View from the PM's House

The art of story-telling is alien to most of our bureaucrats. Perhaps a few decades of goverment service are enough to render them incapable of producing a free flowing autobiographical narrative that can present nationally significant events and personalities in a perspective of their own.

P C Alexander and B N Tandon, both of whom worked in the prime minister's office in senior positions, have already come out with memoirs that do not fulfil the promise that they held out.

The complaint with their account was that you got to know many of the details of what files they moved and what initiatives they pushed or blocked. But the larger picture was missing.

The problem persists with the memoirs now published by another retired civil servant, B G Deshmukh, who has the rare distinction of having worked as cabinet secretary for close to three years with Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister (1986-89) and then as principal secretary to two successive prime ministers.

If you are looking for interesting anecdotes about how certain decisions were taken by the government during his 40-year long career as a civil servant, you will find them aplenty.

But if you are seeking an understanding, for instance, of how the Bofors controversy was mishandled or how the government hurtled towards an unprecedented fiscal and balance of payments crisis, you will be disappointed.

The big bonus, however, is one whole chapter on the Bofors controversy and it does offer fresh insights into Rajiv Gandhi's role in the deal.

Deshmukh writes candidly about the access of the Prime Minister's House (the key personalities then included M L Fotedar and Captain Satish Sharma) to funds from abroad.

He makes no secret of his inexperience in dealing with such issues. It was due to his interference that the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) could not make cash payments in Italian currency to a member of the Maino family (Rajiv Gandhi's in-laws) for training the prime minister's security staff. Eventually, the Italian expert had to be flown in to New Delhi.

What emerges from the whole episode is that Deshmukh was quite a tough official and not afraid to point out, even to the prime minister, what was wrong.

Though he sensed that Rajiv probably knew the names of the recipients of the commission in the Bofors deal, Deshmukh persisted with a letter to the Swiss authorities that sought to establish common criminality by asking them to furnish the names of the recipients of the commission.

Rajiv was upset that such a letter was drafted and ensured that it did not eventually reach the Swiss authorities.

Deshmukh, however, is confident of Rajiv's innate honesty and concludes that neither Rajiv nor any member of his family received kickbacks for the Bofors arms purchase.

But there was strong circumstantial evidence that Rajiv knew the names of the recipients but was reluctant to expose them perhaps because they were either too close to him, his family or the Congress.

That Rajiv Gandhi reposed full faith in Deshmukh despite the latter's frank views (a few months before Deshmukh was due to complete his three-year tenure, Rajiv asked him to move to the Prime Minister's Office as principal secretary) speaks volumes about the relationship the two enjoyed.

Not that Rajiv has been completely spared by Deshmukh. Rajiv's tacit approval of the St Kitts affair, where false charges against the son of V P Singh were framed, is roundly criticised.

Deshmukh is also disappointed with Rajiv for the manner in which he built a coterie around himself, for pursuing soft communalism (the permission granted for the resumption of worship in the Babri Masjid complex), for destabilising the Virendra Patil government in Karnataka in 1990 and for showing disrespect to more experienced chief ministers like Jyoti Basu.

A key attraction of the book is that it contains several little-known facts about the top bureaucrats during the late eighties and the early nineties.

For instance, you will know that it is not only Mani Shankar Aiyar, but Vinod Pande (who became the cabinet secretary during V P Singh's prime ministership) who was also responsible for giving shape to the new Panchayati Raj institutions.

Bimal Jalan openly lobbied to become finance secretary in 1989. Deepak Nayyar could be made chief economic advisor in 1989 only after Deshmukh got Shankar N Acharya a World Bank assignment, since the latter argued that as economic advisor in the finance ministry he was senior to Nayyar.

Deshmukh is generous about furnishing fresh details about himself as well. These include his mild altercation with P C Alexander over his posting in Maharashtra as chief secretary in 1985 (which ironically ensured that he returned to the Centre as cabinet secretary less than a year later), his unfulfilled desire to be made the RBI governor when R N Malhotra's tenure ended, his successful attempt to get Tisco's name removed from the blacklist prepared by the then revenue secretary, Vinod Pande and his failure to approve the proposals from Bajaj to increase its scooter plant's capacity to one million units per year.

But for a civil servant who served the government with his head held high for 40 years, the last few days as principal secretary to the newly appointed prime minister, Chandra Shekhar, were embarrassing and even humiliating.

Soon after Chandra Shekhar became prime minister, Deshmukh offered his resignation, as was the convention. But Chandra Shekhar asked him to continue for a year.

But two weeks later, Deshmukh was shocked by a phone call from then finance minister, Yashwant Sinha, who told him that a decision on appointing his successor had been taken.

Deshmukh was furious. He rushed to meet Chandra Shekhar and demanded to know why and how his resignation was not accepted when tendered and why a successor was appointed before taking a decision on his offer.

Chandra Shekhar had no answer and left the room. An upright bureaucrat had to eat humble pie before a crafty politician.

Worse was to follow. Deshmukh wanted to know from Chandra Shekhar if the government would permit him to take up a job with the Tatas after he left the prime minister's office.

Chandra Shekhar told him that there was no problem. But that permission never came. For Deshmukh, this was perhaps the most humiliating moment of his career. It was also a telling comment on a system that refused to reform itself.

A CABINET SECRETARY LOOKS BACK

B G Deshmukh
HarperCollins India
Price: Rs 500