Forty or so years ago, an IAS officer called Upamanyu Chatterjee wrote a novel called ‘English, August’. The book was made into a film in 1994 directed by Dev Benegal. It was, on the whole, quite a forgettable film but there was one line in the dialogue that captured the essence of the Indian bureaucrat, especially the IAS man in the district.
“Hum yehan ke Raja hain,” says the main character in one place. That was a declaration of absolute power by an officer who had not been on service even for five years. It is exactly how the East
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