A BRIEF GUIDE TO OFFICIAL DINNERS.

 

 

The IAS, unlike its progenitor the ICS, will bequeath few memories other than those of Chief Secretaries being voted the most corrupt by their own colleagues or launching inquiries against their predecessors. But as the service now heads for an inevitable merger with either the Vivekananda Foundation or the Observer Research Group, it is heartening to note that it will leave behind at least one innovative institution—the Official Dinner ( or OD). There are two major practitioners of the OD: the Army and the IAS. The former has an advantage in the matter of finding funds (and reasons) for justifying ODs, because it can debit all expenses to Raising Days, Regimental Days and Shobha Des, but the IAS has to be more inventive because it is under the ever watchful gaze of some whistleblower or CAG just waiting to ambush them with a book titled THE ACCIDENTAL INVITEE or NOT JUST A DINER-THE DIARY OF  A NATION’S AUTONOMOUS GOURMET. It is for this reason that the IAS is given a higher pay-scale than the Armed Forces: explaining the loss of a dozen tandoori chickens from the pantry of Hotel Holiday Home requires far more management skills than accounting for a dozen missing jawans on the LOC.

Recruits to the IAS are initiated into the arcane ritual of the OD in the Academy at Mussoorie. Its presiding capo di tuti capi (or Director) hosts mock ODs frequently where the basics are spliced into the probationers’ DNA. I still remember two of them: one, “never open your mouth till the food is near it”, which perhaps explains why the IAS is so reluctant to open its collective mouth and speak out. The second rule stipulated that one should never speak ACROSS the table, but only to the persons on either side, even if the guy on the left happened to be a carbuncle from the IFS or the bloke on the right a blister from the IPS, and one was desperate to chat up the lady across the table with a view to marrying her because she had been allotted one’s home state ( UP, in most cases) while said one was exiled for life to Nagaland.                                                                                                                     We were also taught the difference between a butter knife and a fish knife (the former for marinating one’s political bosses and the latter for gutting colleagues), between a soup spoon and a dessert spoon ( the former for raking it in and the latter for being politically correct). The uses of the versatile “chamcha” is something we discovered for ourselves later, and adopted as the most valuable of all cutlery.                                                           The most draconian rule was that when the Director stopped eating and put down his knife and fork, everyone stopped eating too. Since the Director, as befitted a Godfather, was the first to be served and the 400th probationer served about twenty minutes later, by the time the former finished masticating and had begun the excavations with his toothpick, about 200 of us had not even sniffed the soup. This accounts for the fact that the IAS is always first in line at the feeding trough: it’s a hard lesson learnt well.

   Since the IAS controls 600+ districts, 100+ Ministries and a few thousand programmes, finding a reason for throwing an OD is never a problem. There are a few, however, that deserve special mention:

THE PSU (PUBLIC SECTOR UNDERTAKING) DINNER: held after every Board meeting, it is meant to console the officers for the huge losses they have notched up. Intended to occupy the commanding heights of our economy, our PSUs were dislodged from there even quicker than the Pak soldiers from the heights of Kargil. Now in the valley of death, their officers will not go, however, without a fight- sorry, bite- hence the dinners, slotted under “ Any other item” in the agenda.

THE EAP (EXTERNALLY AIDED PROJECT) DINNER: EAPs are a kind of international CSR where other countries give us moneys as aid, and then take them back through consultancies, technology transfer and equipment. We are usually left with only enough money to host a dinner every quarter, on which we spend every remaining dime lest they take that back too.

THE CENTRAL TEAM DINNER: when Secretaries in Govt. of India can no longer stand their wives’ cooking they usually take off to a state to “ review progress” on various schemes. The review consists of visits to temples, golf resorts, shopping on the Mall and a seven course dinner at night. The strong batch- mate network and an innovative menu ensures glowing reports for the state govt.

THE FAREWELL DINNER: modelled on the Last Supper, it is given for senior officers who are about to kick the waste-bin- i.e., retire. It even has a Judas in attendance- the guy who is hoping to succeed the retiree. There is, however, a notable departure from the Biblical allusion: whereas Christ went on to a glorious crucifixion and rose again on the third day, the IAS worthy rises again the very next day, reemployed in some Commission or Tribunal. The farewell dinner is usually organised by Judas himself to ensure that the retiring potentate is artfully estopped from coming back into the service. It is not surprising, therefore, that on occasion officers have to be brought screaming and shouting to their farewell dinners. In my case the Chief Secretary had to send a bulldozer to ensure my presence ( actually, the roads were snowed in, but I have a sneaking suspicion the CS was covering all contingencies!).

THE RAJ BHAVAN DINNER: no IAS officer ever wants to attend one of these ghastly death-watches, but an invitation from the Governor is actually an order. We go to such dinners half choked by “ bandh galla” coats originally tailored in the Academy when we were chinless wonders, now wrapped around Adam’s apples of the extra large variety which would have shocked both Eve and the serpent. These dinners are solemn, if not funereal, affairs; the victuals are really quite good though the only spirit in attendance is one of nationalism. Ministers bump into senior bureaucrats, the Governor bumps into the furniture and everybody escapes as soon as he can after the national anthem has been played for the third time.

   All ODs share two traits. One, there has to be a Chief Guest, who is generally the Chief Minister or the Chief Secretary: although having either dampens the evening, it is a tactical necessity to ensure that Finance doesn’t object to the bill when presented. The Chief Guest in Himachal, which I haunted like Banquo’s ghost for 35 years, just HAS to wear either a maroon ( BJP) or green ( Congress) Himachali cap, depending on which party is in power. The smarter ones have now started investing in Aam Aadmi caps, just in case.

   Second, and this is something Mr. Vinod Rai may like to look into when he has time from his six current assignments, is a peculiar feature in all OD bills: the number of chickens consumed ! The per capita average is two, which appears high even if we factor in the disappearance of all other shades of meats post Yogi Adityanath. Are IAS chaps such solid trenchermen, what with their selection grade ulcers and apex scale haemorrhoids ? Not really. The answer lies in the fact that since all liquor is impermissible at govt. dinners, and cannot be so billed, therefore this Hippocrene beverage is billed as chickens. A peg of single malt is worth a whole chicken, a scotch two legs, a shot of rum is equivalent to a wing, a glass of wine equals a breast (its for the ladies, see) and so on. Quite ingenious, and definitely deserving of the two additional increments the IAS gets over its peers. And this  also provides the answer to that much asked question: Why did the pair of chickens cross the road? Answer: they didn’t want to become a single malt !

   Now that I live on a pension and am unable to cross that road too often I generally make do with KFC chicken nuggets. 

AN APOLOGY MAY BE IN ORDER, YOUR LORDSHIP.

 Hon'ble Chief Justice,

May I, a humble member of the Blatta (Oriental)  genus of cockroaches, make so bold as to express my utter stupefaction at your recent statement in open court in which you termed unemployed youth, RTI activists, media personnel and social media activists as "cockroaches" and "parasites"?  Posterity will record these uncalled for and demeaning words as the nadir of judicial propriety and gravitas. Kindly allow me to explain why.

It appears, from what is available in the public domain, that you were at the time dealing with the issue of proliferation of lawyers with dubious degrees. Your desire to identify and weed out such elements from the legal profession is understandable, and even commendable, and should be supported by all. But your subsequent "leap of hubris", not faith, was totally unwarranted and a step too far even in these dismal times when the vocabulary of public discourse has plumbed new depths. The contemptuous characterisation of our youth and civil society is something we have come to expect from our politicians, but not from the senior-most judicial officer in the country, the custodian of the letter and spirit of the Constitution, whose every word is engraved in time, the beacon and conscience keeper of the nation.

Which is why, my Lord, it pains me to say that your  unfair and insensitive obiter dicta has dimmed the glow of the beacon and induced a perception that the keeper has not been true to his charge. It has at one fell swoop insulted and humiliated these sections of society, cast on them aspersions which are neither true nor justified and, even more dangerous, exposed a heart of darkness in the country's judicial anatomy which does not bode well for a liberal democracy. Your Lordhip's subsequent "clarification" does not dispel the apprehensions your comments have generated.

A  democracy remains healthy not only on the basis of institutions of the state, but on the shoulders of a vibrant civil society and non-state actors. These participants- activists, NGOs, social media, RTI applicants, fact checkers- are the benign bacteria in our body politic that maintain our immune systems, keep in check those organisms that would destroy us, and ensure that democracy and a liberal order survives. By castigating them in such derogatory language, My Lord, you have exposed a side of the higher judiciary we did not imagine existed. It has left us confused, apprehensive and fearful.

Are you aware, your Honour,  that there are 28 million educated unemployed youth in the country, and an additional 100 million who have stopped looking for jobs? (The WIRE, 23.5.2025). 67% of the unemployed youth today are graduates, as compared to 32% in 2004 ? ( Aziz Premji Univ. State of Working India Report, published in the Deccan Herald 1.5.2026). 80 million workers have left the cities owing to lack of job opportunities and gone back to their villages: the government classifies them as employed in agriculture! This worsening position is not due to the indolence of these unfortunate youngsters, but because of faulty govt. policies in education, industrialisation and economic "growth" which promote inequity, concentration of wealth and capital intensive projects, and have decimated the MSME sector. They deserve our empathy, not an elitist condemnation.

Finally, my lord, heed the power of language and choose carefully the patois you employ. For language is a double-edged sword, it can soothe or it can wound, it can demean or it can dignify, it can sustain or it can destroy, it can be a paean or it can be a dog-whistle. It is dangerous to employ words loosely. History is replete with instances where carefully chosen words have preceded, and laid the ground for, mass persecution, ethnic cleansing and even genocide. The killing of a million Tutsis in Rwanda was preceded by a campaign that classified them as "inyenzi" which, coincidentally, means cockroaches; in Hitler's Germany the Jews were called parasites  and rats; the Zionists later termed the Palestinians as "vermin" and "animals" ; nearer home minorities from Bangladesh are stigmatised  as "termites" and protesters as " andolanjeevis". All such branding is invariably followed by dehumanising of entire sections of society and their persecution on a large scale.

It is possible your unfortunate vocabulary may have the same effect in India, for your words feed into the executive's own narrative: the segments of society you have, perhaps unwittingly and unintendedly, vilified are precisely the ones the government of the day considers its enemies and obstacles to its authoritarianism. It may now be emboldened to move against them even more aggressively, confident that it now has your your institution's support. That would be a disaster, an opening of the floodgates that shall eventually consume all the pillars of democracy, including the one over which your Honour presides.

At the end of the day, your Lordship, this unnecessary disparagement of the youth, civil society activists and social media may lead to a loss of credibilty in the institution you head, in its ability (or even willingness) to confront an authoritarian executive, to protect the rights of the minorities, and to uphold the letter and spirit of a liberal and inclusive Constitution. A democracy cannot long survive such a loss. Which is why, sir, you may consider a more explicit retraction and withdrawal of the statement made by you, not just a clarification. An apology to the nation at large will go a long way in restoring the confidence of the citizenry in an institution which is, after all, the last bastion of rights and liberty. To err is human, to admit it is divine. 

With profound regards and my own humble apologies for intruding on your valuable time,

I remain, your Lordship,

A.C.Roach.

"TIGER ABHI ZINDA HAI !"-- BUT ELECTIONS ARE IN THE ICU.

  [It was reported by the Satya Hindi news channel, and reiterated by a Congress spokesperson, that after the declaration of the West Bengal results, the CEC Gyanesh Kumar told a group of reporters: "Tiger abhi zinda hai !"]

My faith in the Chief Deletion Commissioner, Mr Gyanesh Kumar (may his tribe decrease), has been fully restored and vindicated: he has lived up to the trust I reposed in him. I fully expected the Election Commission to win the elections in West Bengal, even though it is not a registered political party but only a kind of I-Pac for one of them. And it has won handsomely. Mr. Kumar can now look forward to greener pastures in the days to come, a Governorship, perhaps, or even (as is being whispered in some shady corridors) a Presidentship. The latter post will suit him admirably because a President can only act on the advice of the Council of Ministers, which is precisely what he has been doing for the last many years.

Which brings me to a larger point: why have elections at all, now that ONOE (One Nation One Election) has been converted to ONNE (One Nation No Elections)? After much deliberation and consultations with the divine forces a-la-Chandrachud, I have come to the conclusion that the country would be much better off without elections. There are both macro and micro reasons for my view.

At the macro level, elections are an impediment to the march of democracy: every now and then the government is distracted from its usual job of handing out contracts to cronies, devastating forests, lynching people, building temples, garlanding rapists, bringing down opposition-ruled state governments, etc. in order to get the endorsement of the voters. Why is it necessary to get the voter's consent when it already has the support of the Election Commission, the Supreme Court, the President and the AA twins? It is this unnecessary distraction which has made us amongst the worst performing countries in global indexes related to Equality, Pollution, Press Freedom, Democratic rankings, and so on. ONNE would solve all these problems at one fell stroke.

It would also bring to an end that unique feature of Indian politics- sovereign bribery. Now, bribery is an offence, except when the state does it, and with your money to boot! In our elections ideology, development, social justice etc. have now been replaced with doles, gold mangalsutras, gas cylinders, washing machines, bicycles, sarees and anything else that can rake in a couple of more votes. And it is bankrupting states: Himachal has already started cutting salaries by 30%, Vijay's TVK has promised subsidies and freebies worth more than Rupees one lakh crore per annum, Bengal will now have to borrow money from Bangladesh to keep the bhadralok happy. Our elections are more like auctions now; scrap them and we'll become the second largest economy in the world before you can say "Jai Shri Ram!"

At a micro- that is, personal-level the benefits of ONNE cannot be ignored, either. For one, your domestic staff will not abandon you: during the Bengal election I was orphaned for weeks. My driver went off to Calcutta to vote, the maid to Malda and the washerman to Bankura. They will return in due course, minus a few who may be shoved into Bangladesh, but for those weeks life was not worth living; no amount of democracy is worth it.

And then there's the evening news, of which I am an addict. I like my news hot and spicy- a couple of murders, a rape or two, the occasional encounter killing, a politician caught in a flagrant delicto act, a Judge's outhouse stuffed with moolah, a bulldozer mounted on a masjid. But during elections I get none of these- only Yogendra Yadav or Jawhar Sircar or SY Quraishi talking about EVMs, SIR or the Model Code of Conduct. On a bad day I'll have to be satisfied with Mr. Modi or Mr. Shah on the stump. Life loses all charm, but with ONNE one can get back to the daily dose of violence, sex and Kangana Ranaut's earth-shaking one-liners.

Elections play havoc with relationships. Familial and social intercourse has, for me, been teetering on a knife edge since we gained our independence in 2014: my vocabulary is limited so I tend to call a spade a spade, a fascist a fascist and a bhakt a bhakt. This has not endeared  me to most of my family, colleagues and friends for whom a Hindu Rashtra is the Holy Grail and Mr. Modi its delivery service. Elections, and the inevitable discussions about them, only add fat to the fire: whenever elections are announced my wife moves into the guest bedroom, morning walkers in my Housing society stop wishing me, I'm unable to make a foursome at golf, even my dog refuses to go for a walk with me! With ONNE there will be a sea-change-no opposition, no political discussions, no rallies, no elections. Dinners will become convivial once again, without Republic TV type of debates. Peace will descend again on our twice blessed  nation. Silence will prevail, the silence of the grave. Or, as Omar Khayyam wrote: Thou shalt be- Nothing-thou shalt not be less.

Ah, the comfort of being Nothing!

BETTER TO REIGN IN HELL THAN SERVE IN HEAVEN

 Since these are tricky times, let us begin this week with a trick question: what do the following events have in common with each other ? :

* The huge, and sometimes violent,  protests in NOIDA last month by factory workers and domestic help over increase in minimum wages.

* The refusal of a High Court judge to recuse herself from a case in which her children are employed by one of the parties, and she herself is reported to have attended functions organised by that party's affiliates.

* A "gherao" of judicial officers (appointed as adjudicators in appeals by deleted voters) by thousands of such disenfranchised voters in a district of West Bengal.

* The deletion of names of almost 3 million voters in West Bengal, who had voted in previous elections and possessed all the required documents, because of an opaque, algorithm driven "logical discrepancy" feature not provided in any law or used in any other state.

* The holding of polls without deciding the pending appeals of these 3 million unfortunates, and the callous indifference of the Supreme Court to their constitutional right to vote, saying that they could vote in the next election!

* The imposition of a casteist bail condition on Adivasi Dalits accused (but not convicted) by an Odisha court to the effect that they should clean police stations every morning for two months, demeaning their dignity and making a mockery of the law.

* The defection of seven Rajya Sabha MPs, led by one Raghav Chadha ,from the AAP to the BJP.

* A poor tribal in Keunjhar district of Odisha being compelled to carry the corpse of his dead sister to a bank in order to prove her death, just so that the meagre balance in her account could be transferred to him as the heir. The KYC converted from Know Your Customer to Know Your Corpse.

* The dismissal of cases of hate speech against leaders of a political party by a court on the grounds that their utterances did not amount to expressing hate or inciting violence. One of these speeches included the now infamous exhortation: Desh ke Gaddaron ko, goli maro salon ko. The other was a video of a Chief Minister pointing a rifle at a target with a picture of a Muslim man.

The incidents noted above differ in context, content, import and location, but they all contain one common element: the complete collapse of what makes a developed country- of governance, common law, societal values, empathy, the rule of law, trust in the government or its institutions, the idea of equity and even-handed justice. Taken together, they point to the breakdown of something cumulatively more precious- democracy itself. They vindicate the far-sighted and cautionary words of Dr. Ambedkar: that democracy in India was only a thin layer of top soil which could be blown away easily and should not be taken for granted.

A Devil's wind is blowing through the country these days, removing Ambedkar's top soil and exposing the outcrop of powerlust, greed, religious bigotry, casteism, violence that have always under-pinned our society. We had expected that progressive governments, democratically elected, would over time erode and disintegrate these negative features of our civilisational landscape, but the opposite has happened. Successive governments, more so the one we have had for the last twelve years, have only reinforced these flaws and fault lines; they have been made the driving force behind national (even international) policies, they are being embedded in laws and educational curriculum, they have become unapologetic instruments of state policy, they are the agenda on which elections are now being fought.                                                                                                    The defection of Raghav Chadha only confirms this terminal decline because it shows that a liberal upbringing and London education is no shield against the unscrupulousness of India's politics, and it  vindicates the mounting distrust of politicians in general. The executive has even managed to brutalise our society to a point where the top 10% care only for their own comforts and privileges, leaving the other 90% to survive as best as they can. We are among the most inequitable countries in the world, and proud of it. Democracy is the last thing which can emerge from this witch's cauldron.

We had naively expected that when the executive went on a rampage our judiciary at least would reign it in and preserve the rule of law. That hope has been belied and now lies trampled in the dust, as some of the above episodes demonstrate. We have today plumbed depths lower even than the ADM Jabalpur moment of Emergency days. Then at least there was a constitutionally legitimate state of Emergency in place, today we do not have even that fig leaf to cover the government's naked pursuit of absolute power. Then there was one ADM Jabalpur judgment, today we are being shredded by a thousand judicial cuts every day, whether it be on denying bail, allowing elections to be stolen from under magisterial noses, redefining hate to suit a particular ideology, spurning any notion of accountability, throwing overboard any restatement of judicial values.

A Constitution alone cannot make a democracy, or ensure that a democracy survives. For that to happen the top soil has to be tended carefully, its nutrients lovingly added and preserved, the negative infestations and weeds kept away; the gardeners have to be men of wisdom and empathy, people who love what they are doing, not mercenaries seeking the maximum payouts. Sadly, it is the mercenaries and carpet- baggers who own our patch of land today. What remains of the top soil will be blown away soon, leaving a rocky outcrop, a civilisational desert of no value to anyone but these rapacious seekers of power and their hirelings. They will rule over a wasteland, but then, as Satan mused: "It is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven."