A TALE TOLD BY AN IDIOT

24 A Tole Told by nn Idiot

stocd entirely aloof." According to the official statistics, 763
people wele killed and 1941 injured as a result of police firing.
During a contiguous period of time more than three million
civilians lost their lives in Russia, actively opposing the Ger-
mans. The loss causcd to Government by the '42 movement
was Rs 27,35,125. The pilots strike in Air India, which stsrted
in August 1974, was stated by their Chairman to have cost
more than Rs 6 crures by September. To me, as a grass roots
Indian who saw the '42 movement at close quarters, the pre-
vailing Indian view that it was a national upsurge is offensive,
just as the same contemporary Britrsh view was. A national
upsurge in my country does not occupy a miniature stage.
The British were the second cause of such trouble as there
was. All the Congress leaders, all the men and women to
whom the organization might have listened, were arrested at
the same time, leaving a vacuum-and nature abhorsa vacuum.
There are two ways of dealing with approaching political tfou-
ble. One is to deprive the movement of leadership before the
trouble starts, but in that case oll the people who are-leaders
and who are likely to become leaders have to be roped ih; the
arrests have to go down to the third and fourth rank of !eader-
ship. The other way is to let the situation develop so that the
lines of leadership become clearer, and then-but not too
late-to deprive the movement of effective leadership. Obvi-
ously there cannot be any hard and fast rule, since no two
situations are exactly alike. The British elected to follow the
first course but they did not go far enough. They arrested
Pandit D.P. Mishra because he was the iron man of the Cen-
tral Provinces and a ranking member of the All India Con-
gress Committee, but they did not arrest Shyanilal Kashmiri
who held no office in the Congress, and who, together with his
friend Maganlal Ragdi, was to give far more trouble than
Pandit Mishra would ever have given precisely because he
was not as great a man as Pandit Mishra. The result of the
British policy of neutralizing only persons of importance was
to leave the field open to the more radical, the more violent,
and the more adventurist elements in the Congress. It is they
who gave all the trouble, such trouble as there was.
Confining arrests to well-known leaders was a matter of
polrcy. The district oficers and their superiors at the provin-
he Phoney War 25
cia1 level had no choice in the matter. The line of action was
laid down in a Top secret letter of the Government of India
dated 2 August, the substance of which has been reproduced
in the compilation The Transfer of Power published by the
British Stationery Office. "No individual will bs arrested
merely as a member of an unlawful association, the general
object being not to fill the jails but to limit the number of
arrests to those regarded as essential for dislocation of the
Congress organization." The Government of India in their
wisdom felt that the essential people were the major office-
bearers, whereas any army officer will tell you that in a battle,
it is the NCO's and not the officers that count. We neutralized
the Brigadier, but it was hisKhansama that gave the trouble, as
i n 1857 at the Ridge. In my subdivision twenty-two Congress
leaders were slated for arrest. When I next met the Commis-
sioner-P.G. Braye--I protested. I said that none of them was
likely to go in for violence, and that if violence erupted they
could be relied on to oppose it. He was amused at the certainty
with which I Spoke. He said, "I suppos: you don't want t o
arrest anyone, since they are all plaster saints?" My reply was
"Sir, I don't want to arrest these twenty-two, but 1 have here
a list of about seven hundred chaps I would very much like to
pick up. There are reasons against each name. None of them
is an office-bearer in the Congress." He glanced through the
list and the notes I had made against each name. He nodded
slowly, "If this were 1930 or even 1940, I would have given
you a free hand. But it is not, it is 1942. This show is being run
by the Government of Indis, my boy, carry out orders."
There is a third reason why the '42 miv:ment got out of
hand at certain times and in certain places. The British
might show a brave front lo the Axis, but their backs were
very definitely to the wall. From their point of view it was
imperative to squash the '42 movement before it assumed
proportions that would require calling out the Aw.y on a
significant scale. They decided that this could best be done
by making examples of those who were rash enough to defy
the Raj, even of relatively harmless mobs which could have
been persuaded to disperse without the use of force. Violence
was used long before the crowd became violent, long before
it was necessary, and as usual a chain reaction set in, for
26 A Tale Told bj?an Idiot
violence begets violence. Firing was resorted to when a little
patience, a little tact could well have saved the situation.
Once the subordinate police officers saw which way the wind-
was blowing they outdid their British masters, with an eye to
an eventual Rai Sahib o r promotion. A'nd they got it.
I do not wish to give the impression that every British
officer was imbued with the motives I have imputed to the
British as a whole. There were honourable exceptions, like
Patterson in Jabalpur, and generally the British Commis-
sioners did try to restrain the enthusiasm of their younger
British district officers. The Indian officcrs as a whole behaved
very well. They showed cold courage in facing potentially
dangerous mobs and persuading them to disperse, there was no
unnecessary use of force and no brutality. Our approach was
not perhaps popular with our masters, but no one suffered
for it. At least ~ o obviously.
t

The Quit India resolution was passed on 8 August 1942 and

the amusing thing about it is that .no one, including its
authors, have ever allowed it to s#eak for itself. It was very
far from being the Gita, but like the Gita it suffered from a
flood of explanations, commentaries, and interpretations. It
would only be fair-at least once-to let the resolution speak
for itself. Here it is.
"The All-India Congress Cbmmiltce has given the most
careful consideration to the reference made to it by the
Warking Committee in their resolution dated 14 July 1942
and to subsequent events, including the development of.the
war situation, the utterances of responsible spokesmen of the
British ~ o v e h m e n t ,and the comments and criticisms made
in India and abroad. The Committee approves of and endorses
that resolution, and is of opinion that events, subsequent to
it have given it further justification and have made it clear
that the immediate ending of British rule in India is an urgcnt
necessity, both for the sake of India and for the success of
the cause of the United Nations. The.continuation of that
rule is degrading and enfeebling India and making her pro-
gressively less capable of defending herself and of contributing
The Phoney War 27
to the cause of world freedom.
"The Committee has viewed with dismay the deterioration of
the situation on the Russian and Chinese fronts and conveys to
the Russian and Chinese peoples its high appreciation of their
heroism in defence of their freedom. This increasing peril makes
it incumbent on all those who strive for freedom and who sym-
pathize with the victims of aggression to examine the founda-
tions of the policy so far pursued by the Allied Nations, which
have led to repeated and disast~ousfailure. It is not by adhering
to such aims and policies and methods that failure can be con-
verted into success, for past experience has shown that failure
is inherent in them. These policies have been based not on
freedom so much as on the domination of subject and colonial
countries and the continuation of the imperialist tradition and
method. The possession of Empire, instead of adding to the
strength of the ruling power, lias become a burden and a
curse. India, the classic land of modern imperialism, has
become the crux of the question. By the freedom of India
will Britain and the United Nations be judged and the pecplcs
of Asia and Africa filled with hope and enthusiasm.
"The ending of British rule in this country is thus a vital
and immediate issue on which depend the future of the war
and the success of freedom and democracy. A free India will
assure this success by throwing all her great resources in the
struggle for freedom and against the aggression of Nazism,
Fascism, and Imperialism. This will not only affect materially
the fortunes of the war, but will bring all subject and oppres-
sed humanity on the side of the United Nations and give these
nations, whose ally India would be, moral and spiritual leader-
ship of the world. India in bondage will continue to be the
symbol of British Imperialism and the taint of that imperialism
will affect the fortunes of all the United Nations.
"The peril of today therefore necessitates the independence
of India and the ending of British domination. NO future
promises of guarantees can affect the present situation o r meet
that peril. They cannot produce immediate psychological
effect on the mind of the masses. Only the glow of freedom
now can release that energy ar.d enthusiasm of millions of
people which will immediately transform the nature of the
War.
.28 A Tale Told 5y an Idiot
"The AICC therefore repeats with all emphasis the demand
for the withdrawal of the British power from India. On the
declaration of India's independence a provisional government
will be formed and free India will become an ally of the
United Nations, sharing with them in the trials and tribula-
tions of the joint enterprise of the struggle for freedom. The
provisional government can onl-y be formed with the coopera-
tion of the principle parties and groups in the country. It will
thus be a composite government, representative of a11 impor-
tant sections of the people of India. Its primary function must
be to defend India and resist aggression with all the armed as
well as the non-violent Forces at its command, together with
its allied powers, and to promote the well being of the workers
in the fields and factories and elsewhere, to whom essentially
all power and authority must belong. The Provisional Govern-
ment will evolve a scheme for a Constituent Assembly which
will prepare a constitution for the government of India, accept-
able to all sections of the people. This constitution, according
to the Congress view, should be afederal one with the largest
measure of autonomy for the federating units and with, the
residuary powers vesting in these units. The future relations
between India and the Allied nations will be adjusted by
representatives of a!l these free countries conferring together
for their mutual advantage and for their cooperation in the
common task of resisting aggression. Freedom will enable
India to resist aggression effectively with the people's united
will and strength behind it.
"The freedom of India must be the symbol of, and prelude
to this freedom of all other Asiatic nations under fbre~gn
domination. Burma, Malaya, Indo-China, the Dutch Indies,
Iran and Iraq must also attain their complete freedom. It must
be clearly understood that such of these countries as are under
Japanese control now must not subsequently be placed under
the rule or control of any other colonial power.
"While the AICC must primarily be concerned with the
independence and defence of India in this hour of danger, the
Committee is of the opiniori that the future peace, security,
and ordered progress of thc world demand a world federation
of free nnians, and on no other basis can the problems of the
modern world'be solved. Such a world federation would ensure
The Phoney War 29
the freedom of its constituent nations, prevention of aggres-
sion and exploitation by one nation over another, the protec-
tion of national minoritieS, the gdvancement of all backward
areas and people, and the pooling of the world's resources for
the common good of all. On the establishment of such a world
federation, disarmament would be practicable in all countries,
national armies, navies and air forces, would no looger be
necessary, and a world federal defence force would keep the
world peace and prevent aggression.
"An independent India would gladly join such a world
federation and cooperate on an equal basis with other countries
in the solution of international problems.
"Sueh a federation should be open to all nations who agree
with its fundamental principles. In view of the war, however,
the federation must inevitably, to begin with, be confined to
the United Nations, such a step taken now will have a most
powerful effect on the war, on the peoples of the Axis countries,
and on the peace to come:
"The Committee regretfully realises, however, that despite
the tragic and overwhelming lessons of the war and the perils
that overhang the world, the governments of few countries are
yet prepared to take this inevitable step towards world federa-
tion. The reactions of the. British Government and the mis-
guided criticism of the foreign press also make it clear that
even the obvious demand for India's independence is resisted,
though this has been made essential], to meet the present peril
and to enable India to defend herself and help China and
Russia in their hour of deed. The Committee is anxious not to
ernbarass in any way the defence of China o r Russia, whose
freedom is precious and must be preserved, o r to jeopardise the
defensive capacity of the United Nations. But the peril grows
both to India and these nations, and inaction and submission
to a foreign administlation at this stage is not only degrading
India and reducing her capacity lo defend herself and resist
aggression but is no answer to that growing peril and is no
servicc to the peoples of the United Nations. The earnest
appeal of the Working Committee t o Great Britain and the
United Nations has so far met with no response and the criti-
cisms made in many foreign quarters have shown an ignorance
of India's and the world's need, and sometimes even hostility
30 A Tale Told by on Idiot
t o India's freedom, which is significant of a mentality of domi-
nation and racial superiority which cannot be tolerated by a
proud peopte conscious of their strength and of the justice of
their cause.
"The AdCC would yet again, at this last moment, in the
interest of world freedom, renew this appeal to Britain and the
United Nations. But the Committee feels that it is no longer
justified in holding the nation back from endeavouring to assert
its will against an imperialist and authoritarian Government
which dominates over it and prevents it from functioning in its
own interest and in the interest of humanity. The Committee
resolves, therefore, t o sanctibn, for the vindication of India-s
inalienable right to freedom and independence, the starting of
a mass struggle on non-violent lines on the widest possible
scale, s o that the country might utilise all the non-violent
strength it has gathered during the last 22 years of peaceful
struggle. Such a struggle must inevitably be under the leader-
ship of Gandhiji and the Committee requests him to take the
lead and guide the nation in the steps to be taken.
"The Committee appeals to the people of India to face the
dangers and hardships that will fall to their lot with courage
and endurance, and to hold together under the leadership of
Gandhiji and carry out his instructions as disciplined soldiers
of Indian freedom. They must remember that non-violence is
the basis of this movement. A time may come when it may
not be possible to issue instructions or for instructions to reach
our people, and when no Congress Committees can function.
When this happens every man find woman who is participating
in this movement must fuaction for himself o r herself within
the four corners of the general instructions issued. Every
Indian who desires freedom and strives for it must be his own
guide urging him on along the hard road where there is no
resting place and which leads ultirnatelv to the independence
of India.
"Lastly, while the AICC has stated i t s own view of the
future governance under free India, the AICC wishes to make
it quite clear to all chncerned that by embarking on a mass
struggle, it has no intention of gaining power for the Congress.
The power, when it comes, will belol~gto the whole people of
India."
The Phoney War 31
So there it is. An obvious compromise between conflicting
points of view, but with a repeated emphasis on non-violence,
and a very obvious leaving of the door open for negotiation.
There is no mention of "Quit India," there is no mention of
do or die, and there is no demand that the British are to quit
instantly. The British seized on the opportunity afforded by
the resolution to sweep away the horde of Congress skirmishers
that were disrupting their flanks and making concentration on
the real war difficult. We carried out their orders.

On 10 August the C.P. and Berar delegates left Bombay to

return to their own states. All the former Congress ministers
were in the group and we rzceived orders to arrest the promi-
nent leaders at Malkapur, which was in my subdivision. They
were duly arrested at about 2 a.m. when the train arrived at
Malkapur, and it was amusingto find that Pandit D.P. Mishra,
former Home Minister of C.P., had foreseen the arrest. Pre-'
sumably he knew how the police mind works; be had persuadl
ed his colleagues, including the lPormer Chief minister, Pandit
Ravi Shankar Shukla, to buy tickets only up to Ma!kapur, so
that they did not waste any money! The Superintendent of
h i i c e was Cartwright, a humourless man who had voluntarily
assumed the entire burden of the British Empire. He twitted
his prisoners with having wasted their money in buying tickets
to Nagpur, when their journey would end at Malkapur. In
response Pandit Mishra'held up a sheaf of tickets, all only c p
to Malkapur. Cartwright was shocked. He asked "Who told
you that you were going to be arrested here?'Pandit Mishra
replied laconically. "First railway station inside the Central
Provinces."
That settled Cartwright for a time, but only temporarily.
The prisoners were taken to Nagpur in special buses, and Cart-
wright resumed theattack en route. He said, in extremely poor
taste, "What is all this nonsense about an open rebellion? Your
rebellion is finished before it even started!" In spite of the
fact that Pandit Shukla was a seasoned politician he indulged
himself in the luxury of losing his temper, and said something
like this, "If you had given us a couple of days .more, you
32 A Tole by an Idiot
would have known what an open rebellion is, you and your
police stations!" It was an angry retort that meant nothing,
but the British made good use cf it in the Tottenham report
(Report on rhe Congress Responsibilii)~for the Disturbances,
by Sir Richard Tottenham, then Home Secrctary t o the
Government of India). Their version was that Pandit Shukla
said, "If we had been given ten days time, every police station
in the province would have been burnt down." The Congress
version was something else again. "It is lucky for the British
that the Congress is wedded t o non-voilence. If this had not
been so, there would have been such a rebellion thatevery
police station in t h e country would have been burnt down."
T r u t h is the first casualty in polemics.
Curiously enough, the first cipher telegram containing a
fairly full report o n the disturbances, from the Home Depart-
ment of the Government of India to the Secretary of State for
India, gave the truth-unlike the Tottenhain Report. It is
dated 5 September 1942 and reads:

O u r intelligence authorities do not at present see any master

hand behind disturbances and attribute thein largely to
cumulative effect of anti-British agitation which has b-en
deliberately intensified by congress leaders since failure of
cripps mission a n d partly also t o intervention of congress
socialist party forward block and extreme revolutionary
parties who a r e always ready t o fish in troubled waters
(The Transfer.of Power, 1942-47, Vol. 11, No. 697, p. 904).

D r Parasnis, a n old gentleman of nearly eighty, was a

member of the A I C C from Khamgaon. He was perfectly
harmless, and was passing through a very difficult time. Both
his sons were down with typhord which, in th'ose days before
the advent of antibiotics, was a tricky disease. The indefatig-
able Cartwright appeared in Khamgaon with a warrant for
his arrest under the Defence of India Rules. I had deliberately
left the old gentleman o a t of my list, but Cartwright was the
horrible type that always did his homework. 'There was only
one rhing t o do. I rang u p Jayaratnam, who was now the Chief
Secretary, and explained the circumstances. I said that I would
accept personal responsibility for Dr Parasnis if he was not
 The Phoney War 33
arrested. Jayaratnam 'said, "O.K.,it's your neck. Put Cart-
wright on to me." The warrant was cancelled. Somewhat to
my surprise, this trifling episode paid unexpected dividends.
The public as well als the politicians recognized me as a human
being. A couple of days later Ekbote, the President of the
District Congress Committee, was to address a public meeting
on the Congress resolution of the 7th August. He was an ener-
getic and forceful man-incidentally my tennis partner-and
ranked high on the list of those to be roped in. I decided to
do the job at the meeting itself. I went alone, without any
police escort, and this occasioned some surprise, but no one
said anything. When Ekbote got up to speak, I served him
with the warrant. He announced that he had been arrested
and that the meeting would not now be held. The crowd,
which was about twenty thousand strong, began to get restive.
I whispered to him, "Could you possibly get the crowd to dis-
. perse before you come with me? If you don't, it looks as if
I'll have to accompany you.-as a patient!" H e could have
created a very di5cult situation by refusing my request. He
did not. He went back to the microphone and asked the audi-
ence to disperse peacefully, saying that he would not go with
me until they had done so. In a few minutes everything quiet-
ened down, the crowd dispersed, and I took Ekbote to his
house, where I gave him a couple of hours to sort out his
affairs before he went to jail.
I was fortunate in my Deputy Commissioner, S.W.G. Qlp-
herts-Forrester. A tough man with a sense of humour, his
subordinates could always rely on his support if they were in
a tight corner. Once he realized that I could look after myself,
he gave me a free hand in my subdivision, and that is how I
came to discover Section 151 of the CriminalProced~~re Code.
This provisionof law was invented for policemen, particularly
the unscrupulous ones. It enables arrest on suspicion of being
about to commit a cognizable offence. The amused is produ-
ced before a magistrate within twenty-four hours and remand-
ed to jail custody. At each hearing the police ckim that the
investigation is incomplete and obtain another remand. and
the process goes on until the magistrate loses patience and dis-
charges the accused or until the police decide that enough is
enough. We used Section 151 in those cases wliere we felt that
34 A Tide Told by an Idiot
the Defence of India Rules would be a' form of overkill, dc-
taining the person until the opportunity for making trouble
had passed,'amally a week or two. Since I was the magistrate
dealing with these cases, getting a remand' was no problem.
However, I did once have a narrow shave. A person arrested
bnder Section 151 was remanded to the magisterial lockup-
and everyone forgot about him, quite inexcusably. Two months
later I received a notice from the High Court in a habeas
corpus case. The applicant was the Forgotten Man. 1 immedi-
ately released him and fell over backwards apologizing to their
Lordships-in that order. Somewhat to my surprise, the apo-
logy was accepted and the matter was closed. Justice Hemcon,
who dealt with the case, later told me, "The matter was so
serious that we had only two alternatives; to hang you or to
accept your apology. You were not worth hanging."
Nothing happened in Khamgaon subdivision or in Buldana
district. No wires cut, no lathi charge, and only five out of the
twenty-two persons ordered to be arrested by the Government -
were in fact arrested. This created a peculiar problem. People
started coming to me and demanding to be arrested. They knew
perfectly well that when the Congress returned to power, their
chances of a lucrative position depended on the answer to
that fateful question-and what did you do during the Move-
ment? I obliged them by bending the Defence of India Rules
slightly. I can honestly-or dishonestly-claim credit for a
number of the significant political promotions of later years.
The total number of dead (as a direct result of police action)
in the Central Provinces and Berar was fifty. The district wise
breakup is as follows: Nagpur seven, Wardha one, Chanda six,
Bhandara five, Jabalpur two, Mandla one, Sagar one, Raipur
one, Betul seven, Hoshangabad one, Bilaspur one, Durg one,
Amravati sixteen, total fifty. And yet the figures are, in a
sense, misleading. The casualties occurred in isolated incidents,
one or two in the whole district. For instance, all the deaths
in Amravati district took place at a village called Yaoli. No
one really knows how the trouble started. One version is that
a British officer tried to photograph some persons who had
been arrested. The crowd took exception to this and snatched
his camera, the police used their lathis, and there was a free-
for-all in which the Deputy Commissioner had his leg broken.
The Phoney War 35
Then the firing began at point-blank range, and fourteen
people died. It is significant that no one died on the Govern-
ment side.
When my grandchildren ask-me what I did in the '42 m o v e
ment I say-"I waited for it."
111. FOOD

December 1942 and the winter of our discontent. The juar was
good, the cotton was good, elsewhere in the province the paddy
crop was good. And yet prices rose until we in our innocence
thought they could rise no further. There was no shortage of
foodgrains; there was a shortage of money with which to buy
them. Wages did not keep pace with the sudden rise of prices.
Labour, whether in the private sector or employed by the
Governmeqt, was not as W d l organized as it is now. I had no
power to fix prices, fortunately, or I would also have comrnit-
ted that folly. The merchants and the more socially conscious
citkenr got together, with a little prodding from me, and we
opened what was to my knowledge the first fair price shop In
the Province. The merchants agreed to sell on a no-profit, no-
loss basis, and I sat with them once a week to determine the
price. These shops did not enable us to hoid the price line be-
cause they linked the selling price with the actual cost of grain,
and the actual cost rose per~odically.But they made the people
feel that someotle was sympathetic towards their hardships,
even if he was a bloody fool. In those days sympathy was also
a scarce commodity.
I have said that there was 110 shortage of roodgrains. This
was true of Buldana district and particcldrly of my subdivision,
both of which were surplus, Our shortage was of money. But
elsewhere In the country there was a shortage of grain as well
asmoney. ,
It was true in 1942, and i t is true now, that the level of wages
in Government employment sets the level in the private sector.
Food 37
Wages in the private sector are either above or below the
Government level for equivalent work, depending on the pro-
fitability of the sector concerned. But by and large, the private
employer determines his wage in relation to the wage paid by
the Government for approximately the same kind of work. The
British resoluiely held down wages. One reason was their liabi-
lity to lndia for war services; they did not want the bill to be
too large, and rising wages would certainly have inflated it.
The other reason was a more brutal one. For several years
preceding the war, India had been deficit in foodgrains and
imports had been on a large scale. While our net exports dur-
ing the five years 1915-16 to 1919-20 had been four hundred
thousand tons, ill the five years 1935-36 to 1939-40 our net
imports were thirteen hundred thousand tons (History of the
Freedom Movement in India, Dr Tara Chand, Vo1.3, p.55). With
tlie,outbreak of war, irnports ceased. There was a shortage of
foreign exchange, and, even more important, every tonof
shipping available was desperately needed for .militery purpo-
ses. i n these circumstances the British probably felt that low
wages would operate like rationing. With low-relative to the
price index-wages and high food prices, people would be
forced to buy less. The fact that in doing so they might starve
to death was neither here nor there. You have lo break eggs to
make an omelette. There were no further imports. Instead, we
had the Bengal famine.
We were told that there was 110real shortage, the trouble was
due to hoarding by the bania, the problem could easily be s01-
ved by a few marginal adjustments-the better-off should eat
less cereals, the poor should substitute part of their cereal in-
take with non-cereal foods. I learnt economics under Lord
Wobbins, Caitskill and Hall and the most important thing they
taught me was to take nothing on trust. I suggested delicately
that the better-off in India were such a rnicroscc~icminaritv
that what they did was of no importance whatsoever to the food
fron:. Even if they ate no cereals at all, the tota! saving would
hardly suffice to give tlre labouring classes a tenth of a ckapati
each. I also pointed out that hoarding is a symptom of scarcity
and not the cause. It is only when things are not available that
People hoard. Here there is no room for doubt as to which
comes first, the chicken or the egg. As for the poor substituting
 38 A Tale Told by an Idiot
part of thelr cereaj intake by non-cereals, they already had
diffic.ulty in finding the money for their minimum requirement
of cereals, how on earth would they find the money for a more
expensive substitute? (That is not true today. As 1write, pota-
toes are a rupee a kilo and wheat is two rupees!) What I said
was true and therefore unpopular with our British masters.
Today it is still mostly true and still unpopular.
The transformation of India from a surplus to a deficit
country deserves a closer look. First, the facts. If we compare
four different periods of time between 1893 and 1946, we
find that foodgrain production was steadily declining. In the
period 1893 to 1896 (three years) food production was 70.9
million tons per annum. Between 1906 to 1916 (ten years) it
averaged 74 million tons. In the ten years 1926 to 1936, it
was 00.6 million tons. And in the ten years 1936 to 1946
it dropped marginally to 60.3 million tons. (Source-official
statistics.) The decline is more striking if we put the figures
in terms of per capita food production, thus bringing the
bopulation growth into focus. In the decade 1897 to 1906,
food production per capita per annum was 560 Ibs. This
figure fell to 394 Ibs. in the decade 1937 to 1946, by approxi-
mately 30 per cent. (Kuznets, Moore and Spengler, Economic
Gtowrh: Brazil, India, Japan.) This is in spite of the fact that
the total cultivated area increased from 221 million acres in
1981 to 1905 to 258 million acres in the period 1940 to 1945,
under food crops. The Call in per capita production is not
entirely due to the growth in popu:ation. As the acreage
increased, poorer and poorer lands were brought under the
plough. Their per acre production was low and dragged down
the .average for the whole area under cultivation. But this
does not explain why gross or total production declined, in
, spite of the cultivated area having increased. The explanation
is that per acre yields of even non-niarginal land came down.
ltn the period 1900 to 1945, while the total cultivated area
increased by 21 per cent, the total agricultural output rose by
only 14 per cent. There was an actual fall in productivity by
7 per cent.
But. enough of figures. The crux of the matter is that in
British eyes Indian agriculture was incidental to the supply
of the raw materials they needed; indigo, and later, cotton,
I
Food 39
jute, and sugar. For such commercial crops the railways
offered favourable freight rates,. Britishers became planters
and were very much on the right side of the Government,
the technical know-how available was freely offered for such
crops. For foodgrains o r crops of no economic interest to the
Raj-nothing. From 1921 to 1922 the United Kingdom was
spending Rs 1380 per thousand acres for the development of
agriculture-the Punjab was spending exactly fifty-six rupees.
Times have not changed much. Today, agriculture accounts
for 49.6 percent of the Gross National Product in.our country.
During the period of the Third Plan, only 32 percent of the
expendituie on the productive sector (not total expenditure)
was earmarked for it. Kipling said:

It's Tommy this-and Tommy that, and chuck 'im out,

8 the brute!
But it's saviour of 'is country when the guns begin to
shoot.

.
In our casa it's Jai Jawan Jai Kisan . . but only when a
crisis is breathing down our necks. To this day we have not
been able to decide the acreage the nation needs under each
crop in each region, nor have we evolved a system of sub-
sidies to bring those acreages into being. All the advanced
countries have done so. During the last ten years of my service
I tried to do two things for my state-crop insurance and
planned crop acreages. The Crop Insurance Bill was passed
by the Vidhan Sabha but lack of funds prevented its-imple-
mentation. Planned crop acreages was a miscarriage. Un-
fortunately, nothing worthwhile produces votes.
Twenty-two years after I was S.D.O. Khamgaon, when
I was the Chief Secretary of Madhya ~ r a d c s h ,I often wished
that I could recapture the courage and ignorance of those
days and marry it to the experience and knowledge I had since
gained. The tragedy of age is that it knows too much, and
knowledge breeds fear. I knew nothing and ignorance was
bliss, so I did what I thought was right. Miraculously, I got
away with it. Forrester was now the Deputy Commissioner of
Nagpur, which was passing through dificult times, teetering
on the knife-edpe of food riots. He sent his most competent
-
40 A Tale Told by an Idiot
-but also unfortunately his most dishonest-Extra Assistant
Commissioner (now called Deputy Collector) t o buy juar in
Khamgaon. This gentleman carefully steered clear of me, but
spent two days confabulating with the merchants, and suddenly
prices rose by ten rupees per quintal. I sat up and took notice.
The merchants were holding heavy stocks, it was the off-
season and arrivals were slack. What the Nagpur buyer had
done was to rig the market. His instructions were to buy a t
the prevailing price. He got the merchants to offer ten rupees
per quintal more for the few bags that were coming in daily,,
so naturally the prevailing price became the old price plys
ten rupees, giving a windfall benefit of the same amount to
the traders in respect of their heavy old stocks. He then struck
his deal; the Nagpur purchases would be at the new market
price and the ten rupees unearned increment would be. split
fifty-fifty between him and the trade. I sent for the
three leading merchants and showed them three detention
orders made out in their names. I promised that the
orders would be executed if the old price was not restored
by 4 P.M. the next day. They beat the warrant of arrest by
several hours and the jrrar price duly dropped by exactly ten
rupees. But the officer from Nagpur wept on Forrester's
shoulder, and Forrester took up the matter with Kamath, who
was the Food Secretary, and Kamath took my hide off with-
out benefit of'anesthesia. But when I explained the facts and
'offered to buy Nagpur's requirements at ten rupees less than
the price quoted by the official agent, he cooled down and
took me at my word. 1 completed the transaction, and he must
have been satisfied because he pulled me into the Food Depart-
ment a few months later. I served under him for many years
and in many different capacities and I owe him more than I
can ever repay, in terns of kindness and slipport and teaching
of my job.
The middle of 1943 came and With it my orders of transfer
to Nagpur as Controller of Food Supplies for the district.
The packing, except for the livestock, was no problem-we
had little to pack. We even managed about $he livestock;
four bull terriers, two pups, a bear cub, a young pantber, two
horses and last but not least, a large rooster of indeterminate
parentage, from which my nine-months old daughter refused
to be parted. I declined the invitations to farewell functions,
but there was one gift from Khamgaon which I had to accept.
There was a Mazdoor Sangh (Labour Union) which repre~ented
all types of manual labour. When I tried to pay for the hand-
ling and loading of my luggage, the head hn?~alsaid, with a
small smile, "That is our farewell present t o you, it is'all we
have to give. Remember us sometimes, a s you remembered us
when you were here." So perhaps my fair price s h o p did do
some good after all.

We owe the .British a debt of gratitude for many things; for

example, the Western style commode which enables one to
read the morhing newspaper at the earliest opportunity, and
without interruption; and the British breakfast, which would
have enabled us to conquer the world if only we had adopted
it, and if Mahatmaji had allowed us. But they also taught us
wme things for which I find it difficult t o forgive them. Dis-
trust of the professional is a curious facet of the British charac-
ter. They honestly believe-or believed-that the battle of
Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, which is an
injustice to Wellington, a tough career soldier who leaent his
job the hard way, fighting the Marathas. The British are an
extremely individualistic race, which does not take kindly to
controls that circumscribe the fretdom of the individual.
Combine these two characteristics, and\add to them a third-
the Indian dislike of anything new-and what happened in
1943 becomes understandable. There was an overall shortage
of foodgrains and other essentials, prices had soared, wages
had remained static, and there was acute distress amongst the
people. If ever a situation called for the immediate introduc-
tion of integrated controls under the leadership of experts,
this was it. The trouble was that there was just no time to
build up production or expertise, we had to face the emer-
gency now. To my mind, controls militate against production,
but sometimes, and in the short run, there is no alternative t o
them. Instead the British proceeded t o deal with the matter
as if it was a file marked "Urgent," which actually means
"take your own time." Fair price shops,wcre opened in a fcw
 42 A Tale Told by an Idiot
places, the supplies for them being obtained through open
market purchases. When prices rose, they were statutorily
fixed-and stocks promptly disappeared. All of us were
amateurs facing the professionals of the trade. The basic truth
that no price control is possible without control of a major
part of the total effective supply had not been learnt. The Raj
groped blindly for a solution to the problem, confident of
bungling through in the best British tradition.
As Controller of Food Supplies, 1 was a part of the distrfct
strength, which meant that my immediate superior was the
Deputy Commissioner, Nagpur, now Forrester, under whom
I had worked in Khamgaon. I reported to him on arrival and
he explained my job in admirably few words. "Nagpur has
had more than its fair share of shooting but I'm afraid it's in
for some more-the: poor devils! There is almost no grain,
the crowds at the Fair Price shops are growing every day, and
there's that horrible subdued hum in the air, which is always
the prelude to serious trouble, Worst of all, there's really no-
thing that can.be done at the district level. Now that you've
come I'm going to leave the food side to you-naturally you
can rely on me to the hilt for support and anything else I can
give." For the next few days I carried out his orders-I
tightened a nut here and a bolt there, I improved efficiency,
most important of all, I got to know the problem. But I was
very far from solving it. Forrester was right; the solution was
I not in the hands of the district authorities. I plucked u p
enough courage to go to Kamath, the Secretary of the Food
Department, and tell him the truth as I saw it. The Fair Price
shop systdm was far from being a cure, it was not even a pallia-
tive. All that it had achieved was the creation of a new breed
of professional p u r c h ~ e r swho bought and sold' andbought
again, forcing the genuine consumer to rely on his services
because he had made it impossible for a normal man to get
through the queues. It undermined public confidence because
no one was sure that there would be anything left to buy if and
when he reached the head of the line. The answer was a ratibn
card system but that would require assured supplies, even if
oniy to the extent of availability and not of need. What I said
was the irritating kind of thing which people without responsi-
bility for the really difficult part of a job say, so glibly. Assured
Food 43
supply was the crux of the problem-and that I was generous-
ly leaving in his lap. Somewhat to my surprise, he was not
annoyed; as I would have bcen in his place. He said that more
or less the same thoughts had occurred fo him and he had
been trying to work oue a method by which the Government
could procure, at a fixed price, the requirements of at least the
major urban areas. That, incidentally, was the birth of mono-
poly procurement.
This is as good a place as any to have a look at one of the
shibboleth of food administration. The most important is that
rural areas can look after themselves, because, after all, it is
they who produce !he grain; while the urban areas cannot.
There must be something wrong somewhere. During the Bengal
famine, I never heard of any urban dw~llerdying of starva-
tion. On the other hand, literally millions of starving villagers
,poured into Calcutta and.any other town they could reach,
in the pathetic hope that somehow, somewh*,-e in the city,
they would find food. Some did, but all that the majority
found was death. The same thing happens, on a smaller scale,
whenever there is a crop failure, and it passes unnoticed be-
cause no one dies. The facts may be unpatatable but they
should be faced. Eighty-five percent of the population of India
lives in villages. The great majority of these people do not
produce enough to feed themselves; they have not got enough
land. In Madhya Pradesh studies have be& conducted by
various authorities and at various times to find out the size of
a viable holding. The results *re surprisingly unanimous-7.5
acres. (A viable holding is one that can keep its owner and his
family at a level just-but only just-above the margin of
sobsjstence.) 66.5 percent of the holdings in Madhya Pradesh
are held by people with less than 7.5 acres. On a rule of thumb
basis, 66.5 percent of the rural population must therefore be
deficit. In fact the percentage is much larger because it is noto-
rious that the poorer the cultivator, the larger the family he
has.
It is quite true that the townsman does not produce grain
at dl. But the laws of economics bring to him the lion's share
of whatever is available during a famine, precisely because he
has the money to pay for it. At such a time, even the surplus
cultivator will not sell grain in his village, partly because the
44 A Tale Told by an Idiot
villagers cannot afford to pay him what he will get in the
town, and largely because of the danger of looting. Have you
ever seen a town dweller selling his children during a famine?
No, neither have I.
There are three perfectly valid reasons why the urban ateas
have to he looked after. The first is that they give fat more
trouble than the villages. Crowds gather more easily, get
excited more easily, riot more easily, and if there is firing,
cause a judicial enquiry more easily. The second is that news-
papers give far more publicity to them. Fai!ure to supply extra
'sugar in a metropolis during Diwali will get banner headliaes,
while a few famine deaths in a village will make the lower
half of the third column on the back page with dificulty.
Governmemts are sensitive to publicity. Thirdly, if urban areas
are not fed (and cordoned OF) during periods of shortage their
superior huyiag power will draw away much sleeded grain
from the rurtrl areas. But the order of importance of these
reasons is the orderin which they have been stated.
1 returned from Kamath, relieved at having got my troubles
off my chest. After that, events moved fast. He worked out his
scheme, he set up a nacl~ineryto implement it, and ten days
later I got a summons from him. He asked how long I would
require to introduce a ration card system in Nagpur.1 had
already thought out most of the details and I said, brashly,
that I would need fifteen days. He was surprised but did not
comment. He merely told me that in lcss than fifteen days I
would have adequate stocks for three months and I should go
ahead, and that was that. As soon as I Itft him, I realized
what I had let myself in for. Nagpur in those days had a popu-
lation of three hundred thousand, and in order So introduce
rationing we would have to enumerate every household, print
three to four hundred thousand ration cards, fill them up,
open the requisite number of shops, and distribute. ths cards
to them. There wore other problems too, which still give me a
bad time in nightmares.
To cut a bog story short, we compieted the job in ten days.
The public gave me enormous quantities of free labour, quite
voluntarily, and the Municipal Committee rendered yeoman
service, We were under Governor's rule, and the adviser in
charge of food was Sir Geoffry Burton. He lndicated that after
 Food 45

a few days he would like to go round and have a look at the

ration shops. I asked the Boss-as we called Kamath behind
his back-whether he would like to go too, and he said some-
thing which I have never forgotten, "Why? If you're satisfied,
I see no reason to have a look myself." It is trust and confi-
dence of this kind which evokes the best in a subordinate. Sir
Geoffry went round in due course and I accompanied him. I
presume he was satisfied as I escaped without a rocket. Later
on the Governor, Sir Henry Twynam, also inspected the ration
shops, more as an exercise in publicity than anything else.
I settled down to the life of a shopkeeper. There were 210
ration shops to be watched-] use the word advisedly, if you
did not watch them like a hawk, they immediately swindled
the Government as well as the public, with a fine impartiality
-there were godowns holding about thirty thousand tons to
be managed, large movements of grain had to be arranged a t
short notice, and the trade had to be kept in its proper place,
which was as fac from the rationing setup as possible. But
the real trouble was the customer, not the poor or even the
middle class consumer because they, poor devils, were satisfied
with very little. It was the VIP and the top ten type that gave
me grey hairs. Any shopkeeper who hon:stly believes the
customer is always right should havc his head examined. The
wife of a very senior I.C.S. officer was short-changed, quite *\
inadvertently, by one of our Government-owned ration shops.
The amount involved was less than two rupees and we made
it good before her first scream of outrage had hit the sky, but
nothing less than the dismissal of the unfortunate teenage
shop assistant would satisfy her. I wrote out the order of dis-
missal at once, showed it to her, and, as soon as 1! had remov-
ed myself from her presence, tore it up. I did, however,
transfer the boy to a city shop where she woiild never go.
I have never met a woman who could tell the difference
between Badshah Bhog and Chinoor (both varieties of fine
rice), but let them into a shop and they become experts-
experts o n rice, wheat, cloth, evtrything in the shop. This
makes them easy to cheat, bat the Boss had strict.ly forbidden
cheating, even as a form of punishment. My wife is a typical
woman and she cannot. understand why I am unsympathetic
when she i's cheated. She will, if she reads. this book.
 We had a much more serious problem than customers, or
tven women. Nagpur was securely in the grip of two major
gangs, each bitterly hostile to the other. A number of murders
had taken place, the victims being members of one gang of the
other, and,sometimes, an unoffending bystander who happened
to get in the way. O n o n e occasion I was awaiting my turn lo ,
give evidence before the City Magistrate in a food case when
a rather agitated individual appeared before him and demanded
that his evidence be recorded immediately because he was cer-
tain that he would be murdered within the next hour. He was
a key prosecution witness in a murder case against the members
of one of the gangs. City Magistrates are overworked and short-
tempered people; he was told where to get off, in no uncertain
tenns. Soon afterwards I found that my evidence was not to be
recorded on that particular day, and I went out of the court.
The City Magistrate's court was on the second floor of the Dis-
trict Office building, arrd as I climbed down the stairs I saw the
man who had claimed to be in fear of imminent death, walking
in front of me. Recognition had hardly registered, when another
man overto6k me, stabbed him expertly between the shoulders,
and disappeared down the rest of the stairs in flying leaps. I
hardly saw him, I could certainly not recognize him again. We
tried to help the wounded man but he died before we could
even lift him from the tangled heap into which he had fallea.
One of these gangs was led by a man called-for the purposes
of this book-Dhanraj Patel. His speciality was extortion from
shopkeepers, the old Chicago protection racket. If the shop-
keeper paid theamount that was fixed as his monthly insurance
premium-well and good. If he did not, sometlling unpleasant
invariably happened to him and/or to his shop. When ration-
ing started, my shops wtre approached for the usual protectiort
money. They were working on a slender margin of profit and
could not afford to pay. Very reluctantly, some o_f the shop-
keepers disclosed their predicament to me in the strictest con-
fidence. I came to the conclusion that there was much sense in
the Hindi proverb. "It takes a thorn to remove a thorn" and
tried to apply it. Under the guise of recruiting godown chouki-
dars (watchmen) I recruited forty of the toughest goondas I
could find in Nagpur, arid kept a truck standing by, twenty-
four hours a day, to immediately take them wherever they were
Food
needed. This was after the gang had permanently blinded a
young ration shopkeeper by throwing acid at his face. The
police had their hands tied by the law, and by the quite hand-
some payments so regularly made to each police station in
Dhanraj's domain.
'The next time his men tried to make life unpleasant for one
of my shopkeepers, my men reached the spot and there was a
brief but effective free-for-all, which ended in three of his
people being hospitalized for long periods. After this episode
had been repeated four o r five times, the demands on my shop-
keepers ceased. Instead, I received a courteous message from
Dhanraj, througli devious channels. It wid that I was young
and, in normal circumstan&s, there was no reason why I should
not live a long and healthy life. The emphasis was on "nor-
mal." I sent a reply through the same channels to the effect
that if he would kindly leave my shopkeepers alone, everyone's
prospects of living a long and healthy life would improvt.
During my boxing career I always hated dancing around the
ring and trying to be clever. The attacks on my shopkeepers
ceased and I thought the matter had ended. I was wrong.
That was my first mistake. I made another, and more serious
one. Originally the ration shops had kept office hours, func-
tioning at a time when most people could not go to thern. I
changed the time to early morning and late evening, approxi-
mately the same hours as those of the ordinary shops. But this
created a problem in regard to the Government-owned ration
shops. By the time they closed, the Treasury was also closed
and they were left with the day's takings, a total of sixty o r
seventy thousand rupees, to keep until the next morning. Thz
obvious solution was to deposit the money at the nearest Police
Station, but the Nagpur Police Stations had no imbedded safes,
and the rules require that Government money must be kept in
such safes. Orders were issued to have them installed. In the
meantime, with incredible stupidity, I directed that the sealed
cash boxes should be brought to my house every night and left
there. Fortunately, the safes were installed in a very few days
and the cash boxes ceased to come to my house, but by that
time the whole of the Nagpur underworld knew that 1 was
keeping huge sums of money overnight.
We had only one child at the time, a self-opinionated young
48 A Tale Told by an Idiot
ady uf nine months, who insisted on naving her first feed at
precisely 5 a.m. The milk used to be kept in the dressing room
idjoining our bedroom, and it was my duty to heat it for her.
An itinerent cat had got at the milk before my daughter on
several occasions, so I acquired the habit of sleeping with a
cane under my bed. On this particular night, some days after
+he message from Dhanraj, we had dined out, returning at
about eleven. At 2 a.m. I awoke for no apparent reason. I am
normally a very sound sleeper, but long practice a t sleeping
over tiger kills has conditioned me to awake at any stealthy
movement. I put two and two together and came up with five-
it was that damned cat again. I picked up the cane and walked
as silently as I could to the dressing room.
There were two of Dhanraj's men in the dressing room.
Their orders, as I subsequently discovered, were to get the
cash boxes first, and then to teach me how unwise it was to get
involved in his affairs. There were no cash boxes so they had
come looking for me. I was a sitting duck in the bedroom, but
my wife was there and would certainly intervene, and the
Maratha hoodlum has a posilive phobia about using violence
on a woman. That was why they had gone to the dressing room
and deliberately made a slight noise to get me there. The man
behind the door lashed out with a loaded stick, insti~~ctively
1 ducked and escaped with a glancing blow on my thick head,
which merely brought me to my knees instead of putting me
out for the count. My wife's wardrobe, doors ajar, was just in
front of me. I dived for it, hoping that she had again ignored
my repeated entreaties t o keep her loaded revolver, safely
under lock and key. She had, it was under a pile of saris. I
snatched it up ar:d fired at the man who had hit me. A clean
miss at eighteen inches, but it put them off. Both men rushed
through the outside door of the dressing room, which they had
thoughtfully opened in advance, into the compound. I fired
again, at the sound. There was a high p~tched,gurgling cry,
the sound an animal makes when shot through the lungs. Then
silerrce. An indignant voice broke in on me. "What are you
making all that noise for?" It was my wife, complete with
baby in her arms, which proves my theory that a woman
thinks of her child first, her husband next, and' thereafter has
no room in her heed for thought. I said a few caref'ullv chosen
Food 49
words and pulled her into the bedroom, where she would be
safe from flying sticks or worse.
The police investigated vigorously. Not only did they prize
the mirror of my wife's dressing-set from its enamel frame
(Presumably looking for finger prints), but they read all the
love letters I had written to her when we were engaged (impro-
ving their minds). I n spite of all this, no trace of the culprits
could be found, and the crime was written off with a final
report. But I had 210 ration shops and a man with these at his
disposal is in command of the finest intelligence setup in the
world. People have to go to ration shops, they have to wait
there, and they have to talk while they wait. All that is needed
is to direct their talk into constructive channels. My shop-
keepers did the directing and came u p with a full story.
Dhanraj had used a car belonging to an eminent trader-1
shall have something to say about his ability to get cars later
on in this chapter-and the man I had wounded was taken to
Amravati, where he died. When I heard this I was worried. I
had no intention of getting involved in a gang feud, and it
looked as if this was exactly what I had done. It seemed to me
that the only way to tackle the situation was to take the bull
by the horns. I sent a message to Dhanraj, asking for an ap-
pointment and assuring him that I would abide by any condi-
tions be might lay down. He gave me the appointment and, in
due course, we met. I will not go into detail, but we arrived at
a modus vivendi. My main argument was that if he did not
leave me and my work alone, I would continue to make life
so difficult for him that he would be compelled to liquidate me.
And if he did so, the fat would be in the fire. The bumping off
of an I.C.S. officer was nut something the Raj would take in
its stride, there would be reper~ussions of the most violent
nature, and even the local police would be powerless to pro-
tect him. There was no possible doubt about his ability to get
rid of me-but would the price be worth paying? He was a
tall man of indeterminate age, immensely imposing, clean
shaven and bald headed, with the hooded eyes of a vulture.
He looked a t me. "Do you mean that you are willing to die?"
I said irritably, "I don't want to do anything of the sort-I
have a wife and a baby daughter, and I am young. But what
choice d o you leave me?"
50 A Tale Told by an Idiot
He nodded slowly. "No, you are not the kind of man who
would tell his shopkeepers to look after themselves." Suddenly
he stood up, and pushed out his hand. "All right-I agree."
We shook hands on the bargain, and he never broke his word.
By now Kamath had organized the Food Department into
a machine that really clicked. There was a procurement and
storage side, there was a distribution side, and there was an
accounts side, headed by an officer from the audit and ac-
counts, with the rank of accountant general. He picked the
best from every field, from the I.C.S., from the education
department, from the revenue branch, from agriculture, from
everywhere, all men who made their mark in later life, with
the exception, that is, of me. And even I ended up with the
distinction of being the only I.C.S. officer who shot more than
a hundred tigers off the ground-the blasted butcher! In a
word. Kamath introduced professionalism into food, and to
hell with the playing fields of Eton, or Loyola College, o r
whatever; we were not being paid to play. Like true profes-
sionals, we were pragmatic. Rice procurement was based on
monopoly purchase-sales of quantities beyond a certain limit
could only be made to the Government-because the rice mills
offered a convenient bottleneck where we could grab the stuff
as soon as it was milled. But in the case of juar and wheat the
surpluses were marginal and monopoly purchase was easily
evaded by selling direct to the consumer or the retailer. We
scrapped monopoly purchase in respect of these two grains, ,
and went in for a producer's levy on a sliding scale, under
which the cultivator had to give us a certain quantity per acre, .
rising, in the case of the bigger cultivator, to one-third of his
gross produce. It worked.
I remained in the Food Department throughout the rest of ,
the war, during the first years of independence, and until
January 1949 as Controller of Food Supplies, as Deputy Secre-
tary and Deputy Director, Distribution, and finally when
Kamath became Commissioner Berar, as Secretary and Direc-
tor of Food. By 1949 the food situation had easeh considera-
bly, a measure of decontrol had been introduced, and I felt
that it was time for me to renew my acquaintance with the .
districts and the villages where India still lives., I took my
courage in both hands and went straight to the Chief Minister,
Food 51
Pandit Ravi Shankar Shukla, and asked for a district. He saw
my point that I was getting stale in food, but not the need for
me to go to Bastar, a remote and tribal district. "Why Bastar?"
he asked. I explained that I had always been interested in the
tribals, that there was much to be done in Bastar, and, almost
..
as an afterthought, "And of course, there's the shikar ." He
laughed uproariously, "And of course, there's the slrikar! You
should have put that at the beginning. There's shikar in
Nagpur too, you'd better take that." Nagpur was, for all
practical purposes, just another secretariat job. I gave a non-
committal reply and eased myself out of his presence-he did
not take kindly to' too much contradiction. But I asked Pandit
D.P.Mishra to put in a word about Bastar, and as he always
had a kind spot for me-he did. That was how, in the end, I
got Bastar.
Two years later I came to Nagpur for a conference, as
Deputy Commissioner Bastar. I needed transport but all my
friends Gere either out of station, or themselves,fully occupied,
and I drew one blank after another. Then I thought of Dhanraj
Patel and rang up the unlisted number he had given me. He
listened to my request and asked where I was ringing from. I
said, "The railway station."
"Please remain near the booking office. After fifteen minutes
a car will arrive and my man will find you. The car and driver
will be at your disposal as long as yop are in Nagpur." I
thanked him and rang off. Exactly fifteen minutes later the
car arrived, complete with driver, and I really enjoyed using
it for the two days of my stay. It was the official car of a
minister.

Can there be an epilogue to a chapter? I don't see why not.

Anyway, here it is, quite frankly an exercise in one-up-man-
ship. In 1950 the Government of India appointed a Committee
to go into the question of procurement of foodgrains and allied
problems. The Chairman was Thirumala Rao, a senior mem-
ber of Parliament, and the members were all officials-C.P.K.
Menon, then Director General of Food Supplies of the
Government of India, E.N. Mangat Rai I.C.S., and myself.
52 d Tale Told by an Idiot
We submitted our report in six months, which must be some
sort of a record for Committees, and my contribution was a
minute of dissent. I reproduce it here for two reasons, firstly
because I still hold exactly the same views now as I did then;
and secondly, because it was the minute of dissent that was
acted upon by the Government of India and the then Food
Minister, Rafi ~ h m e dKidwai.
"The members of the Foodgrains Procurement Committee
were appointed in their individual capacities and not as repre-
sentatives of their Governments. This minute of dissent, there-
fore, represents purely personal views.
"(2) The main term of reference of the Committee was 'to
recommend such changes as may be necessary in the existing
system of procurement and distribution to minimize imports
in the case of a deficit State and to maximize exports in the
case of a surplus State, and to reduce the difference between
the prices in the market and the prescribed control prices.'
The emphasis is placed on devising methods to irnprove pro-
curement and distribution so as to solve the supply problem,
the accent on prices being secondary.
"(3) The food problem contains two principal factors, each
unfortunately opposed to the other, namely the supply factor
and the price factor; there must be sufficient food to meet the
minimum requirements of the people and it must be available
at prices within their means. If the price factor did not exist,
the supply factor would present no difficulties, for, in the last
analysis, a sufficiently high price would, by eliminating the
demand of the poorer sections of the population, make any
supply adequate. But such a solution involves famine and
starvation, and is obviously unthinkable.
"(4) Essentially, therefore, we have to arrive at a compro-
mise solution, and in order to do so it is necessary to.decide
whether the supply aspect is to be given predominance or the
price aspect. I have already indicated my own intetpretation
of our terms of reference; and I believe that this interpreta-
tion is also in accordance with the logic of facts. Controlled
prices are not based on the cost of production; they are arbit-
rary in every sense of the word. There is, for example, no rela-
tion between a wheat price of Rs 13 for Punjab and 16 for
adjoining surplus tracts of U.P. There can be nothing sacro-
Food 53
sanct about such prices and any attempt to give them predomi-
nance in our solution must lead to an ultimate widening of the
gap betwren demand and supply. The only effective way to
make the controlled price the ruling price in a situation of shor-
.
tage is to ensure that there are no transactions other thar: con-
trolled transactions. This means the procurement of the entire
surplusand universal rationing. Universal rationing is perfectly
feasible if one ignores the cost but the procurement of the entire
surplus is not. Stocks go underground; a black market flouri-
shes; in the last analysis the cultivator simply eats more and
no system yet devised can Drevent him. What the procurement
price is does not much matter so long as there is an alternative
market at a higher price, whose very existence automatically
makes the controlled rate inequitable. A State with an extre-
mely efficient administrative machinery like Madras has tried
such a system and the results speak for themselves. As against
65 per cent of rice production normally marketed, the Govern-
ment succeeded in procuring only 32.5 per cent. The figures for
m~llets are worse-5.6 per cent procurement against 18.5
percent normally marketed. On the other hand, they have had
to statutorily ration 35 millions out of a population of 54
millions.
"(5) If we agree-and I do not see how we cannot agree, in
giew of the declaration that there will be no imports after 1951
-that the supply aspect of the problem is the more important,
:ertain conclusions follow:

(i) Our objective should be to reduce distribution commit-

ments to a point where-(a) the gap between procurement
and distribution will be minimised in deficit areas, and (6) a
sufficient proportion' of the total effective demand will be
met at, controlled prices to act as a brake on the rise of
prices in the open or free market so that the general level of
food prices is not unduly above the controlled rates. In
other words, we must attempt to find an optimum point at
which net availabilities (for consumption within the State in
the case of deficit areas and for export in the case of surplus
areas) are maximised, compatible with a reasonable level of
prices, taking the controlled rate as the norm but without
insisting on it as a universal price.
54 A Tale Toltl by an Idiot
(ii) On the procurement side, this involves the recognition
that intensification beyond a certain stage yields diminishing
returns, in that :t leads t o a disproporticnate increase of
distribution commitments without a corresponding increase
in procurement.
(iri) There can be no uniformity of systems because the op-
timum point we have mentioned in item 1 will be at different
stages in d~fferentareas and a n intensive system that works
satisfactorily in a deficit area will be a failure in a surplus
area as it will,produce the diminishing returns alluded t o
above. The introduction of the Madras system of intensive
procurement in U.P.would mean a 50 per cent increase in
distribution commitments and only a 25 per cent increase
in procurement. While, theoretically, the entire surplus can
be taken. from a producer, in practice it cannot; and the
proportion it is possible to take in a surplus area is less
than in a deficit one.

"(69 The ideal system of procurement and distribution for

each area, would, in the light of the foregoing, be one that
set out deliberately to take only a part of the surplus from the
surplus producer and to feed only a part of the deficit popu-
lation leaving the balance of production to be marketed freely. .
This system would maximize availabilities because arrivals in
a free market are always more than under controls. I t would
maximize production because the higher price obtained by the
producer for that part of his produce which is sold at uncon-
trolled rates would induce him to grow more. It would keep
the general level of prices from soaring without restraint by
meeting a part of the demand a t the controlled rate.
"(7) The details of the system would vary from State to
State according to the circumstances of each, as also the exact
proportion it is desired to take from the producer. Basically it
would be a partial levy, either on the producer or, where
markering is well organized, on the trader with export restric-
tions on the State and the proviso that quantities additional t o
the levy deinend could be voluntarily sold to Governmerlt.
"(8) If the principles on which such a scheme is based are
considered, it will be seen that it will have to vary from inten-
sive procurement a t one extrerce to almost complete decontrol
Food 55
at the other, because it is aimed zt meeting conditions which
differ widely. For example, in Malabar, no scheme which is
not intensive 'from both procurement and distribution points
of view can have any significant effect on prices because the
defici: is so huge. The bigger the deficit, the more extreme a r e
the lheasures needed to bring out local or individual surpluses
at reasonable prices. When a surplus is big, particularly when
it is concentrated into a small area, no particular rigor is need-
ed to acquire it-it. flows out of its own accord. But where-as
in ~ a l a b a ;or Cochin-Travancore-it is surrounded by avid
markets, it cannot be secured except by strict measures.
Furthermore, imports have to be equitably distributed, parti-
culnrly when they constitute such a large proportion of con-
sumption requirements as in Malabar, or else they have very
little effect on prices, unless the market can be saturated. We
cannot find enough stocks for saturation; universal rationing,
therefore, becomes a necessity. It is not possible without
universal procurement, because local stocks are also required
to fulfil the commitment. In certain deficit areas, however,
relaxation almost to the point of decontrol would be the logical
result. In the North Zone of Bihar, the general standard of
wealth is high because profitable cash crops are grown. Its
supply requirements are largely met by Nepal paddy. In such
an area, local procurement is inadvisable because it would
yield no results and would increase commitments. The area
could safely be cordoned off and left to look after itself with
the exception of certain essential classes of the population
who would be fed from imports.
In all self-sufficient and surplus areas where a fairly efficient
land records system is functionitlg the system would work i n
its entirety.
These variatioi~sfrom area to area are open to objection on
the ground that they are breach of the principle of equality of
sacrifice. The answer is that no such pinciple has ever been o r
possibly can be enforced. Even in a State like Madras, the
producer is allowed, to eat 1 Ib. per day (he actually eats much
more) while the ration for others is 12 02s. I think it is time
we got away from high sounding principles which exist only
on paper and tried to find solutions that were practical and
would actuallv work.
 I

56 A Tale Told by an Idiot

''(9) Another objection, raised by the Committee in Chapter

two to any scheme which visualises two prices operating simul-
taneously an open market price and a controlled price-is
that the open market price being much higher, the cultivator
resents having to surrender part of his produce at a lower
price and hence procurement fails. This objection is not really
based on fact. There is always an open market or black market
price which is higher than the controlled price even under such
an intensive procurement scheme as in Madras. The cultiva-
tor's resentment only becomes dangerous when an unreason-
ably large part of his surplus is taken; the taking of a small
part of the surplus is viewed as a tax and does not create
much opposition. And, obviously, there is likely to be more
opposition to the taking of the whole surplus at a low price
than to the taking of only a part of it. In every case where a
partial levy has failed, the cause has been elsewhere than in
the existence of an open market price. In U.P. it was due to
demanding grains which were not produced in the holding and
in Bihar it was due to engineered agitation which would have
been much worse if a larger proportion of the produce had
been taken.
"(10) The Committee have, however, adopted the view that
the price factor is more important than the supply factor and
their recommendations follow quite correctly and logically
from this stand. Obviously if the price factor is to be given pre-
dominance, the best scheme would be one that would obtain
control of the Iargcst part of production. The Committee recog-
nize that different local conditions necessitate modifications
in some State but essentially their solution is an- intensive
monopoly with extensive rationing. In certain areas the inten-
sity of the monopoly is to be less (as in Orissa) because of
particular circumstances prevailing there, while in other areas
it is to extend to what I may call absolute procurement and
distribution, as in Madras.
"(11) As a result of this major decision on principle, the
Committee's rcwmmendations have the effect of immediately
increasing the assistance required by deficit o r slightly surplus
States from imports. U.P. is recommended a quota of 3.6 lakh
tons; the proposed modifications in Bihar will need at least
1 lakh tons more imports; Hyderabad will require another 1 to
Food 57
13 lakh tons; and Mysore, Cochin-Travancofe, West Bengal
and Madras will all need greater imports. In surplus areas the
immediate result will be a fall in availabilities for export
particularly in Madhya Pradesh, Madhya Bharat and Orissa.
There is of course the hope that in the long run, the policy of
intensifying procurement and distribution will pay divideods,
'but these results cannot be expected in less than two years,
and I do not believe that they will materialise at all.
"(12) The Committee have taken a line which involves
intensification of controls even beyond the point where, in my
view, diminishing returns set in. Such intensification, if only
for the reason that it takestime to achieve, is not
unless a firm decision is taken that' controls will continue over
a period of years. Any radical change in food policy-requires
at least three years for a reasonable appraisal of its results to
be made. I am not aware that the Government of India have
committed themselves to three more years of controls and in
fact the last Food Minister stated in Parliament that gradual
decont_rol was aimed at. Tightening up of procurement and
distribution is surely a peculiar method of arriving a t this end.
"(13) 1 have already mentioned that intensification of
cotltrols beyond an optimum stage yields diminishing returns.
I would like to elucidate this point further. In the first place,
not even the most intensive procurement system can procure
the same proportion of production as was normally marketed.
This fact is substantiated by the figures already quoted for
Madras, and is due to psychological conditions created by the
very existence of controls. The more the procurement scheme
is tightened up 'the smaller are the increased gains from
intensification. In the second place, intensification of controls
means extension of rationing. The extension of rationing
increases commitments in three ways:

(a) in the absolute sense of having to feed more people,

(b) in having to feed some h o p l e who would normally
have been content with a high proportion of non-controlled
grains in their diet, with controlled grains, and
(c) in having to feed some people, who would normally
have fed themselves, on unprocurable surpluses.
- .-
58 A Tale Told by an Idiof
I need not expand items (a) and (b) which are self-evident
but (c) needs a little explanation. A fairly significant part
of any town's requirements of grain are met by deficit pro-
ducers who market their stocks in the town, feeding them-
selves on cheaper foods. ,No procurement system can justifi-
ably touch these inadequate producers who are therefore left
free to patronise the black-market. In normal times, a petty
Kissan who grows a little rice or wheat invariably sells it and
lives on coarser grains and (in some parts of the country) on
tubers, etc. As soon as a town is rationed, these supplies are
cordoned out and just disappear. I have repeatedly come
across such instances in my own experience.
"(14) Intensification of controls, in all areas, but parti-
cularly in self-sufficient or surplus areas, leads to a progres-
sive stiffening of opposition. It is all very well to say that
politics should be kept aloof f r ~ mfood, but in a democracy
politics cannot be kept aloof from any subject that affects
the interests of the people. If the people oppose a particular
course of action that course must ultimately fail. I feel that
the Committee have not been realistic enough in appraising
the true importance of this factor. Democracy is essentially
Government by consent and consent to stringent measures
can only be obtained in times of stress and for temporary
periods; it can never be obtained indefinitely. There remains
the alternative of coercion, but even coercion fails, like the
sulfanilamides, if used repeatedly.
"(15) The importance given by the Committee to the price
factor involves, as we have seen, intensification of controls.
This in turn means (a) greater expenditure in personnel and
money for staff and (b) greater expenditure on foreign imports.
No States can view with equanimity a position in which a
substantial proportion of its seasoned officials are kept indefi-
nitely on food work to the detriment of nation building
zctivities. Almost every State in India is today surering from
an acute shortage of experienced oficials, and intensification
of controls will tend to perpetuate this position. As regards
foreign imports, the subsidies paid on them come ultimately
from the pockets of the tax-payer and any reduction of
price which is attained by such means is deceptive and must
in the long run prove ruinous.
 "(16) There is one more and not the least important reason
why I am unable to agree with recommendations which seek
to intensify controls. In every area where this experiment has
been tried, with the possible exception of Bombay, acreages
under controlled cereals, except rice, have gone down alar-
mingly, particularly under millets. I agree that this decrease
is probably due to substitution by other crops but, in the
absence of any evidence to the contrary,'it appears to me
that such substitution has taken place because controls were
too intense. In Bombay this tendency is not noticeable pro-
bably owing to the fact that the acreage was regulated until
this year by law, and that the levy system in force arbitarily
assumcs a certain proportion of the area to be under food.
Statistics for four major areas where controls were rigid and
strict are reproduced below:
s
('000 acres)

Peak acreage and year 1948-49 acresge and year

(bet ween 193940 and 1948-49)
State Rice Wheat Millets Rice U'keat Milicts

Madras 11014 - Juar 5052 10280 - Jcar 4334

1944-45 1939-40
Mysere 844 - Ragi 2218 767 - Ragi 1916
1944-45 1943-44
Juar 864 Juar 333
1942-43
Madhyil 6304 3229 ~ u a 5648
r 6304 1853 Juar 4962
Pradesh 1948-49 1910-41 1933-44
- -

Hyderabad 1419 1125 Juar 9605 I032 263 Juar 5935

1945-46 1941-42 1942-43

The steadiness of rice acreages is due to the fact that in most

areas this crop is not substitutable. On the other hand, in
arem where there has been a. certain laxity of controls acre-
ages have risen appreciably as will be seen from the chapter
on U.P. Unless controls are imposed on all agricu!tural pro-
duce, diversion of acreages wherever possible to non-food,
crops or at least to non-controlled food crops is certain. The
60 A Tale Told by an Idiot
extent of such diversion has already more than neutraliskd
whatever benefits the Grow More Food Scheme may have
produced up till now.
"(17) My difference of opinion with the Committee is on
the basic principles I have already described. This difference
naturally involves differences in regard to the recommenda-
tions for individual States. To treat each State at length would
mean writing a separate report with even less hope of its
being generally read than this minute, of dissent, and I shall
therefore confine myself briefly to indicating the salient points
with which 1 do not agree in each Chapter."
IV. EXODUS

When is a part greater than the whole? When it belongs to the

I.C.S. I make no apology for the drum-beating in this chapter.
Neither apology nor justification is called for. All that I am
about to say falls far short of what I would have said if I had,
not had the honour to belong to the Service.
At the end of 1939 the total strength of the I.C.S. in India
was 1299, out of whom 759 were British and the rest Indian.
The corresponding figures for the Central Provinces were 72
and 37. A handful of officers were recruited in 1940, 1941 and
1943 but the number is SO small as to make no difference to
the overall picture. There was no recruitment thereafter until
the end of the war. The figures of 1939 may therefore be
taken, for all practical purposes, as representing the situation
that prevailed on the eve of Independence in August 1947.
The British officers did not merely add up to more than
half of the cadre; they were the senior part, holding the key
posts. And all of them, with less than half a dozen exceptions,
belatedly obeyed Mahatmaji on 16 August 1947; they quit
India. Try suddenly cutting the strength of any office-govern-
ment or private-by more thad half, and that half the senior
half, and see what happens. Chaos is what will occur. But it
did not occur when the I.C.S. (and the I.P.) were cut in less
than half. Now re-read the first two sentences of this chapter
and you will understand them. Overnight,, we lost more than
half our strength. Overnight, the responsibility for running the
administration was dumped on what remained of the cadre,
the Indian part, the junior part. At is for the country to judge
 62 A Thle Told by an Idiot
whether we measured up to the responsibiliG that was cast on
us. I 'for one am confident of the verdict. Sardar Vallabhbhai
Patel; who was in-a position to know, paid us the ultimate
tribute. "Well done, thou good and faithful servant!" Others,
particularly the politicians who were not in positions of:power
- during those critical years, have been less than fair. To them
we were neither Indian nor civil nor a service. Well, they
have a right to their opinion. But it could justly be said of
the I.C.S. and of the I.P.

Whom God abandoned, they defended,

And saved the sum of things for pay.

Remember India at the time of the post-partition riots?

What were we like in our last days, we of the I.C.S.? We
did not bestride the world like a colossus-our legs were too
short. Nor were we the steel frame of the administration.
What Lloyd George actually said in 1922 was "I can see no
period when they (Indians) can dispense with the guidance
and assistance of the small numbers of the British Civil
v Service. They are the steel frame of the whole structure."
(Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 5th Series, Vol.
157, col. 1513.) The steel frame was British. What he thought
of us, the Indian members, is in the first sentence. And yet
we have been beaten with this particular stick ever since. I can
remember.
The Service as a whole-British and Indian-consisted of
quite ordinary men, set apart from others by three things; a
dedicated sense of duty born of tradition and training: an
independent outlook: and complete identification with the
interests of the people of wherever we were sent to serve. We
deteriorated later. But that is how we were in 1947. Parma-
nand, living on borrowed time, and sent to a light district to
ease his last days, hastened his end by producing a superb
addition .o his own "Settlement Operations." One never
heard the phrase "He can't do very much, he's ill you know."
*I If an I.C.S. officer was ill, he was in hospital and on leave,
not dragging out his illness on Government time. If he was on
duty, then he was doing his duty, not talking about it.
Independence of outlook is a nuisance to any government,
Exodus , 63 '
and particularly to a politically motivated government. The
British took it in their stride; they overruied the offender in
the teeth of his. protests. Later governments were not so
charitable. Lacking the courage to overrule, they sometimes
penalized. It made no difference. The I.C.S. continued to be
independent. S.N. Mehta in Sagar refused to collect the land
revenue because the crops had failed. He got a rocket; he still
refused. In the end the Commissioner had to see for himself
and he agreed with Mehta. That was that. I refuse to give
any examples from my own career-my friends insist that in
my case it is only bloody'mindedness and not independence of
outlook.
Identification with our people-that is how we always
thought of our districts, our districts, our people-was com-
plete. We fought tooth and nail for their interests and it did
not matter in the least if our own sxffered in the process. The
only censure I received in my official life was contained in a
letter communicating the Government's displeasure (richly
deserved) for a most intemperate letter I had written, accusing
them of bad faith with the people of Bastar, which was then
my district. But I got what I wanted. And'there is the story-
probably apocryphal-of the Deputy Commissioner who rep-
lied to orders imposing a collective fine, with which he violent-
ly disagreed, "Your letter of the-instant, which is hefore me,
will shortly be behind me in another capacity. I am, Sir, your '
most owdient servant."
So much for the official side. But what were we like as < ,
people? Very ordinary, I think. Neither plaster saints nor
complete blackguards, although some of us did try. There was
the very senior officer who was living quite openly with some-
one else's wife. When not so gently reproached, his reply was
"At my age it's too much damn trouble going all the way to
her place whenever L'want to hold hands." Others specialized
in more innocuous thing. Rajan, until he died (in harness)
was a corresponding member of the Britishand French Socie- i
ties of Mathematicians, or whatever they call themselves, and
an eminent mathematician in his own right. We had butterfly
collectors, physicists, and poets too. In his own circle the 4
1.C.S. man was extremely human, although to the world at
large he presented a formidable mask of cold indifference.
 64 A Tale Told by an Idiot
Even the Boss (H.S. Kamath) of whom I have spoken earlier, .
, unbent on occasion. I once took a week's casual leave and
spent it in Betul chasihg a tiger. While wandering in the jun-
'
gles I was amazed at the catholicity of the aboriginal's diet
and when I returned I wrote a note about it which was put up
to him. His comment was "Very interesting" and then a P.S..
"I hope the Deputy Secretary got his tiger!"
One of the most common criticisms of the Service was that
we were snobs. I do not think we were. The fact of the matter
is that isolation o r exclusiveness is a necessary insuran~efor
anyone who wields the kind of power a member o r the I.C.S.
or I.A.S. wields. That is why we barred non-officials from our
clubs. We wanted to be able to relax in those sanctuaries. If
non-officials had been members, a careless word could have
done considerable damage. And what about "undue influence?"
Isn't it harder to say "no" to a chap with whom you had a
drink yesterday, than to a stranger? And corruption. High
V Society crookedness always starts with social relations because
no one is fool enough to offer a bribe to a man he doesn't know.
I am not for a moment suggesting that all, or even many non-
officials would like to get friendly with Service personnel for
dubious motives. But it is difficult and embarrassing to dis-
tinguish. One more reason for sticking to our own backyard
-we just could not keep pace with the Joneses. when the
Joneses were affluent businessmen. We were old fashioned
enough to believe that one should not accept hospitality if he
was unable to make a return, a belief that seems to have since
died. The convention of exclusiveness was carried so far that
I.C.S. officers in the Judiciary had very little to do with the
rest of the Service, as a precaution, I suppose, against being
inadvertently influenced in their official duties. You may say
that this was carrying the adage "Justice must seem to be
done" to ridiculous extremes; but do you prefer what today
is a common sight, High Court judges on terms of close and
visible friendship with senior members of the Bar? I have no
doubt that their friendship h a not the slightest effect on their
judgements-hut ask the man in the street what he thinks. One
final argument in favour of exclusiveness. None of us went to
jail for corruption, none of us was even accused of corruption,
until we became socialites. All right, I brn a square.
Exodus 65
Less than tell years after Independence, by about 1955! the
picture had changed radically. The I.C.S. succumbed t o powef .c
without responsibility. In the Centre as .well as in the states,
ministers had grown t o lean increasingly on them, and their
word had become a prime mover of Government policy. It is
never a healthy practice for a permanent civil service to deter-+
mine policy, precisely because a civil servant is by training
and temperament unfit to understand the aspirations of the
people, o r the best ways of fulfilling them. We are truck dri-
vers, not owncrs of trucks. W e can cover the most difficult
routes, but we are incapable of selecting the most profitable
ones. Unfortunately, at about this time we began to see our- ,,
selves as truck owners.
Let me digress for a minute. When Govind Narain Singh
was Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, and I was his Chief
Secretary, I told him a t a full CabTnet meeting, that it was no
part gf my functions to suggest policies. There was disbeliev-
ing silence for a few seconds. I added, "There are two things
I can do, and one thing I am not competent to do. I can tell
you if a policy is workable, according t o Service standards.
I can tell you the consequences of a policy. But I am not *
competent to tell you what policy to follow, because it is you,.
a n d not I who have t o answer t o the people. It would be
unfair to influence your policy decisions from the safety of my
own position."
H e said, "But what if you tell us that all our policy decisions
are unworkable?'I replied "Then get a new Chief Secretary."
During the whole of his tenuke as Chief Minister he never
consulted me about policy matters, except in regzrd to their
feasibility o r probable consequences.
But the I.C.S. began to see themselves as truck owners. This
led to a 6 unhealthy identification of the civil servant with the
real owner, the minister, which in turn led to a loss of the
objectivity which was his most valuable asset. When father
turned, we all turned. When father was ditched, we ditched
him first. If we saved the country from 1947 to 1950, we did
o u r best to destroy it in the next ten years, not because we
were unpatriotic but because we overestimated ourselves. It is
no accident that every civil servant who became a minister .>
was a political flop. We were just not cut ou! for the part we
 66 A Tale Told by an Idiot
sought to play, but our ambition to play it led to many things
of which I, for one, am ashamed-to jockeying for position, to
, intrigues, to the mean things that small men do. And the
tragedy is that we were not small men, not really. A11 that we
did was to implement Peter's principle, each one of us s t r i v i ~ ~ g
to rise to the level of his incompetence. All of us would have
done well, e v e n brilliantly, if we had remained one grade
below the level to which we actually rose. If the Government
had allowed me to remain as a Commissioner, instead of pro-
moting me to the post of Chief Secretary-then you would
have seen something.
I have spoken about a dedicated sense of duty being on: of
the attributes of the Service. Refusal to do something mainly
because it serves one's own interests should logically flow from
such a sense of duty. It did in the past. Upgrading a post
because you-or your wife's cousin-would get it was unthink-
able; it was the good of the administration that counted, not
' your own. For example, in Madhya Pradesh, the post of Chief
Secretary carried the same scale as that of Commissioner, and
the Chief Secretary was literally and financially primus inter
pares. There was a lot of sense in the arrangement. For one
thing, the Government could select a relatively junior officer
as Chief Secretary without causing heartburn. For another,
the Chief Secretary, being nothing more than a selected com-
missioner, and sometimes junior to many of them, had to carry
the commissioners with him instead of riding them, he had t o
' discover in himself qualities over and above an ability to note '
on files. At that time the post was equated with that of Joint
Secretary to the Government of India, and was on a fixed pay
of Rs 3,000 per month. After the reorganization of States,
efforts began to upgrade the post to that of Additioaal Secre-
tary (Rs 3,500). The Boss, who was then Chief Secretary,
resisted but ultimately the upgrading was done. Then, in 1969
or 1970, the Chief Secretary got another lift. The reason-
since chief secretaries got only RS 3,500 while secretaries to
the Government of India got Rs 4,000, there was a flight of
chief secretaries to the Centre. As no officer serving in a State
can go to the Centre without the consent of his parent govern-
ment, the validity of the argument escapes me.
This kind of upgrading was bad enough. What was worse
Exodirs 67
was the niultip!ication of senior' scale super time scale posts.
Like flood waters the proposals seeped through o r oiltflanked 4
tlie dams you erected against them. Take the states and the
Centre, compile a comparative list of senior scale and super
time posts every five years, and you will discover a rate of
giowth which aiould d o credit to any Planning Commission.
Parkinson only discovered his famous law-it was the services
that put it into being. In doing so they inadvertently establish-
ed a corollary which should be brought t o M r Parkinson's
notice. The greater the degree of overstaffing, the less the d
work dcne. We d o not need any more administrative reforms
commissions; all that is required is to slash the number of
senior posts in the country by half, and then let the remaining
Iiatf get o n with the job. They will d o it far niore efficiently.
Let me anticipate a very legitimate question. What did I . d o
to prevent the evils I have described? Frankly, I tried and I
failed. Like the ministers.
When independence came, members of the Service-British
as well as Indians-were given the option of either continuing
t o serve under the same terms and conditions, o r of qui:ting.
Those who elected to quit became eligible f c r various sums o f
money by way of colnpensation. The scale of compensation
was worked out by the senior members of tlie Service, and the
manner in which they did s o is a tribute t o that objectivity
which I have already praised, and whose loss I have lamented.
The least compensation was admissible t o the seniormost
oficers on the ground that they had con~pletedmost of their
service and had correspondingly !ess l e f ~to compensate for.
And these were the very men who had draftcd the scheme! But
that was the I.C.S. of 1947. I wonder if the same high princi-
ples would have t e e n in evidence if the compensation scheme
had been drafted in 1955.
A couple of years ago I had occasion to give a talk to some
members of the 1.A.S who had recently joined the Madllya
Prndesh cadre. I reproduce the tape recording of that talk, not
because 1 claim any credit for it, but because it is based o n
what the senior members of the Service had taught me when
I w2s a fledgling. What I said to my successors is exactly what 5
the I.C.S. at its best tried to be and to do.'
"There are three main aspects of a civil servant's life-
 68 A Tale Tolcl by an Idiot

'' 1. Method of work.

2. Attitude to public.
3. Relations with ministers and politicians.

Here are my DO'S afid DON'TS for each.

Method of work
"DON'T slop around in your bungalow ofice during ofice
hours. Attend the main office every day punctually and have
all your interviews there. This is the only way of ensuring that
your assistants will be punctual. It is also conducive t o the
mental discipline that is so essential for a good civil servant.
Your bungalow office is only for homework and emergencies.
"DON'T think you know everything about anything. Every
time you have to deal with a problem, read u p the law and
rules unless you think you can make your own. If you do,
you are still in the primary grade, and n o one can help you.
"DON'T compron~isewith quality. Whatever you d o should
be the best you can do.
"DON'T take part in cliques and intrigues, they leave a
bad taste in the mouth.
"DON'T treat your co-workers as if they are machines.
Unless they like and respect you they will not give of their
best, and without their best your own performance will be
mediocre. Above all do not humiliate them before others.
"'DON'T be afraid to take decisions. When you have to
take them, take them as quickly as possible. This may get
you into trouble sometimes but a civil servant who has never
been in trouble is not worth his salt.
And finally DON'T be lazy. Remember that genius is one
part inspiration and nine parts perspiration.
"DO take up a t least some revenue appeals, they are the
surest way of getting to know your assistants' work.
"DO be patient and give everyone a fair hearing. A civil
servant who loses his temper and bullies people is an abomi-
nation before the Lord.
"DO learn the work of your subordinates thoroughly. Unless
you do, you cannot inspect it with a good conscience.
"DO remember that there is no good work that is not
inspected. Make your own inspections and ensure that your
Exodus 69
assistants d o likewise.
"DO make it a habit to drop in informally at the table of
cach person working under you from the junior-most clerk
upwards, to see how he is getting on. Preferably on the
opening hour.
"DO take the trouble to correct and explain rather than to
merely condemn and criticize.
"DO treat the heads of other offices in the district as equal
partners in a common enterprise, and if you are really as
good as yoii think you are, ensure that your wife behaves in
t!ie same way with their wives.

Attitude to public
"DON'T talk about being a servant of the public unless
you are quite sure of the meaning of the phrasz. You arc a
servant of the public because you are paid from the public 4
exchequer. You serve them by ruling them on bchalf of the
Government. Every public servant from the pat~vari upwards
is a ruler. The M.L.A. is elected by the people but as a
member of the Vidhan Sabha he formulates the laws that
rule them. You are the executive instrument that implements
those laws and there can be no rule of law unless you rule,
The ministers, the M.L.A's and you are all rulers-but rulers
who rule in order to serve, rulers who rule for the public good 4
and not for private gain. The ministers, the M.L.A's and
you are servants of the public because all of you carry out
the wishes of the public-but oniy as embodied in the taws
formul~tedby the elected representatives of the people, not
as formulated in mob slogans and riots. Failure to understand
this basic principle is the root cause of deteriorating adminis-
fration. The finest motto for a civil servant is in Housman's
Epitaph on nn Army of ~ e r c d n a r i e s ;

Whom God abandoned, they defended,

And saved the sum of things for pay.

In nlomenis of crisis and stress the saner elements in the

pilblic look to you fgr two things-a consfructive leitd and
protection from antisocial elements. Do not fail them. Do
not be afraid to rule in order to serve.
 70 A Tale Told by an Idiot
"DON'T lose ~ o n f i d e n c ein yourself. N o crisis can last
for ever. and if you keep your head the odds will be in your
f:~vour because public opinion is bound t o swing round t o
your side. At the worst moment, dig your heels in and hang
on to the rope, you will win the tug.
" D O N ' T be afraid of being wrong. But if you are, admit
it gracefully and you will find the public will not hold it
against you. The only man who never makes a mistake is the
man who abstains entirely from action of any sort.
"DON'T be condescending. Treat all as your equals, with
the same courtesy and consideration that you would show to
fellow members of a club.
. "DON'T give false hopes t o the public. If you have t o say
"no" say it politely and without stuttering-the woman who
" stuttered had eleven children.
"DON'T pass the buck by blaming the Government o r a
superior officer for a n unpopular decision. I t is your duty
t o suppor! and execute t h e orders you receive from competent
authority. ~f you criticize them, you a r e a coward, because
you a r e letting down your team.
"DO identify yourself with the hopes a n d aspirations of
the people you serve. Always remember that people are the
.d important thing, not reports and files., You will be remen-
bered by what you have achieved for the people-always
think of them a s yottr people-and not by what you wrote.
"DO learn all you can about "your" people because with-
out 'this knowledge you cannot help them effectively.
"DO be willing to meet the public without let o r hindrance
because this is the biggest iingle check o n corruption and
exploitation.
"DO take an interest in what the other departments are
doing in your district and help them all you can. Working in
. a watertight compartment is never successful (unless in a
submarine).
"DO turn a deaf ear t o backbiters, tale-bearers and Aot-
terers. One successful way of doing so is to change the
topic of conversation by telling them one of your allege^!!:^
funny stories-the duller the better.
"DO retain your sense of humour. Jt will make even the
worst situations bearable.
Exodus 71
Relations with Ministers and Politicians
"DON'T allow yourself to be identified with any person
o r party. In certain circumstances this may cost you a degree
of inconvenience, but it will at least keep you out of jail.
"DON'T allow yourself to be pressurized into any action
which you feel to be wrong. In case of trouble, there is going
to be only one scapegoat. Guess who?
"DON'T ask for favours, e.g., a particular posting or job.
There is always a price of some sort to be paid in these
matters and you may find it too high.
"DON'T talk too much. A seasoned minister or politician
will not be impressed and the others don't count.
"DO implement all Government policies with dedication
and to the best of your ability even if you disagree with them.
This is what you are paid for and it would be positively
dishonest to do otherwise.
,"DO state your views honestly but without exaggeration
and resist firmly any temptation to play to the gallery. This
also is what.you are paid for.
"Above all D O remember the phrase caveat empdor and take
nothing on trust. In the last analysis, you and you alone are
responsibk for what you do."

The British members of the I.C.S. left in 1947. The Indian

members were liquidated by efflux of time. There was no '
fresh recruitment to the Service and it was substituted by the
I.A.S. For us the first fruits of independence were distrust,
doubt, and dislike, from the new rulers of the country, not so
much because we had prosecuted them as because they had
attacked us unceasingly for twenty years, and wondered whe-
ther we would try to get a little of our own back, now
that they had to depend so m x h on us. There were some
amusing incidents-at least amusing in retrospect.. One of
the ministers ordered me to acxampany him to a village on
the outskirts of Nagpur, as he wlshed to examine the food
distribution arrangements there. He started his meeting by
asking for complaints. After some discreet prodding, one
person got up and said that the jum. supplied from the local
 72 A Tole Told by an Idiot
ration shop was old and damaged by insects. The minister
turned triumphantly to me and demanded "What have you to
say to that?" 1 said, "This ration shop was opened as a result
of political pressure although there was no need for it.
Initially we supplied ten bags of juar, and over a period of
six months only one bag has been sold. That is why the grain
is infested." The Indian villager is essentially fair-minded.
There were approving murmurs and the minister did not
pursue the matter further. But later on, in his speech he
returned to the attack. He said "This man sitting before you
is a member of the I.C.S. Yesterday he was your master, to-
day he is your servant. He is your dog, you can do what you
like with him, today is the day of the people." Another attri-
bute of the Indian villager is innate good manners, and the
disapproval in the silence that followed could be felt, even by
a minister. When the speech was over, I asked for permission
tq explain the Food Department's point of view, although I
had no intention of expressing anyone's point of view except
my own. I made a very brief speech, but it drew more
applause than the minister's. I said, "It is quite true that we,
government servants, are now your servants. But it is also
true that we were always your servants, and you will bear
witness that we tried to serve you to the best of our ability.
I n regard to the matter of dogs, I am myself extremely fond
J of them. and if you treat us as I treat my dogs, I am sure
there will be no complaints." Later on, the minister in ques-
tion was ticked off by Pandit Ravi Shanker Shukla, the Chief
Minister.
I have related this incident, not because it is of any impor-
tance in itself, but bccause it illustrates the attitude of at least
sorne politicians towards the I.C.S. Naturally, when the I.A.S.
was formed, was dinned into them that they must be total!y
F
and ~ ~ t t e r dilTereqt
ly from their predecessors. They were asked
#
to be democratic, public spirited, dedicated, and patriotic, the
implication being that we were not. If anyone had asked me
-wisely, no one did-I could have told then1 that disappoint-
ment was in store. The politician's understanding of the qua
lities enumerated are not exactly the same as the administra-
4 tor's. When he speaks of democracy, he has in mind thc
greatest good of the greatest number-of .his supporters.
' Exodus 73
Public spiritedness refers to that section of the public which
has voted for him. Dedication means dedication to himself.
And patriotism-well, your guess is as good as mine. The
unfortunate young men who joined the I.A.S. discovered to
their surprise that we were very much like them, that we '
shared the same values and the same interpretation of terms,
that we did have a sneaking fondness for our country which
could be called patriotism, and, most important of all, that
we did not consider them to be upstarts. In short, they missed
the bus. They could have been democratic, public spirited,
dedicated, and patriotic, as defined by the politician. Instead, ,r
they remained honest to themselves and to their Service. It
has always surprised me that no one accused us of corrupting
them. In later years the politician began to compare the
I.A.S. nostalgically and unfavourably with the I.C.S. They V
were incompetent, they were lazy, they had no spirit of
service, and so on and so forth. If the I.C.S. had remained
in existence as a service, exactly the same things would have
been said about us.
I would like to set the record straight. Some of the finest
men who worked with me have been members of the I.A.S.
They were every bit as good as any 1.C.S: officer I have known.
There,are, however, two factors that weight the dice against
the I.A.S. What makes or mars an officer is the first few years
of training, not the academic training that he gets when he
joins the service, but the practical training he receives at dis-
trict level, getting to know people and their needs, getting to
know problems and their solutions. In the circumstances of
today the Collector simply does not have enough time to
devote to the training of the young officers attached to his
district. It is not that the Collector's official work has increased
and overburdened him. The real difticillty is V I P visits which
keep him dancing like a cat on hot bricks. A friend of mine,
who was then Collector Raipur, kept n record and found that
194 days in the year had been occupied with looking after
ministers on tour. It is no use saying that these courtesies can
be handled by the Headquarters Assistant; ministers want the 4J.
best, and to them there is no substitute for the Collector.
This leaves little time in which to train the Assistant Collec-
tor. Thc other factor is even more damaging.'I have niention-
 74 Tale Told by an Idiot
ed the politician's di2mst of the I.C.S. Today the politician
distrusts the I.A.S. man twice as much, although the distrust
stems from a differqnt root. He distrusts him because he
' belongs to an all-India service, whose loyalty must be. more to
the Centre than to the state. This is utter nonsense, but the
politician believes it, and it 'is what he believes that is the
important thing, not the truth. Any politician will tell you that
., he prefers a state civil service officer to one from the I.A.S.,
as a collector, and one of the headaches of a chief secretary is
t o persuade his government to accept the annual quota of
J.A.S. probationers. At state level, therefore, thc I.A.S. is a
foundling. So far as the Centre is concerned, he has been put
out for adoption and they wash their hands of him. The state
can kick him around-as much as they please and the Centre
will not interfere, even unoficially. It is only when the state
proposes dismissal that the Centre is consulted, and then they
content themselves by passing the buck to the Union Public
Service omm mission. Washifig their hands of the blood of
innocent men was a popular pastime in the Home Ministry.
All this leaves the I.A.S. in the unenviable position of being
disliked by tha states and disowned by the Centre. I t was a
source of never-ending astonishment to me that they could
function at all.
There is a good case for radical revision of the recruitment
rules to the all-India services. I had made some proposals in
this regard when I was Adviser to the Governor of Punjab, in
1968, but the Home Ministry shelved them. Briefly, the idea is
to limit open market recruitment to the most junior level of
the state civil service. After working for three years a t this
level, the successful candidates will have two chances at the
limited competitive examination for the senior level of the state
civil service, the level of deputy collectors. After eight years,
deputy collectors throughout the country will compete for
entry to the senior scale of the I.A.S., there being no recruit-
ment to the junior scale. The successful candidates wit1 consti-
tute the I.A.S., and open market recruitment will be abolished. ,
J.A.S. officers will be posted to their parent states unless any
state needs more officers than can be provided by the success-
ful candidates from that state.
While I am riding this particular hobby horse I may as well
Exodus 75

dispose of a hoary old chestnut-that having officers from

other states makes for a more independent administration, an
administration less susceptible to local political pressures.
Nonsense. An officer resists political pressures either because
he is built that way, or because he knows that he will be pro- ,
tecfed if he does the right thing. An I.A.S. officer is protected
only by his virtue and a few admiring remarks in the lobbies
of the Home Ministry. If you think that is adequate protec-
tion, you are welcome t o your opinion.
There is a time in the life of every man when he must have
courage enough t o bear witness to the truth. Preferably at the
tail-end of his life, when nothing very much can h a p p ~ nt o
him. Here then is a truth; different pay scales for the different v
all-India services are totally unjustified. The qualifications are
the same, getting in would be equally difficult if the higher
scale of the I.A.S. did not attract more competition, and the
responsibilit~esare equally onerous. Building a two hundred
crores dam causes just as many-or more-sleepless nights a s
handling a riot. The only reason for giving the I.A.S. a higher
scale is that the Collector thinks he is superior to the Superin-
tendent of Police or the Engineer, if he draws a higher salary,
quite forgetting that a junior Collector won't. The worst result
o f this discrimination is the number of brilliant technical men +'
-engineers and even doctors-who are wasted in the I.A.S.,
square pegs in round holes, attracted solely by the financial
rewards. I rhink the Government's failure t o redress an obvious
injustice is due to the fact that the I.A.S. officers who have
dealt with the. file u p till now have all been married; the
female of the species is notoriously more status conscious than
the male. Let the matter be examined afresh by officers who
are bxhelors..
 V. THE TRIBALS

FROMHOPE AND FEARSET FREE. . .

My acquaintance with the tribals, who comprise one-fifth of

the population of Madhya Pradesh, began in 1940 when I
worked for six months under Grigson,on the Aboriginal Tribes
Enquiry. I studied them a t first hand, I lived with them, I
tried to understand them, in Sagar, Mandla, Raipur and
Bilaspur. The association continued for thirty years. They
evoke in me a deep sense of guilt. The worst thing that
-/ one race can d o to another is to take away their living rooni.
That is what we did to the tribals-by we, I mean our ances-
tors. The Aryans, developin!; from nomads into agriculturists,
pushed them away from the fertile lands, and they took re-
fuge in the hills and jungles. The Brltish took away the jun-
gles because the timber was valuable and the shilcnr attractive.
Minerals were discovered in the hills, and independent India
took away the hills. Now I suppose we will look for lebens-
raum for them a t the bottom of the sea. When the East Bengal
refugees began to be settled in the Dandakaranya Project,
much of which is in Bastar district, I asked H.M. Patel what
WAS going to happen to the tribals. He was optimistic about
the benefits they would get through the opening up of the
area, roads, schools, dispensaries and all the trappings of
I asked doubtfully, "But what about their land?
civilizatio~~.
*' What will they cultivate, not now, but when their population
increases?" There was no answer. T h ~ r never
e is an answer to
a fundamental question. T h e tribal has a low birthrate because
The Tribals . 77
he lives on the edge of starvation. Because no one really ,.,
cares whether he lives or dies, he has a high death rate. Natur-
ally, the few forests and barren mountains that have been
left t o him are underpopulated. Rut with the awakening of a
social conscience during the last twenty-five years his numbe~s
are increasing, and by the time he needs land, there will b.
no land left for him.
It is almost impossible for a non-tribal, even for me, to r
comprehend what his land means to a tribal. It has a life of
its own with which his life is insepatably linked, it is the
mother goddess that gave all men birth, but because it is his
land, it is his mother, with an umbilical cord that cannot be
severed. If its fertility decreases and the crops fail, it is because
the gods are angry with him and it is hc who must make
amends, with a human sacrifice if the omens so dictate. The
sacrifice is not for his well-being, it is for the well-being of the
mother earth who has suffered through him, and if he has to
hang for it-well, he has to hang. When a man like this loses
his land, something inside him dies, that something which .i
made him a man. And it is the land that is the first casualty
when civilization sweeps over the tribal. When he accepts
money and executes a sale deed, he assumes that he,is parting
with his land only iemp6rarily, only until it has produced
enough and more for the new master to neutralize the amount
he paid. I have seen a Gond in Rehli rehsil, standing with
dead eyes before the munim of the bania who had bought his
land, and asking "Have you got enough from the land to
repay the hundred rupees I took?" He had sold his land twenty
years ago. The munim, accustomed to such scenes, said briefly
"Not yet" and turned back to his work. The little old Gond
carried his dead eyes silently away. He would not have minded
so much in the days when alternative land was available for
the asking, or for the use of an axe, the good days a hundred
years ago when he had the run of the jungle. Rut today the
money he gets is preempted by his debts as soon as it comes
into his hand, and the jungles are protected, .Now it is not so
much the individual who wants his land, (only the poorest
quality is left) it is the state. Projects for irrigation require
land for the dam and the canal, the contours require that it
be the tribal's land. Iron and coal are discovered and the
 78 A Tale Told by an Idiot
country's needs demand their exploita!ion. The land is the
tribal's. New railways cut through virgin territory-and the
tribal's land. What centuries could no: do, civilization has
achieved; it has cut the umbilical ccrd between the adivasi and
his land. I have no solution. I merely report a tragedy, the
tragedy I saw pictured in the dead eyes of the Gond, "from
hope and Tear set fret."
When Dr Rajcndra Prasad, the President, visited Bastar he
talked to.me about the development plans for the district. I
blurted out that I had only three objectives-two square meals
a day for my people, protection for their land, and a degree
i,
of education that would enable them to be the exploiters ins-
tead of the exploited. He said, "They don't !ook starved."
I replied, "Sir, you shou:d see them at. the beginning of the
monsoon, when their rice is finished and the wild roots of the
jungle are not yet ready. Last year, during the rains, I had to
cross a flooded river in dugout canoe paddled by 3. Muria. The
current was very strong, and in spite of the fact that I helped
out with one of the paddles, hi: could not hold the canoe
diagonally against the flow of the river, with the result that
we had to return to the bank from which we had q t out.
When I swore at him, he said, quke simply, that he had not
'' eaten for three days. I gave him a meal, and the results were
dramatic-two hours later we crossed the river with the great-
est of ease." The President was evidently sympathetic about
two of my objectives. Within a few days my demand for deve-
lopment funds was met, and within an equally short time
legislation which I had been pressing for, to protect the
adivasi's land, was passed. Alas, it did not protect hiin against
Government acquisition!
I have lived long enough to see my third objective on the
way to realization. I was Commissioner Jabalpur Division in
1958 when some Gonds came to me with long faces. They were
from a tiny jungle village in Seoni district, and their grievance
was serious. The Pacloari, instead of visiting them once a year
on his rasad tour-a toui to collect rations for the year-had
started making rasad tours almost once a month; he had fallen
in love with the ghee they produced. Tnis was a burden they
found unbearable. They did not want offcia1 action, they
would deal with the problem themselves, but would I kindly
The Tribals 79
look after them if there was trouble? I said I would. As an
afterthought I added that it would be desirable for the patwari 4
not to die. There was uproarious laughter. Certainly he
would not die, they would not lay a finger on him, all they
were going to do was to give him ghee. And they laughed
again. A couple of months later, the parwari took the unusual
step of asking for a transfer outside the district, and the
application came to me with a forwarding endorsement from
the Collector. He wrote that the patwari believed he had been
bewitched, certainly he was In bad. mental shape, and the
transfer was recommended. I transferred him, and the next
time I toured Seoni district I dropped in on my Gonds. They
were quite frank about the matter. "We mixed tigcr's fat in
the ghee, and you know what that does to a man." What it
does to a man is make him behave like Casanova. "And
then we sent the Brahmin pujari of Baghdeori to tell him."
The patwari was himself a Brahmin. It was bad enough that
he had eaten tiger's fat and suffered for it, now another
Brahmin knew what he had done. No wonder he wanted out
of the district.
This chapter is not intended to be a thesis on the aborigi-
nals. Its only purpose is to introduce you to the tribal as I
know him, in the hope that you will see a human being and
not a museum piece.

6 January 1950-Started by car for Kokometa in Abujmarh,

where one of our cloth and salt shops has been running very
successfully since last June. Arrive at threeish and am greeted
by Mukaddam, rather amusing old sinner who claims to be
friend of mine. He ought to, as I have given him the only gun
licence in ihe Abujmarh and have taught him elements of
shooting. Long tale of woe. Graziers have brought their cattle
near village and wild buffalo has joined them. Wild buffalo
prevents cattle from being milked, which hurts graziers, and
spends spare time in eating Abujmarias' mustard crops, which
hurts Abujmarias. Strongly suspect this is made u p for my
benefit so that I will shoot buffalo. However, proceed dutifully
to investigate and somewhat to my surprise, find story true.
,80 ' zle Told by an Idiot
Graziers and Mukaddam unanimous that buffalo should be
shot.
Build myself a convenient machan, set up my camera and
await return of wild buffalo with herd. He arrives in due
course and is photographed. Expectant multitude awaiting
shot, niake barbed remarks regarding my cowardice. Wild
buffalo chases them and earns my gratitude. I alight from
machnn and point out, very reasonably, that multitude, tame
buffaloes, and wild buffalo were so mixed up that excessive
number of targets made shooting impossible. Explanation
received in cold and disbelieving silence.
Wild buffalo sits down in middle of tame herd. I suggest that
some one go in and make him rise. Remark ignored. I throw
halfhearted clod of earth at wild buffalo and beat him to tree
by shorthead in ensuing race. Honour being satisfied, wild
buffalo saunters off to forty yards. Am urged unanimously to
shoot it. In reply, gesture towards rifle which I had shed as
unfair handicap during race. Mukaddam brings rifle, eluding
wild'buffalo by inches in process. With effort of mental agility,
I now claim to be unable to shoot from this tree, as I need two
legs and at least one hand to stay on it. Mukaddam (whom I
am beginning to cordially loathe by now) says, "Come down
and shoot it." Buffalo ch'ases him around herd for his pains.
I seize opportunity to alight from tree and as quickly as
possible climb tree with machan. This time, rifle stays with
me.
Mukaddam (how I hate that man!) enlists aid of two other
Abujmarias and all three partly entice and partly drive buff.11~
until it comes opposite my tree. Pressing invitation to s!~oot
repated. Buffalo sees me and proceeds to intimate that I am
well and truly treed. Light is failing and I have no intention
of spending freezing night. I slug buffalo behind ear with solid
423 and he is forthwith written off Forest Stock book. Grn-
ziers now claim they cannot have dinner with buffalo lying in
front of encampment so will I please move it elsewhere. Send
pickup for more Marias. Twenty arrive and job is done.
All return with me in pickup which is one of the minor
nliracles of space and an all-purpose vehicle. Am too tired for
dinner, and sleep the sleep of the unjust.
7 Jun~rary-Arise from broken slumbers, breakages being
The Tribals 81
due first to woman yelling her head off at about midnight and
then to cold which made me climb out of bed and put on all
available c!othes. Am travelling without tent so have to sleep
in leaf huts. Decide that Parnshala in winter is form of pur-
gatory not fully appreciated by Valniiki. Enquire in morning
with fine show of unconcern whether woman's yells were
evidence of murder o r merely result of husband's'discipline.
Am informed that she gave birth to healthy baby earlier in
night and was thrashed as per custom. Am greatly intrigued
by custom and speculate how it arose. Probably novel form of
pain therapy. Forget cardinal principle that no Abujmaria
will. tell you anything if you appear interested, with result
that they all clam up.
Hold open court for news and complaints. Am told that
cultivated crops (in fields) are good but owing to early out-
break of monsoon, pendas could not be fired. Penda is form of
shifting axe cultivation common in Abujmarh where areas are
c!earfelled, burnt and millets sown in them. Offer to send in
rice from plains but am informed it is not necessary.
Allegations made against Forest Guard who beat Maria
women engaged on road work. Promise to look into case and
make note. Ganda (non-aborigillal) who cheated couple of '

Maria boys out of a bullock also reported. Find on enquiry

that case has been registered by police who are doing every-
thing necessary. Once more realize that comptairrt?~ Mariais
like the pen of my gardener's aunt in French-repeated or
applied to everyone. Thcy have kecn sense of injury and no
sense of time, like Irish, only more so.
Leave for Kachapal at three (ten miles) acconlpanied by
Mukaddam and Pargana Majhi (kribal leader in Pargana).
Discover that Abujmarh is split up between villages by com-
mon consent and convention, leaving nothing for Government.
Each village consists of about fifty acres of stable or shifting
cultivation and five to fifty squarc miles of forest. Realize why
shifting cultivation does not see111 to have done much harm
in Abujmarh-too much forest and not cnough cultivatiori to
seriously effect it. Majhi tells me penda rotation here is about
fifteen to twenty years. Am struck by abundance of flat, fertile
land which has not been touched and wonder for the ump-
teenth time.why Maria is so childish. He will ignore land .
82 A Tale Told bj, an Idiot

next to him and go three miles to use a field which is probably

no better.
Enter into limits of Irmbhatti after climbing (by estimate
and gasps) about fifteen hundred feet. Ma.jhi tells of disputc
between Kokorneta and Irmbhatti over two fields (about three
acres-I saw them) which both claim. Decide that best solu-
tion is for neither to sow those fields and am hailed as Solomon.
Then discover that the fields are in limits of Adasur which is
deserted, but some of whose cultivators have settled in
Kokorneta. Still stick to original decision as two fields are
cheaper than couple of murders. In any case no land revenue
is involved, there is no land revenue system in Abujmarh.
Pargatla Majhi.7 collect a poll tax of one rupee and six annas
per male over sixteen per year and pay it into rehsil treasury.
Census is taken for this purpose every five years, again by
Majhis. This system which was introduced by Grigson i n 1929
is probably the most important single reason why the Marh is
still sealed off from the rest of Bastar. But it has become s o
set that it cannot be disturbed suddenly. However. Procecd
further at slightly reduced speed owing to fact that I am
engaged on interminable climb over gradient of I in 2 (it
seems!). Decide that I must stop o r burst my lungs. Save self-
respect by asking Majhi whether villages are jealous of all
rights in their jungles o r only overpenda rights. Cunningly stop
to hear answer, roll cigarette and enter into discussion which
gives much needed breather of ten minutes. Find from Majhi
that these Abujmarh village forests are like reserved forests in
sense that every action in them is a crime unless specifically
permitted. (I got this from a definition by a very distinguished
forest officer of the difference between reserved and rot acted
forests.)
Tactfully enquire whether I rnay shoot peafowl just visible
through tall (six-feet) grass, which scerns to cover enlire area
not covered by big tree forest. Pcrniission too enthusiastically
accorded, with result that nuafowl saves its life. Rave not
seen any valuable jungle evcn through binoculars. Evcry-
thing is sat-kuru, miscellaneous.
t Arrive Kacchapal sixish, in time to attend ;I funeral. This
area is in Sonpur 'Pargana. Majlri is surly old bird but must
makc allowance for fact t h a ~dcccascd was his sister-in-law.
 The Tribals. 83
From symptoms described she died of appendicitis, not notice-
ably improved by charms, purgative, and, as last resort, brand-
ing across stomach. Corpse is wrapped in bambco matting and
red cloth and carried lashed t o pole., Burial is in lying posi-
tion after removing cloth, and am told that some time later,
stone will be erected when feast and other formalities are
complied with, Considerable and energetic wailing which
seems more ceremonial than genuine except in case of rela-
tions, who are deeply affected and hence d o not make so
much noise. Pargnna Mojhl of Kokometa returns from here
but my old friend the Mukaddam signifies his intention of
completing tour w;:h me and returning from Jagdalpur.
8 Janz~ary-Spend better night than previous one because
I threw caution to winds and had a glorious fire in my leaf
hut. Hear drums until midnight a n d suddenly realize that
they,are sending messages-very clear kind of code, some-
thing like morse. Am interested because I had always suspzcted
there was drum code amongst these people. Confirm theory
by asking Majhi in morning what message drums were sending.
He says "That you have arrived and are going to Kutul
today." I bet there was lot more than that but he would not
tell. Another mode of sending messages is by symbols. Jamun
branch and piece of meat left on door step at night means
, "Your man was killed in hunt." Bunch of chillies, arrowhead
and symbol representing name of a village means "Assemble
at such and such village in so many days (according to number
o f chillies) prepared for war." There are heaps more. Notice
that many people in village suffer from hydrocele and there is
high proportion of scabies. Abujmaria's attitude to human
life very realistic-he is good to children because they repre-
sent assets and ignores aged because they are liabilities anyway,
and he sees no reason to increase their span. He feels he is
doing more than enough by taking no positive action to
reduce it. This attitude not confined to Abujmarias but found
in all primitives I have worked with. Wonder why every
social worker from Thakkar Bapa to Elwin persists in euphe-
mizing aboriginal. Surely it is possible to love and try to under-
stand them without romanticizing thzir qudlities. Strongly
leminiscent of wife's attitude to small son-infant p r a d ~ g y
angel instead of (what he is) attractive llttle devi1. Statistl-
 84 , A Tale Told by an Idiot

cally, nearly 70 per cent of Bastar's murders (which are about

as niany as in a whole M.P. division) involve father and son,
husband and wife, brother and brother.
Leave for Kutul at nine. Early starts impracticable in Abuj-
marh at this time of year as night mist only lifts at eight
and grass through which footpath runs is soaking wet for
another hour. Mist has to be seen to be believed-visibility
twenty feet in places.
See and photograph a tree house on way. Abujmaria camps
in his field while crop is growing and lives generally in hut
built in tree during this period, returning to village alter
harvest. Is celibate during this period.
Try to orient Survey of Indja map with actual landscape,
aided by compass, and fail. Have already discovered that map
is quite bogus as far as Abujmarh 5s concerned. Even village
names do not tally and village locations on map are just wild
guesswork. These villages change site aod name evefy five years
so map-maker's task is not enviable. Route I am following
has been worked out by arithmetic and trigonometry to be in
exactish centrz of Marl?, running north-south as closely as
I can make it. Each day's journey is decided after consulting
villagers and keeping due south. Technically I am well and
truly lost but console myself with reflection that I still have
seven days grain and can always shoot a peafowl-I hope.
Reach Kutul at noon. Long chat with locals. No complaints.
Aboriginal always responds to humour and is a good-natured
chap generally. Find ghotul building in village and discover
that these do exist all over Marh but only the boys (chelik)
sleep there at night. Once in week there is dance and then
girls too go. Boy who wants to "make" a girl offers her con-
ventional drink. If she accepts-well, she returns home at ,
dawn. My Mukaddam (the Kokometa one) remarks patroniz-
ingly that Abujmaria is not like plains Muria who has no
morals. In the Muria ghotul the girls sleep out every night-
here it is a weekly treat. I thank thee 0 Lord that I am not
as other men. I, ask what if there are pregnancies. Boy is
fined and girl is'married off to husband already selected by
her parents who also accepts child as his own. But I am
assured fhat such cases practically never occur because it is
only a weekly affair. Shades of Marie Stopes!
 The Tribals 85
Incidentally find that fertility amongst Abujmarias is very
low even for aboriginals (where it is lower than elsewhere).
Childless marriages are frequent and where there are children
the number is not more than two or three per family. Cert9:nly
not due to birth control, because children are passion, .zly
desired. Wonder if this caused by practically fatless diet or
prevalence of filaria. It is certainly not due to venereal
disease or yaws. I have seen no cases yet.
Find a man whose parenis were Gonds of Panabaras and
came in and settled in Marh. After their death Abujmarias
accepted him as one of themselves and got him married to a
Maria girl. He was born in the Marh; but in two other cases,
Maria boys who had gone to work in the plains married
Muria girls and brought them home. There seems no feeling
at all against Maria-Muria or Maria-M.P. Gond or even
Maria-non-Gond marriages, although naturally they are not
'frequent because opportunities are lacking. Had always
thought, with Grigson, that Maria is strictly caste or tribe
bound-obviously not so.
Kutul people (four of them) have been as far afield as Ala-
palli (Chanda district, eighty miles) and most of them have
visited Narainpur. But not one has crossed range of hills
dividing Narainpur area of Abujmarh from Kutru area. They
reasonably poin<out thty have no reason to.
Enquire regarding complaint of Forest Guard beating
wornen. Denied unanimously. Majhi Wanja who was cited as
witness by complainant in Kokometa says nothing of sort
happened to anyone in his pargana. Have been climbing more
o r less continuously since Kokometa and must be over three
thousand feet by now.
Discuss further route with wise old men and find little help.
They say Gomangal is due south one day's journey for a
Maria-twenty to thirty miles. Dhurbeda is on way. Decide
to make for Gomangal on 9th via Dhurbeda.
9 January-Early start-eight. Climb steadily for two miles
and get a lovely view from top of rise.
Pause for photographs and breath. See various patches of
penda and am to!d rotation is ten years here as jungle grows
fast. See patches of bare hill but am assured that penda has
nevcr been done. Wanja Mojhi (who is seeing rne as far as
86 A 7hIe Told by a n Idiot

Gomangal) says n o one d o e s penda unless jungle is really dense

"for who would marry a bald-headed woman?" Closely ex&.
mine some patches and find his version true. N o cutting.has
ever been done here, nevertheless trees a r e sparse and area
looks bare. I n next four miles wentally analyze cultivation
seen and find (a) penda on hill slopes is rotational o r shifting
(b) occasional'penda o n level ground is preparatory t o stable
cultivation, i.e., land is sown after burning for first year and
thereafter cultivated regularly (c) penda is only done in, poor
soils where kosra (minor millet) will grow and not in rich soil
(6)some little rice being grown in richsoils and am told its
cultivation is extending, but such areas are in minority. Main
c r o p is still penda-grown kosra, and (e) Wanja Majhi says
there was n o rice cultivation five years ago but people going
t o Alapalli-(Chanda district-eighty miles) for work have sfen
it and started such cultivation o n return.
Conclude that Abujmarh in Narainpur t r h i l at least is
progressing fast.
Forest still of sat-kata, miscellaneous' type a n d not much
value except for some scraggy bamboo. See plenty of signs of
sloth bear a n d some of Sambhar.
Reach Dhurbeda a t eleven (ten miles) and pause , t o Ict
equipment catch up. Find population assembled t o greet me
and am presented with massive tuber by headman in token of
receiving freedom of village. Give him cigarette in return and
photograph him, solo, with Majhi, and with self. Looks very
Australian aboriginal. Abujmar-ias d i r e r widely in appearance,
from red-bronze alniost Caucasian type, through very dark
symetrical Dravidian type, t o absolute primitive bushman
type. Just near Dhurbeda s2w unique- sight and am still re-
gretting inability t o photograph it. Maria girl having bitter
quarrel with sister in dense dark jungle, lit by couple o f r a y s
c f sunlight (1/100 Sec F 4 Super XX-this conveys t h e scene
t o photographers) was so engrossed in quinine of human un-
kindness, she forgot t o run when I and party turned corner.
F o r moment she fi.oze. Sister had bzck t o us. What a
picture! ~ n then d both were gone, running,like deer. Dravi-
dian types like Sunil Roy portrays, goddesses in that lighting.
Again enquired regarding complaint against Forest' Guard-
again told it was completely false. Forest Guard exhonerated.
The Tribals 87
From two miles before Dhurbeda, have been going over
level ground between two long ranges of hills, running north-
east and north-west respectively. Must be about 3400 feet up.
According t o compass, since yesterday, the sun rises in north-
west. Am.now relying o n wristwatch and sun for direction.
Dhurbeda is somewhere about the exact centre of Abujmarh.
Richer soil than Kachapal and even Kutul. In fact good agri-
cultural land JI the-way from Kachapal in patches.
Reach Gomangal at about three, fairly tired but still have
another seven t o eight miles in my legs. Have usual meeting
in the evening and treat a few cases. Hope the Medical Asso- 4
ciation does not take action. Apart from quinine, mepacrine,
castor oil, itch ointment and dysentery mixture, I use Aspro
for everything else, so cannot be doing much harm. Find
people from here also go t o Alapalli t o work for Forest
Department. Ask tactfully why they d o not come out o n
P.W.D. o r Forest r o ~ dworks in this district and get the answer
after much patient questioning. Here payment is by piece
work and is really ridiculously inadequate. The Forest pay
R s 30 to Rs 45 per mile of road (kacha-repairs) but this in-
cludes temporary bridges. The average share of a man for fif-
teen days work comes to eight annas. I t would be mush more
honest to call it begariand get it done free! As for P.W.D.,
real objection is that labour is of unaccustomed and back-
breaking type and payments are made very late (once in month '
o r even two months o n Gidam-Bijapur section). I know exe-
cutive engineer is doing his best t o solve payment problem
but it is almost inlpossible for one S.D.O. t o observe financial
rules and make payments more frequently. I a m convinced
that Abujmaria will turn out in satisfactory numbers if paid a
reasonable wage daily. Have no trouble a t all in finding car-
riers at five anlias per day (not more than twelve miles-if
trip is lonser, two sets have to be used) and they think I am
generous. Normal daily wages on site o r near village are only *
four annas.
After meeting, am call-d to visit case of veterinary nature.
Cow with swollen ear. Locel gaita (witch doctor) watches with J
cold hostility. As I d o not want to incur his anger I invite
him to have first go. Much epileptic jerking, wailing and
foaming at mouth and then he takes out assortment of dried
 leaves which are burnt under cow's nose and emit vile sme
' Owner of the cow says this has been done twice before a1
cow is not better, moreover gaila charges one bottle liquor f
each treatment. I tell him sternly that we doctors are worth
our fees an'd get to business. Explain that evil spirit seems to
be in cow's ear but this must be verified by magic-first. Increase
of interest at once in ciowd. I take out rupee and announce
that I shall send it to find where evil spirit resides. I then
vacish rupee and call to it in loud voice to tell me where evil
spirit is, repeating answers for benefit of non-psychic audience.
,Eventually walk over to cow and ask rupee where it is, uiti-
cialely producing it from cow's ear. Having tlius located
source of troub!e (amidst tense silence broken only by small
boy who bursts out crying and is led away in disgrace), I
proceed to treat. Very simple, a good dollop of Milton,, 10
per cent dilution in ear while cow struggles. I the nretire amidst
general admiration and hope cow won't die before I leave
village.
10 January-Distribute salt as usual. This is the only time
I have ever seen aboriginal abandon usual gentlemanly indiffe-
t rence-he is definitely eager to get his salt. Must try some gur
next time.
Visit patient of previous night and find Milton has 'worked '
J like real magic. Swellinp almost nil and pain seems to have
disappeared. Repeat treatment and leave village like hero.
The route is now level except for negligible little hills of four
or five hundred feet which I take in my stride with a sneer.
From Kutul, the physica.1 characteristics of Marias found seem
to have been steadily changing. Up to Kutul, the reddish
brown type is in ~najority,after Gomangal it has slmost dis-
appeared and the bushman type is coming into prorninctxe.
Particularly i:i Kokopar which we enter at about eleven. .
The landscape too is changing. There is less fertile land and
nore black rock. The cultivation both shifting and stable is
more interisive afler Dburbeda (before Gcmangal). There are
n o t e patches of stablc cultivation. I-lave seen b ~ ~ n d l erice
d
fields in Goniangal and irrigation in Kokopar.
Am acquiring quite a fondness for my Kokometn Mukad-
dam, in spite of his being a confounded scoundrel. 1,argely .1'
thlnk, because he is always cheerful and irrepressible. .Mo re-
 UVFL ~ I C :13 XJ naively in love with his own cleverness that his

villainies are always transparent. At Kokopal he produced a

land dispute case for decision. Parties belong t o Gomangal
and I shall reproduce case in some detail because it gives in-
sight into aboriginal psychology. Chamru Madia was minor
when parents died and could not look after all his land so he
lent some of it to Masu. Now Chamru wants back field he
lent to Masu about eight years ago and has been asking for it
repeatedly and in vain. First I question Masu who says he has
cultivated land for many years and it is his own. H e has not
lied. He has cultivated it for years and he feels it should be
his own. Insight no. 1 into aboriginal mind. He will seldom tell
I a lie but he is a n expert at sltppressio veri and suggesrio falsi.
I Then question Chamru who states facts already mentioned.
Verify .from old men of village and decree in favour of Cha-
mru. To ratify decision. prepare document in English with all
the Latin phrases I can remember and decorate it with rough '
sketch of tiger and a man on stilts, which are the only two
things I can draw. Sign it and seal it from lac provided by
aboriginal, with three seals, first of my signet ring, second of
.256 cartridge case and third of buckle of my wristwatch ,
strap. Last looks most impressive. Dzlivcr document t o Chamru 9
and carefully explain decision to Masu, \rho accepts it more
gracefully than I had expected.
Shortly afterwards, surprise my Mukaddam and Majhi of
Chhote Dongar (in whose pargnna I am at the moment) ac-
cepting Rs 2 from Chamru. On questioning, my Mukaddam
says that is fee which panchayar would have charged a n d it
seems a pity that Majhi should miss h ~ share s because I decided
case. On further questioning, admits blandly that he will keep
Rs 1 for 111mselfas Majlii did not have courage to demand 4
fee. Lack moral courage to argue matter and anyway cannot
let down M q h i , so change subject but obtain insight no.2 into
aboriginal mind.
Later on ask Mukaddam why they did not decide case in
panclmyat and earn their RS 2 hoilestly. H e says, with pity
fdr my ignorance, that one of the two parties was going to b::
anaoyed at decision so why earn annoyance when I was there
t o take it. Insight n6. 3.
Notice that younger aboriginals are rclati\,ely clean ,
 90 A Tale Told by an Idior
older ones (over forty-five), are filthy and wear coat of ashes
against cold. Very young children also wear ashes.
Enter Adar about one (twelve t o fifteen miles). Village
assembled t o greet me with inevitable yam in headman's hand.
Also see five cases of hydrocele a n d a very obvious case of
leprosy.
Desultory conversation. These people are the w~ldestNlarias
* I have seen. Enquire regarding ghoti~la n d find it is of different
, type t o Kokometa and Orchha. Boys sleep there purely be-
, cause there is n o room at home. N o dancing and no com-
munion with the other sex. For aboriginals, they lead a really
dull life.
Am told that in living memory, not even a chaprasi has
come t o Kokopal o r Adar, which gives me a first of sorts.
Information regarding dancing was given by a boy of Kutul
who happens t o be here o'n visit. Local cheliks most indignant
and have just come t o tel! me that not only d o they dance but
will put on show for me tonighf. Unwillingly dig up Rs 10
for feast and try t o look pleased.
Dance is put on a t six when almost dark. Village elders sit
round fire while boys and girls perform usual buttock bells
dance of Abujmarh. First song, a s near as I can make out, is
invocation t o earth goddess to make land fruitful. Then hymns
for good fishing, good hunting, even good sulphi (palm toddy)
season. All very non-poetic and quite different from songs
of Narainpur Murias particularly around Alanar, which have'
genuine poetry in them. Am captivated by metal feather
which boy is wearing and ask how much he paid. He says
Rs 2 and I offer Rs 5. H e jumps at it.
Take qome flash pictures but not of the girls, except one
f ~ o mbehind because thcy a r e already scared.
My Kokometa Mukaddam very officious a n d tries t o act
a s master of ceremoiiies which is resented by village elders so
I tell him t o sit down, having by now realizcd his feelings
don't require to be spared.
Have been calculating distances as well a s I can, and think
I am now eighty miles from Kokometa which means we will
start descent of hlarh hills tomorrow. Learn from enquiries
that I can reach Bhairamgarh on third day by noon. Fr~lly
realize that if locals turn hostile I will not reach at all and it
Tlie Tribnls 91

would take a month for my District Superintendent of Police

t o trace me. Retire t o bed o n that sobering thought.
I 1 January-Early start (8.30) for Itul. There .is frost on
ground and huts. Photograph a complete Maria family with
exception of married women, in front o f t h e i r hut. Married
women decline to pose and the two unmarried girls hang grimly
o n t o piece of cloth round shoulders. Otherwise both sexes
wear only loincloth. Also take close-up of three wise old men. '
Find the road easier now. We are following valley going
down between two ridges of hills. Am again intrigued by fre-
quent bare patches o n hills, nor due t o penda, and photograph
one. Speculate as t o whether due t o iron. There is certainly ore
here because Abujmarias smelt and prepare all their own iron
requirements. And Rowghat deposits are o n range of hills
which run into Abujmarh. Imagine having enough iron in
only two known deposits to last world for one thousand years.
(This is a fact-Rowghat and Bailadila, both in Bastar, with
ore that averages 70 per cent.) Geological survey of Abujmarh
would be worthwhile. Perhaps gold o r oil?
Stable cultivation not seen. Land is very poor and most
streams look as if they woold dry u p by summer. Further
notice that bushman type mentioned in Gomangal is now again
disappearing and giving way t o majority of reddish-brown
Aryan and symetrical Dravidian types. ,
Rezch Korowahi a t 11.30 and find Itul has disappeared.
The people deserted it last year and in Adar, only ten to
twelve miles away, there was no knowledge of this fact. Koro-
wahi is new village one mile from site of former Itul. The case
of the lost village.
But the Korowahi people knew I would not find Itul s o
built a leaf hut for me without being asked. Now you know -P
one of the reasons why I am s o fond of aboriginals.
Am in Kutru part of Abujmsrh, south, and would have
expected predominance of busllman aboriginal. Provisionally,
judging by what I have seen, Abujmarh population consists
of three different elements: reddish-brown Caucasian-or Aryan
type; black symetrical Dravidian; and Australoid bushman
type. The original must have been bushman who was squeezed
into centre of Marh -by successive waves of outsiders of two
other types. At present I would say bushman type is 20 per cent
 92 4 A Tale Told by an Idiot
with the remainder equally divided between other two. Na-
turally, there is plenty of mixture but in spite of it the three
types still stand out. Probably due to existing custom of cross-
v. cousin marriage, which keeps racial types unchanged. Have
taken several photos to illustrate, particularly one just now in
Korowahi. Get my first news of outside world from Edka
Mzji (Bhairamgarh pargann) who has just returned from
Kutru. Says Maharaja is there on shikar.
Talk with assembled population and find practically no
stable cultivation in this pargana, not because they don't want
t o d o it, but because there is no suitable land. Certainly on
these scaggy hills stable cultivation will cause more erosion
than penda. There is no objection at all to ploughing. Assem-
bled population very friendly and watch with avid interest
wh~leI write this. So I draw a tiger and the man on stilts for
them. First time my artistic efforts have ever been appreciated.
Show naturally continues with binoculars which are passed
from hand t o hand, o r rather eye to eye, and evokc gasps of
astonishment. Then conjuring tricks, ending with my extra
special of swallowing a matchbox and taking it out of (laced)
, boot which is on my foot. I wonder what reaction would be
if they saw woman being cut in half!
Am attended by enthusiastic crowd of fans while I bath and
shave and only reason why 1 haven't yet had my siesta IS
because they are still with me.
Evening-They put on dance without being asked and are so
obviously keen to show off that I haven't heart t o refuse.
But this show is wotth it. Very good part singing in excellent
harmony, with yodelling effects. Wish I had a wire recorder.
Discover that Abujmarias are keenet on song than dance
which differentiates them from other aboriginals I have known.
And all their songs have a break and change into higher key,
very much like yodelling. Why is mountain singing yodelling
like Swiss and Himalayan folk songs? Wide open spaces too,
cf. cow-boy songs. There was particularly catchy song with
refrain "he mama, he dada, kokore ko kikorei." All about girl
J who is married to boy she loves but makes usual feminlne
fuss at time of wedding. Very jolly.
Abojmarias laugh easily and are a gay crowd with] a c
enormous fund of vitality like all aborigi~lals.Can hear them
The Tribals 93
now as I prepare for bed.
12 January-Early start again (8.30) as tehsil jamadar who
has come from Kutru says next camp (Bodga in Khalsa, out-
) fifteen miles and I might sit up for a tiger there
side M a ~ h is
if I reach in time. Kokometa Mukaddam very thoughtful for
half an hour. I ask him what is the matter. Tells me very con-
fidentially so that none can hear, "In this trip I have seen the
whole Marh from north to s o ~ t h ~ a nalld the Mnjhis of the
parganas through which we have passed. Now don't you think
they are a .silly lot of owls compared to me? Why shouldn't
I be a Majhi?"
Sit down on pretext of reloading camera and laugh silently
for five minutes. Predict great things o::.old Moosra Mukad-
dam.
Climb down steadily for seven miles and reach plain which
,stretches for another three. Penda on hills is pretty intensive
but plain is untouched and contains about fifty thousand
acres of good cultivable land under non-descript forest, only
bamboo being of value.
No stable cultivation at all in Bhairamgarh Pargana (from
Korowahi on) of Abujmarh and no cattle. Majhi says "No
cattle, no fields; but also no tiger," and insists that people
do not keep cattle because they attract tiger.
Except for plain referred above land not suitable for stable
cultivation and suspect this is real reason. Of course Abuj-
maria could come down into plains but is primarily hillman(<
and would not like it-yet.
This is only pargana of eight seen in crossing entire Marh
from north to south, where no cattle at all.
One obstacle to stable cultivation will be this absence of
cattle. And stable cultivation not possible in barren Kutru
part of Abujmarh. Notice that in spite of intensive penda '
(five-year rotation) lower slopes of hills are never deforested. /
Either a ~ a z i n gcoincidence or aboriginal has dim sense of
danger of erosion. Ask Majhi and am told it is "because
the hill will fall away." I
As neat a description of erosion as I have heard. And they
say aboriginal is backward. Wish some of our "advanced" ,
cultivators could understand danger of "hills fallipg away."
Reach river called in Maria, Kokomanda. Find it repre-
 94 A Tale Told by an Idiot
sents border of Abujmarh. Take farewell photo and look, and
cross my rubicon.,

MALARIAAND POYAMIMASA(1994)

If ignorance is bliss, this article will positively shriek with

happiness. My qualifications for writing it are the same as
my friend Poyami Masa's-we both have had all the types
of malaria that were ever invented, but he is illiterate and
I have to do the writing. This is a pity, because his style is
certainly superior to mine.
An antimalarial unit started work in Bastar in 1949. ?'hey
commenced operations in the towns of Jagdalpur and Kanker
and a belt of villages around each place and the decline in the
number of cases treated was immediate and spectacular. At
the end of this article I have given the statistics on which
this statement is based, but I would like to add that even a
confirmed disbeliever in statistics like myself was enormously
impressed, not by the figures, but by the obvious improve-
ment in the health of the people. This was something one
could see. Villages that had been notonous for their pot-
bellied children changed in a few months into reasonably
healthy spots. Even the surviving mosquitoes were non-
malarious.
Bastar is fifteen thousand square miles of hill and jungle
-and, until a couple of years ago, malaria. The population
is nine lakhs, seventy-five -per cent aboriginal. And the com-
monest picture is of an old man, covered with his entire
wardrobe-(it's less than a mid-Victorian bathing suit) lying
in the sun and trying to get warmer than the fever will
allow. A t least, it used to be the commonest picture; it isn't
now, not since the machar-mar walrs got going. The second
most colnmon picture was of an infant with a tummy that
, would have been justifiable on his mother-just before he
was born. When I first saw those stomachs, I thouglit of the
famine cases I had seen in Bcngal-il's peculiar that hunger
, and over-eating should.produce such similar results. . . and
11:aIaria.. . . Then carne the antimalaria squad and more
trouble for an administrative officer. The aboriginals could
not understand this business of taking blood samples, or
The Tribals 95

spraying thc liouses. Sureiy every one knows that blood i s

only taken f o r a sacrifice (and in case you think this statenlent
is funny, please remember that we have hanged two men in
the last three years f o r human sacrifice) while the spraying
of white stuff o n houses is obviously a form of magic. How-
e v e r , , t h e y were soothed in due course, and the work conti-
nued. After ,the first few months, we had more trouble from
the so-called "civilized" people than from the aboriginals . ..
they thought they knew more than the antimalaria workers,
and were continually wiping the D D T from the walls. But o n
the whole, thz only real setback we had was due t o the experts.
With tile most laudable scientific motives, they followed in
the footsteps of the parade-ground sergeant who achieved
levitation, in two simple commands; "right foot off the ground;
both feet off the ground": First they reduced the number of
s p r a y i n ~ s ,then thky reduced the strength of the spray, and
fina!ly they omitted the D D T altogether, using cheaper substi- ,
tute. There was loud applause, but only from the mosquitoes.
In 1953, after a careful analysis of the results achieved in
Jagdalpur and Kanker areas (we had of course gone back f o
the older practice and given up the D D T substitutes by then)
it was decided t o extend the scheme to cover a population
of more than six lakhs in the district, and this was done.
There were difficulties and I am not sure we have overcome
them completely as yet. Means of communication are practi-
cally nonexistent and the huge trucks supplied are singularly
unsuited to fair-weather roads. The vi!lages are very far apart;
the paras o r hamlets are scattered miles from each other, in
fact a single rcvenue village may extend over ten o r twelve
square miles; and even the houses are a considerable distance
from each other. Naturally, this makes spraying difficult t o
d o and even more difficult to supervise.. The only remedy is
surprise checks.
The aboriginals have received the expanded programme with
enthusiasm. I t would be interesting to consider their reasons
for this in some detail. They are not afraid of malaria because
it kills tlicm-it does not-but, because it takes away the zest 4
of living. I t interferes with their slrilinr and their dancing and
their elope~ncnts-it cven interferes with their work, but this
is not so important. "A short life and a merry one" is Poyami
 96 A Tale Told by nrr ltiior
Masa's philosophy, ar.d malaria is objected to merely as an
enemy of mirth. People do die from the consequences of the
disease, but they are usually the very young or the very old
. . . and I am not sure that this is a disadvantage in an over-
populated country, at least Poyami does not consider it a dis-
advantage. But if you live, you should feel you are alive, and
the fever makes )roll feel you are dead (I am quoting him). Ifi
a nutshell, that attitude is the reason for the aboriginal's co-
operation once 11e is convinced of the efficacy of the work.
Fortunately, the results speak so eloquently for themselves that
no other propaganda is required.
What of the future? Speaking with Poyami's ignorance but
not his intelligence, I think the next ten or twelve years will
bring new problems and it would be as well to prepare for
them from now. Mosquitoes will acquire a resistance to the
' insecticides being used (in fact, the last one that bit me injected
DDT, not malaria) atld we will have to invent new ones or
else supplement the present methods of malaria control with
anti-larval work. I am told that it will take more than ten
years for mosquitoes to gain such resistance. This may be t n ~ e
of American and European mosquitoes who are civilized, but
I doubt if it will be true of our aboriginal mosquitoes; they are
I altogether mbre adaptable, more (fitted for survival under
adverse conditions, and more intelligent, when it comes to
dealing with exterminators. Poyami told me a story t o illus-
trate this, a story for which he vouches. In his village, the
mosquitoes have discovered that sitting on a DDT sprayed
wall means death. A mosquito bit his wife while he was watch-
ing. Instead of landing on the nearest wall when it had finished,
it flew out, returned with a thin blade of grass, put the grass
on top of the door, and sat on it. Believe it or not.
As the incidence of malaria is reduced, the resistance which
the local population has acquired to it will also go down.
Children who have been brought up in a controlled area will
be particularly susceptible to the disease if they go to a place
where there are no control measures in force. The answer is
"
to extend these measures to the whole country, but I do not
knbw whether the financial position will permit. I hope it
will; but if it does, we will still have to face the greatest danger
of all. Once malaria has been reduced to a negligible level, the
 The Tribals 97
people grow careless. They stop taking the elementary precau- ,
tions, they stop cooperation with the antimalaria sqnads. On
the administrative side, we who are always on the lookout for
means of economy, begin to ask the doctors why the scope of
the work cannot be reduced now that the Anopheles has been
practically eradicated. I have asked this question myself. And
I was foolish enough to argue about the answer, which was
that even if twenty malaria carriers are left alive, all the houses J
will still have to be sprayed, if they are not to find sanctuaries.
I did not argue about Poyami's answer. He said, "If you
leave gaps in the line of beaters, do you think the tiger will
not break ,back?" I t is a pity that Poyami will not be avail-
able at all the places where this question is bound to be asked
in the future.

Ours is one of the few remaining clubs in India where people ,

come to meet each other rather than to play'bridgc. One of the
reasons for this may be Rao, a thin and sardonic member, who
has a n enviable talent for making a story live. Rao speaking:

I first got into this story when some cultivators of Singhan-

pur came to me with the request that I should shoot a wild
bdffalo that g a s ruining their crops. I had no intention of
shooting the buffalo but I was touring in the same direction,
so I promised t o look into the matter. A fortnight later I
reached Singhanpur and they took me into the fields to see for
myself what the buffalo had done. It was tragic, from the
point of view of a small aboriginal community, growing only
one crop of rice. Buffalo do poach in fiel'ds during the crop
season, but this fellow had behaved with malicious fore-
thought; he had not only eaten, he had rolled and trampled on
what he could not eat. The fields looked as if a herd of
' elephants had been let loose in them. The leader of the village
(the Majhi) said: "Our rice is gone. If we can get a crop of
'
kztlthi, we will be able'to live. But the buffalo will not permit,
.he will Gome again when the kullhi a in ear."
I t was early September and there were still tail-end showers
from the monsoon so I did not relish what I had to do, which
 98
- A Tale Told by an Idiot

' was to stalk the fields at night and put a charge of salt, loaded
in a 12 bore cartridge, into the buffalo. However, it had to be
done. Short of killing, this salt trick is the only thing that will
discourage a crop raider, and it's not very safe either. I went
out that night and put a load of salt into his rump, after which
2 the buffalo and I both ran like hbll-fortunately in opposite
directions. I returned to bed with a smug feeling of satis-
faction.
The buffalo was back again the next night, and this time
he not only ravaged the fields, he broke into the bani-the vege-
table patch-of an outlying cultivator, and ruined that. They
came to me in the morning with the news, an' "I told you so"
expression on their faces. The Majhi said "It's no good, you'll
have to kill him. Or let us die of starvation." This latter was a
bit of an exaggeration, but not much. The population of
Singhanpur is forty and there are hardly forty acres under culti-
vation. I set out with them, carrying my 12 bore loaded with
salt, and-just in case-my 465 as well. We picked up the tracks
from the badi and followed into fairly dense scrub jungle. My
friend Sudran saw him first and pointed and we all froze. He
was standing broadside on, half screened by a clump of bushes,
a t a range of hardly thifty yards. It would have been easy to
put a charge of salt into his rump, but not so easy to escape
the inevitable consequences; there was a ditch behind and we
couldn't have crossed it before he got t o us. While I weighed
up the situation, an idiotic Muria a few yards on my left, ges-
tured at the buffalo, thinking I had not seen him, and said
.
urgently, "There he is . . shoot!" The buffalo headed for him.
I dropped the 12 bore and grabbed my 465 from my gun-
bearer, who hadn't moved an inch from his position one pace
behind and to the right of me. You know old Madkami. I fired,
trying to break the spine, and hit six inches to the rear of
the shoulder blade, just below the backbone. The buffalo
pecked, then swung round and made off before I could give
him the left barrel.
We followed after a decent interval and although we saw
him twice in the next eight miles, he never charged, neither did
he give me a shot. That's the first time in my life I've bumped
into a wounded buff that would not show fight. Another thing
that struck me as peculiar was the fact that the Murias showed
The Tribals 99
,
absolutely no fear, a;d if there's anything they're scared of, it's
wild buffalo. When we stopped in the evening for a rest, I
remarked on this, and they told me a story that would have
been fantastic outside our jungles.
Bogami Hirma was-and for all I know, still is-the witch .,
doctor of the Sonabal pnrgana, and a redoubtable character by
any standards. Remember the fuss there was a couple of years
ago about someone raising the dead for his own purposes? Well,
he was at the bottom of the whole thing, although we couldn't
prove it. He woke up one morning to find a buffalo had damag-
ed his urid. That didnot worry him unduly, but the young men
of the village made jokes amongst themselves at his expense;
they said "Yah, make the dead work for you! And you work
for the animals." It hurt his vanity. And to niake bad matters
worse the buffalo visited his fields again. Bogami disappeared
for a few days. When he returned to the village he brought with
him a strange assortment of articles, and a t midnight he made
the puja of the Three Names. That's one of the rituals I have
never been able to attend; in fact the Murias won't talk about
it, the Names are unutterable, even during the ceremony. It's
a risky sort ofpuja. Apparently, if it goes wrong the man who's
doing it dies. Like Poyami Masa of Eramner whom we found
dead in a field-he had been making the puja of the Three
Names, only something went wrong. But Bogami was luckier.
He completed the ritual without mishap and he cursed the
buffalo with the curses of the Xames; one for each name. "You
will always damage crops, and yet you will always be hungry.
Men will always injure you and yet you will not be able to in-
jure them. No weapon shall kill you and yet you'will kill your-
self." Then, for good measure, he put the Protection of the
Tortoise about his fields, and went home to sleep, the old
scoundrel! Three days later the buff showed up in Singhanpur.
Me, I have a n open mind about these things. Don't laugh,
I know 1 make sacrifices to tribal gods but that's a simple cow-
tesy, and it usually pays off. Did I ever tell you about Kanka-
lin and-the man-eating tiger I shot at Kolar? Oh, all right 1'11
finish this story first. The buffalo made life miserable for the
people of Singhanpur, and they in turn were not squeamish
about his feelings. Before they came to me, they had already
put a couple of arrows into him, and tried various other
 100 A Tale Told by an Idiot
methods of discouragement. They couldn't kill him, and, on the
other hand, he refused the most tempting opportunities to kill
' them. Then they came to me and I couldn't kill him either. So
obviously he was a dev bhains, a bewitched buffalo, or, per-
.
haps . . a buffalo god?
Wt tried to come up with him for two days and failed. I
went about my usual duties after assuring the villagers that
the buffalo was either dead or effectively discouraged. And
everyone was happy-until the kulfhi crop came in ear. The
buffalo came with it, and as it was a smaller crop than the rice,
he had almost completed its ruin before the Murias could get
to me. I went s t once, and this time I went to kill. Sudran met
me as I arrived at the village. He was' not optimistic. ''It is a
dev bhains. The curses of the Three Names are on it, and what
are your bullets before the Three Names?" Nevertheless I '
. waited for the buffalo in a field that night, and he was good
enough not fo keep me waiting long. It couldn't have been
later than eight when he arrived. I took a slow and careful
'
shot at his neck with the 465, using a solid bullet. The moon
was nearly full and I did not need a torch, the night-sight
showed up clearly. The flash of the explosion blinded me for a
. second. When my eyes recovered, there was no buffalo. I lay
awake that night, wonderjng . . . .Yes, you.can laugh, but I'm
* not a bad shot and the 465 is ndt a bad rifle. (Rao is probably
one of the best shots in India.)
We went back to the field in the morning sad the tracks
showed that the shot had been a hit, and a hit in the neck a t
that. The height of the bloodstains on bushes was conclusive
proof. I won't bore you with a description of the follow-up. It
..
was long . and as fruitless as the first time. The Murias
went with a.reckless disregard for safety, and I caught the in-
fection after a while. I think they had begun to believe in the
curses of the Three Names, and the second curse was our safe-
guard. Anyway, the buffalo did not ambush us. We pushed
through the tall grass without even the hope that sustains one
in the fatigues of shikar. When we circled back to the village,
late in the evening, we wece very tired.
A peculiar thing about the buffalo's grazing, whether in
fields o r in the nala beds where the tender grass grows, was
that it never seemed to be serious. I mean, he picked a mouth-
 &

The Tribn is 101

ful here and a mouthful there, and never enough to fill his,
stomach. We noticed thc same thing when we were following
his tracks... casual browsing all the time. That night we dis-
cussed the whole affair at length, a sort of shooting post-mor-
tem, and again Sudran summed it up. "We have seen the first of
the three curses operating, and the second. He starves himself,
and he cannot harm us. I t remains only to wait for the third
curse now. Put away your rifle." I left Singhanpur with a curi-
ous feeling of frustration, a feeling that was not due only to
..
our failure. Sorry, I'm not expressing myself very well . it
was a feeling that the whole episode had already been arrnn-
ged, we were merely wasting our time in trying to rewrite the
play. It would work out as it had been intended to work out,
whatever we might do.
Singhanpur was pretty well ruined, but they did not starve
-not quite. Fortunately a new road was being built and they
. a
found work on it, and afterwar s the, Malegaon coupe was
4
auctioned, and they .found employment there also. In the
meantime I happened to meet ~ o e a m i ,the witch-doctor, and
I asked him about the buffalo. He blustered a bit at first but
I soon cut him down to size, and then he admitted that he
had put the curses of the-Three Names on the buffalo. Whe'n
I suggested that he recall them he nearly dropped: "You t o
say such a thing!" he said, reproachfully. "You know 2s well
a s I do that once the Three Names have been invoked. a curse
c a n only be recalled by taking it on oneself." Well, i saw no
harm in that, no one would really miss old Bogami, but I
could hardly expect him to agree with me. And he didn't.
This year we have had no winter rains, and a lot of tanks
and wells have dried up. People have to go two o r three
miles for water. The Singhanpur Murias had t o go to Chi-
pawand, a mere two miles; and would not have been seriously
inconvenienced, by their standards, if it had not been for
one thing. The buffalo took up h i s residence in a patch. of *
jungle on the route to water and the patch could not be
avoided because it wa$ the only practicable route over a hilly
portion of the way. There were precipices on either side. The
women tried to avoid the buffalo by keeping to the midd!e of
the jungle'strip, but he kept to the middle too. Then they
tried to avoid him by sticking to the edges and he took to the
 I 02 A Tale Told by 'nn Zdior
edges as well. Worst of all, he chased them every time he saw
them, and although they believed in the curse, they ran just
the same, which meant the loss of the precious water, and
another trip. H e never actually caught anyone. The drought
increased, and with it the nuisance value of the buffalo, until
a t last Sudran came t o me for help. "If this goes q n any
longer" he said indignantly, "the men will have t o fetch
water!"'So I went back t o Singhanpur and resumed the quest. ,
We spent two days and a considerable amount of energy ,
in looking for the buffalo. H e seemed t o have disappeared. I
was hopeful that he had shifted his quarters, but Sudran
disillusioned me. "He knows you have come, and every time
you have come he has been hurt. He's lying low. Give him a
rest tomorrow. Then follow the women and see what you will
s'ee." I took his 'advice, not because I believed him but be-
cause I was tired and needed a rest anyway.
The women giggled as they set off for water in the
morning, with me trailing along behind. They made rude re-
' marks too. "At your age! Does your wife know you're
chasing us in this shameless fashion? You should stay at
home with my mother!" I pretended t o be deaf, and the
remarks ceased of their own accord as soon as we reached
the buffalo area. They were walking along the edge of one of
the two escarpments which bounded the strip of jungle, five
women in all-and myself a hundred yards in the rear. The
buffalo came out with the quite incredible silence with which
they move when attacking. . . and he came from behind the last
.
woman. I cursed myself for a fool. . . I was in balk, it was
impossible t o shoot without hitting one of the women. They
screamed and the pots went flying helter-skelter as they
scattered and ran. And then, suddenly, the women had disap-
peared, but the buffalo kept on his course, straight for the
precipice. I was so flabbergasted, I didn't even fire. H e kept
right on. H e went over the edge without the slightest hesita-
tion, like a diver. There was a rumbling crash down below
and a few rocks bounded from spur t o spur.
When we climbed u p t o him from the valley (there $as n o
way down from where we were) the buffalo was dead. H e was
a very old animal, with only one tooth left in his head, which
may explain his restrained grazing. I t may also explain &batlast
 The Tribals 103

purposeful charge to his death. But when we examined him

we found that my first bullet had broken his back, and the
second-the one 1fired in the moonlight-had passed through t
both carotid arteries of the neck. And I have never known *
465 bullets fail to kill when placed like that. . .
When Rao finished his story, our doctor exploded. He's a
nice chap, our doctor, but he does not know the ways of the
jungle. "It's absurd! You must have been mistaken about the
placing of the bullets. The buffalo couldn't possibly have
survived if he had been hit as you describe. O r do you expect
us to believe this business of the Three Names? Damn it, can
you believe it yourself?" Rao finished rolling a cigarette, and
lit it before he replied. "Can I believe it myself?" he said.
"Can I believe it myself?" he repeated. "I wonder. . . ." And
there it rests.
*
JNTHE WORLD OF THE ADIVASIS I
(Broadcast from A.I.R. in 1974)

I
The human conscience is an elastic thing, fortunately for most J
of us. If it were not, we non-adivasis would have a permanent
guilt complex. Look at the facts. First we took their land and
pushed them into the hills and forests. Then we pushed them
out of the hills and forests because we discovered valuable
mi-ncrals there. All in the name of progress, of development,
of the national interest. But it was only after Independence
that we discovered there was such a thing as a national con-
I
science, we began to feel that perhaps we had not been very
fair to the adivasi, we embodied safeguards for him in the Con-
stitution and made special provision for his advancement. For
the last twenty-five years we have been lecturing him and
uplifting him, and the politician as well as that peculiar animal, 4
the social worker, have been assuring him, somewhat offen-
sively I think, that he is their brother. Well, listeners, I have
good news for you. In spite of all our efforts, the advasi J
remains a better man than you or I.
In Madhya Pradesh as a whole, he comprises 20.63 per cent
of the population and the main concentrations are in Jhabuz.
Bastar, Surguja, Mandla, Raigarh, Shahdol, Khargone, Seoni,
 104 A Tale Told by an Idiot
and Sidhi districts. The main tribes are the Gonds-there are
at least fifteen sub-clans-and the Bhils. Two qualities are
' common t o all the adivasis, a sense of humour and a sense of
detachment. I think it is these qualities that have enabled them
to survive the worst we could do to them, particularly our
attempts at uplift. They stand back and listen politely while
we describe the sterling.qualities of m a n as laid down in the
4 Shasfms, in the intervals df selling them adulterated sugar and
cheating them out of their timber. The humour of it occurs to
them. Their very detachment enables them t o perceive that our
crookedness is a part of our way of life, and not something
. for which we should be blamed. For, as a Muria friend put it,
"The hyena has stripes too, but you can't expect him t o be-
have like a tiger, can you?" No resentment, no blame. Let me
tell you some more.
The time is 3 p.m., the place is the Baiga Chak in Mandla
district, the month is May and it is damnably hot. The occa-
sion is a man-eating tiger. Doma Baiga, with whom I shot my
first bison more than thirty years ago, is speaking, or rather,
whispering. "There-beyond the karonda-is a patch of wet
sand. That is where he is, I can smell him." So could I, in
spite of the smell of Doma and of myself. We-or rather
Doma, I was only his assistant in the matter of tracking-had
been following this tiger for six days now, sleeping wherever
we were when the dusk came. And there had been no time for
baths. I breathed "Stones?" He shook his head, "There is no
way out for him, except towards us. And he knows we are
here, he is afraid, that is why we can smell him."-I thought-
the smell of fear, he must be able to smell us too! We Were
halfway down the bank of a steep nala, crouched behind a
~ o c k The
. karonda was fifty yards ahead of us, and behind its
shelter, the tiger. Doma gave himself a little shake, as if he
had made up his mind. "There is only one way. I'H go down
and walk towards him, keeping towards the opposite bank, he
will come for me. Your aim is good." He was over fifty, his
sole weapon was the little Baiga axe, and he was going to invite
a charge from the tiger. I said, "No, I can't do it, what if I
miss?" He looked at me, and there was, I swear, a little
twinkle in his eye. "Then you will get another chance when he
' pulls me down. He has taken many of my people. There is no
- -
 The Tribals 105
other way." Before I could stop him he had moved soundlessly
' down the nala. Five seconds, ten seconds, then a coughing
roar, and a blur of reddish yellow burst from the karonda.
Doma swung up his axe and shouted, and there was so-ething
of the tiger's roar in the shout. For a fraction of a second the
tiger checked, the heavy rifle kicked hard against my shoul-
der, then I was wiping the sweat from my palms and it was
all over. I wondered if I would d o for my people, any people,
what Doma had just done for his. I stopped wondering, I
knew I would not. There is a sense of identity, one for all, all Jlr
for one, among the adivasis, which I have not found in the
so-called civilized races.
Identification with one's community to the extent of being
willing to die for it requires a degree of detachment from one's
self which is hard to. achieve. But the adivasi has achieved it.
His attitude towards-I'm sorry, I can't think of a better
word-Dharma, underlines the fact. T o him, there are two,
clearly separated, kinds of wrong. There is the wrong action
that affects only the individual o r individuals, and there is the ,
wrong act that affects the whole community. The first type of '
wrong action entails consequences only t o the doer. You com-
mit a murder-well, you'll pay for it one way o r another, and
that,'s the end of the matter. But you commit the unforgivable
sin of marrying a girl whois within the prohibited degrees of
kindred-that's an entirely different matter, what you. have
done is paalo, taboo, you have committed a crime against the
community. The punishment, as recently as twenty years ago,
used to be burial alive. Now it is complete and utter ostracism d
for the man and his entire family. His hut is cerenlonially
burned, he is forbidden to enter the village, the Majhi or clan
head tells him solemnly "Now you are dead, now you have
no clan, go and do not return." It is a curious fact that men
who have been outcast for such an offence seldom live more *
.than a few months longer.
The consequences of this complete identification with the
clan are not always tragic. There was a boy in a Gond family
near Muki, which is jn Balaghat district. He was subject to
epileptic fits, and in one of them he had a vision of what he v
called the Unknown God. This god was invisible and formless,
but he had very clear ideas about what people should do. and
 - -
A Tale Told by an ~ d i o t
his orders t o the boy were definite and precise. Unfortunately
they were not always sensible, but the whole clan took them
seriously. Once I found a disconsolate group of women clus-
tered outside the village-the Unknown God had decreed that
n o pregnant woman should remain in the abadi, which was
hard on the women because it was raining heavily. Another
time the pigs attracted his attention. N o pig should have any
hair on the ridge of its backbone. That was another sight I
'
saw. The whole village was chasing recalcitrant pigs, all of
whom were vociferously reluctant to be plucked. But the pro-
blem sorted itself out with adivasi commonsense in the end.
d My epileptic friend died irr his sleep, and no one including the
energetic ~hanednrten miles away had any reason t o suspect
that it was other than a natural death. An epileptic lives, o r
dies, perhaps a little earlier than necessary-what difference
does it make? The important thing is that the clan should live..
The Unknown God died as other gods have died. The
ndivasi lives, as I hope-without much hope-that we shall
live. Because he has faith in himself, becabse he .is real enough
t o live. Like the time I had an entirely teetotal V.I.P. inflict
himself on my district. He had a pain in his stomach, or it
may have been a cancer, a pain in the stomach is too low for
a V.1.F'. So his son-in-law and his daughter-or it might have
been the other way around-deputized for him at a tribal fes-
t i w l in a tehsil headquarters. There was dancing, and if you
think there was no drinking, you are more stupid than you
need be. It was suggested that I should join the adivasis, and
a V.I.P's daughter's-or son's-wish is a command. I did,
and I flatter myself that my performance was at least not be-
low par. I was complimented in somewhat invidious terms-
to think that these innocent people can dance all right, with-
out being tired, and without liquor. . . and you too! As it
turned out "me too" was not the source of trouble, it was the
r sulphi. The sago palm, if tapped-and the adivasis are not so
foolish as t o leave it untapped-yields a colourless fluid which
is rather like neera, but less sickeningly sweet. It also behaves
like neera, only more so. If allowed to ferment for a few
hours it turns into a very potent kind of champagne, aerated,
sparkling, faintly acid and totally seducing. The dancers-and
I-were drinking the more potent-stuff, but we'had a few pots
The Tribals 107
of the unfermented juice for guests. Tragically, however, thc
pots had got mixed up and .now our distinguished guests got
the wrong pot. It had imnlediate and foreseeable results. N o '
longer amazed a t my ability t o dznce so long and so vigoro-
usly, they did likewise, but without any noticeable muscular
coordination. After my G o n d friends had picked them u p once
o r twice, they-the Gonds-ticked me olT for having warned
them t o behave with circumspection. "Why did you tell us t o
be careful, these are nice people, just like you!" .lust like me
indeed. It took thret Aspros apiece t o get them on their feet
the next morning.
Identification, detachment, and a sense of humour-that is '
our adivasi. As human values g o what more could one want?
And yet apparently, we do. We want lip service t o the prin-
ciples we profess but d o not practise, we want conformity, we
want the acceptance of our patronage. I d o not think we will
ever get it from the adivasi, and if we do, it will be the worse
for him. T o my mind, true culture is the ability t o respect and ,
understand values other than our own. The adirasi has this
quality. Have we?
 VI. THE BEGINNING OF THE END

I was in Bastar for nearly six years, from 1949 to 1955, and
the imprint it left on my mind can be summed up in this
. extract from a radio interview broadcast by AIR shortly after
my retirement:

Q. When did you attain the maximum happiness and job

satisfaction in your service career?
A. When I was Deputy Commissioner, Bastar, in 1949
It through 1954. At that time the Deputy Commissioner
Bastar was unique, like Pooh Bah in the opera, a little
bit of everything. In addition to the normal powers of
a deputy commissioner, that is, collector, h e also
exercised the powers of a conservator of forests, of a
civil judge, of an income tax appellate authority, the
administrative powers of the chief engineer, P.W.D.,
and any other powers he chose to assume. As a result,
he could really get things done. For example, if I
wanted to build an irrigation tank, once it was techni-
cally approved, I myself gave the administrative sanc-
tion and no brilliant young officer in the state capital
had the opportunity to beat his brains out on the pro-
posal. Much of the examination of any proposal really
consists of picking holes in it, not because therc are
any holes, but because the officer making the examiha-
tion has to justify his existence. I ought to know, I
have done the same thing myself. But in Bastar this
didn't happen, and in consequence ideas actually took
 n4rBeginning of the End 109. ,
concrete shape on the ground. That sort of thing gives
tremendous satisfaction.

I had gladly waived my chances. of promotion in order to

remain in Bastar. After all, Freddie Mills had served thirty ,
years in the Naga Hills! But my wife fell seriously ill and a
stage arrived when the doctors doubted their ability to save
her with the limited facilities that existed. In those days,
- reaching the rail-head from the district headquarters meant a
road journey of a hundred and eighty m i l e ~ ~ a nthe d road
was not good, her movement by car was prohibited. In my
trouble I did something I have never done before o r since-I
telephoned the Chief Minister, Pandit Ravi Shankar Shukla, J
and asked for help. I explained what had happened and re-
quested that the State plane be sent for my wife; adding that
I would pay whatever amount was fixed-by Government, if I
b a s permitted to do so by instalments as ready cash was
almost nonexistent with me. He cut me short brusquely.
"We'll think about the payment afterwards. How long does
it take for the plane to reach Jagdalpur?"
"About an hour and a half."
"Have your wife rzady at the airstrip in two hours;" He
rang off. When I took my wife on a stretcher with the Civil
Surgeon to the airstrip the plant was circling to land. As soon
as it was down, Mone, the Finance Secretary stepped out,
looking rather bewildered.
"What is this irnportailt financial matter which the Chief r
Ministcr wants me to discuss with you?"
I had served under Mone in Raipur district and took the
liberty of saying "Sir, we can discuss financial matters later,
my wife is dying and I would be most grateful if you could
take her back to Nagpur at once."
My wife was taken immediateiy to Nagpur. She was received
a t the aerodrome by Pandit Shukla and a galaxy of doctors V
and moved immediaiely to the Medical College Hospital. I
could not leave Bastar at the time, but he looked after her as
if she had been his own daughter, and she is alive today V
because of him.
Shortly afterwards, I was transferred to Nagpur as Member,
Board of Revenue, and in 1956, when the states were reorga-
110 A Tale Told by nn Idiot

nized, I was posted as Commissioner, Jabalpur. Thereafter I

served as a commissioner until1 1961. This chapter deals with
the years 1956 to 1961, when I had the opportunity to watch
the Government moving, like God, in its mysterious way,
from neither too close (the Secretariat) nor too far (the
Board of Revenue). Massive changes were taking place and
perhaps it would be useful for future generations to have a
worm's eye view of them, as objective as 1 can make it.
We were brought up in the Micawber tradition of econo-
mics to believe that public administration must live within its
means, o r at least. its foreseeable means, count your paise and
the rupees will look after themselves. We now learned that
public administration was founded on the public debt, the
bigger the better. Finding money for a project was no longer
a problem; if the money was spent, it would be found. The
viability of the project, and ihe benefits it would confer on the
people were also irrelevant. What was required was a show-
piece, rather like an old fashioned cinema, all stucco and sin-
gle brick walls. A new phrase dominated our work, "financial
targets." What you achieved was of no importance, it was what
you spent that mattered, and how quickly you could spend
it. One example-pickup weirs across non-pereqnial rivers or
nalas. I must have been infected by the prevailing atmosphere
of "hurry u p quickly" instead of the festina lente (hurry up
slowly) in which I had been trained, because I took to the
idea with enthusiasm. The theory is simple and attra-t'we.
Throw a permanent weir across the stream, thereby creating
a mile o r two of dead storage, and irrigate the upstream
reaches on both sides by using pumps. The average cost was
a mere twenty thousand rupees. Unfortunately, there were
two snags. Twenty thousand rupees is within the technical
powers of relatively junior engineers, and the relatively junior
engineers usually built the weir in the wrong place, with_ the
result that the stream wiped it contemptuously out of the way
in the first monsoon. The other snag was that the stream
would not cooperate. When it could not breach the weir, it
bypassed it by creating a new channel. If people had not been
so kind t o me, the dozens of unsuccessful weirs with which
I littered Jabalpur division would have been collectively
known as Noronha's folly, using a more robust Hindi word
The Beginning of the End 7 111
for folly. Everyone realized they were a flop but to my sur;
prise the idea caught on in other divisions after I had dropped
it, because the damn things were a showpiece, because they
could be built quickly, and most of all because they enabled
minor irrigation funds to be spent instead of lapsing. No
painstaking survey was necessary, no expert masons, no
laborious trial borings. You built it, a minister performed the
inauguration, and by the time it was washed away, everyone
had forgotten it. I would not like to give the impression that
a . pickup weir is, per' se, a. losing proposition-it is not. But
in the hilly country of this state, the construction, of, one re-
quires a degree of technical excellence which cannot be found g
at the level of the person who usually builds it. At least one
of my weirs was eminently successful. We spent less than
twenty thousand rupees and even today it gives two waterings
to the rice in nearly four thousand acres, just after the n;on-
sooh. The principal architect was Kashi Prasad Pande, a
cultivator, and later the Speaker of the Madhya Pradesh
Vidhan Sabha (Legislative Assembly) for many years. He over-
ruled all my junior engineers.
My father psed to say that you cannot permit a rat hole in

i
a dam unless you are prepared to lose the dam. Any relaxation
of the Micawber principle in public finance leads to a general
relaxation of financial proprieties which in turn leads to a
slackening of moral inhibitions, to mass dishonesty and cor-
ruption. And lo! The rat hole has breached the dam. Let us (
forget pickup weirs for the moment and have a look at major
projects. They were rushed through a t a speed that made any
critical examination impossible. The area to be irrigated was J
maximized in order to reduce the cost per acre of command,
the life of the project was exaggerated, no attempt was made
to ensure a regular flow of funds for each year of construction,
and expenditure was controlled only by inability to spend
more. The call was for speed, speed, and more speed-and for v
showpieces. No one bothered about the actual cost of irrigat-
' ing the land which came under command. Later, when it was
r discovered that the cost was far more than the irrigation char-
ges in force, it was decided to levy an improvement charge,
payable in instalments, and based on an estimate of the
amount by which the land that came under irrigation had
 112 A Tale Told by an Idiot
increased in value. Needless to say. in most cases this was'
never levied, and where levied, public agitation led to its with-
drawal. In 1973-the year is only important because my cal-
culations were based on it-I told the Planning Commission
f
that the actual recurring cost of irrigation per acre from any
new project was Rs 210. This included interest on capital and
maintenance, but'rnade no provision for recoupment of capital
expenditure. It was inconceivable that any cultivator, parti-
cularly a small cultivator, could afford anything like this
amount. His limit was an average of about thirty rupees per
acre, which left us with a recurring loss of Rs 180 per acre
per year. On paper, that is. Money never sticks to a cultiva-
tor's fingers. If he makes an additional five hundred rupees
per acre per year as the result of irrigation-a conservative
estimate-most o f it is spent, and that is where Government
gets its rake-off. Cloth, liquor, precious metals, iron, i bicycle,
a transistor radio-everything is taxed. Over and above the
tax on the articles purchased is the income tax on the profit
made by the shopkeeper who sold them. And finally there is
the invisible return to the State, the wealth generated by what
has been spept, the additional eloth and cycles and transistors
ihat will be produced as a consequence of the increased de-
mand-all taxable. I calculate that in the long run the additional
five hundred the cultivator gets, means an equal amount to the
Government by way of taxes, direct and indirect. More than
enough to make u p the initial loss incurred. In many of the
princely states, which it is now the fashion to decry, no sepa-
rate charge was made for irrigation, although a littleextra
land revenue was recovered on irrigated land; perhaps the
princes had a better understanding of basic economics than we
have. All-this I told the Planning Commission, and I suggested
that 'our approach to irrigation should be based on the'long-
term benefits to the country and to the Government and not
\
. on the idea of a pound of flesh. But nothing happened. The
wishful thinking continued, the paper command area, the
notional improvemen? levies, the determined bluffing of self.
This sort of thing i s dishonest and dishonesty breeds disho-
nesty at other levels. The administrator o r engineer who Iied
about costs and benefits w2s very soon lying about more im-
mediately profitable things. And thus began the mental ap-
 The Beginning of the End 113
proach t o corruption, which was later to become a way of life.
The rat hole breached the dam.
Those were the days of the Bhakra Dam, the showpiece of
India. I11 fact, the claims made on behalf of it would have been
t r u e if divided by three-the area irrigated, the power gene-
rated, the life expectancy. W e a r e only beginning t o discover
this now!
During this period the decay of the Congress also began the
beginnidg of the end, a s 1940 was the end of !he beginning of
their rise. There were two causes for the decline, and it is an
'
irony of fate that one o f them was the same cause that had
alienated the rural areas from the British. I have described in
t h e first chapter how t h e British stood by and watched the
village intermediaries who were their most loyal supporters,
drowning in their debts, during the decade preceding 1938.
T h e Congress now did something even more foolish. They abo-
* lished the new intermediaries who had stood by them so J
staunchly a n d who had borne with stoical courage the worst
t h a t the Raj could inflict during the '42 movement. In
Madhya Pradesh, a t least, there was no earthly reason t o d o
so. Land tenures had been safeguarded t o the point where
the malguzar could not dispossess anyone without the concur-
rence of the state. O u t of every hundred rupees of income
collected from the village, the Government and the local
body, the janpad, appropriated ninety-seven, leaving him
with three a s his remuneration for looking after the village
a n d its common land. His power was circumscribed'by law
a n d by a n efficient revenue administration. If there were any
cases of oppression by the landlord (the tnalguzar) they were
t h e exception rather than the rule. On the positive side, the
malguzar provided in his person a Government representative
of status at the village level, a man in whom the villagers had
confidence, to whom they could turn in time of calamity o r
distress with the certainty that he would d o His best for them,
if only because his own interests required him t o d o so. Many
villages had valuable forest which he safeguarded bzcause the
income from then1 accrued t o him. If the crops failed, it was he
who took loans and provided employment, his granary was
opened for the hungry on credit. I have often felt that there
is a commur~icationsgap between the urban rulers of India 4
 114 A Tale Told by an Idiot
and the rural ruled. Perhaps the decision to abolish the village
intermediary sprang from this gap, in the mistaken belief
that it would be popular. No minister who had spent six
months in an interior village would ever have taken it. The
consequences that followed were disastrous for the country as
well as the Congress.
y, The village teak forests disappeared overnight, crores of
rupees of teak melting in the flames of a srupid greed, rather
like the destruction of Byzantine art when the Crusaders saw
their first mural. Some of the timber was sold, much of it was
burned and the thin soil on which it grew, was brought under
cultivation for a couple of years, after which it refused to
v produce even grass. The sole custodian of Government pro-
perty at village level was now the patwari, and it may be
assumed that he did not trouble himself unduly about the
destruction that was going on all round him. Even worse than
the destruction of the forest was the anarchic manner in which
the common land was encroached upon and brought under
cultivation by those who had the strength to hold what they
grabbed-at the cost of the smaller cultivator, who lost his
grazing. Residential sites in the abadi were similarly usurped
with the result that in later years the Government had to
spend large amounts on acquiring new sites for the homeless.
So much for the loss to the state. But that was not the o111y
loss. Tlie British had alienated the old proprietors by aban-
doning them in their distress. The Congress made bitter
enemies of the new proprietors by virtually liquidating them
through the abolition of proprietory rights. Between theni, the
old ex-proprietors and the new ex-proprietors, constituted the
most influential part of rural India. It was they who moulded
village opinion, it was they who controlled the vote. The
Congress had made many promises to the old proprietors,
including a half promise to restore the rights which they had
lost when their villages were sold. None of these promises was
kept. When people saw that even the new proprietors had been
liquidated, the credibility of the Congress reached an all-time
low. Thus the two most influential sections of rural pubiic
opinion (the old and the new ex-proprietors) joined in a
common, but as yet passive, hostility to the Congress. In many
respects the wheel had come full circie, and we were back in
The Begint1irig of the End 115
the atmosphere of the late thirties and early forties, an atmos-
phere of armed neutrality, with the people who mattered
hostile or indifferent to the administration. Curiously enough,
the political parties in opposition to the Congress made no
effort to exploit the situation. Then, as now, there were few
ideological differences between them; the dixerences were
essentially on the question of who should exercise power.
Still more curious was the Congress method of dealing with
the situation. They knew perfectly well that they had lost the
backbone of their organization in the rural areas, with the
liquidation of the ma'guzar. Nevertheless, they made no seri-
ous effort to build up a r alternative. Instead, they began t o
lean more and more on the Government servant; on the
pntlcvari and revenue inspector, on the police constable and the
sub-inspector. Gradually, but not so gradually as to be im-
perceptible, the Congress machine diiintegrated and they were 4
left with the shell of what had once been the most powerful
political organization in the country. No party permits the
withering away of its political machine in this manner unless
it is convinced that it is going to rule for ever; and overween- J
ing self confidence of this kind is not wise.
The worst consequence of using the administration as a
political tool was the erosion of discipline and the quick fall
in efficiency. If a Government servant relies on politics for
advancement, he would be foolish to waste his energy on work; I
and Government servants are generally not foolish. The pat-
wari realised that his M.L.A. could save him from transfer,
could speak to a minister and get him promoted, could even
get his punishment set aside by appealing to the state govern-
ment. He ceased t o waste time on the land records or the in-
structions of the tehsildar. Once, on a duck shoot, the ruler of
an Indian state witnessed a superb right-and-left by his A.D.C.
He cried delightedly "Teen katal maaf" (three murders for-
4
given). The doing of a favour to a politician brought with it
comparable rewards. Circular orders prohibiting approach to
a politician by Government servants were issued regularly, but
the first person to connive at their breach was usually a mini-
ster, and nothing could be done to him. Some of the political
interference was comical, if you have my kind of a sense of J
humour: There was the case of a patwari in one of the districts
 116 A Tale Told by an Idiot
of my division, whose transfer was ordered to be cancelled by
a minister-nothing in writing, of course. The Collector con-
cerned brought the matter to my notice, and I wrote officially
to him, without any reference to the minister's orders, direct-
ing the transfer of the patwari for reasons that were stated in
the letter. I endorsed a copy of the letter to the minister, and
nothing further happened for the time being. Later it trans-
pired that the patwari was a kind of double agent, pretending
to work for the minister but actually in the pay of an opposi-
tion group. When the minister came to know of this he was
full of praise for my intuition, as he called it, and I accepted
the compliment gracefully. I did not think it necessary to
mention that I had been quite ignorant about the patwari's
deviousness. Nor that most of the crooked government ser-
vants were doing exactly the same thing, as a method of keep-
ing their options open.
The main function of a government is to maintain law and
order, and them aintenance of law and order inevitably entails
the use of force on occasion. The Criminal Procedure Ccde
has devoted much thought to the subject, the do's and don'ts
have become crystalized, but no two situations are exactly
alike, and things do go wrong sometimes. A situation is allow-
ed to get out of control, o r excessive force is used, o r an error
of judgement is made. The Police Manual provides for a mag-
isterial enquiry to be held into every case of police firing, and
it is always open to the Government to order an administrative
enquiry into any case of a serious nature. One would think
that these safeguards against human weakness are adequate,
but the public began to lose faith in them. There were two
reasons; a camaraderie amongst the Services which led the
' enquiry officer to whitewash as much aa he could; and a tend-
ency on the part of the public to hold the Government res-
ponsible for the lapses of an individualofficer, which in turn
made the Government reluctant to hold any officer guilty. The
demand now was for .a judicial enquiry, for which, strictly
speaking, there is no specific provision in law. The Criminal
Procedure Code provides for a magisterial inquest, and the
Commissions of Enquiry Act provides for an enquiry into any
matter of public importance. Such an enquiry may, but need
not necessarily, be held by a member of the judiciary. What
fhe Beginning of the End 117

the public wanted was an enquiry by a judge, and the Gov-

ernment, no longer leading but being pushed, turned to the
Commissions of Enquiry Act for relief, with a judge, prefer-
ably a High Court judge, to preside. As soon as such an
enquiry was ordered, there was an immediate pola~izntion o f .
views, all the officials on one side and the self-styled leaders
on the other. The major casualty was truth. There is a story
that in a certain judicial enquiry, the presiding judge grew
tired of living on a diet of lies, and decided that he would ,
himself select independent witnesses at random and examine
them. He accordingly had the first passer-by intercepted and
brought into court to. give evidence. The man $.+isa Muslim
and the enquiry was about a communal riot. His evidence:
"I was in the Masjid saying my prayers when I heard the
Hindus shouting war cries. I thought they were coming to
assault us, so I ran out of the building. As soon as I got out-
side, a Hindu hit me on the head with a lathi, and I fell un-
conscious. That is all I know."
The next passer-by was a Hindu, and his evidence .was as
follows:
"I was doing my puja in the temple, when L heard the
Muslims shouting Allah ho Akbar-(victory to God). I realized
they were coming to attack us, so I tried to escape. As soon
as I got out of the temple, a Muslim hit me on the-head with
a lathi and I became unconscious. That is all I know."
The judgedecided he wouldlike to have the benefit of neutral
opinion, and ordered a Christian to be brought in. He said:
"I was having a drink or two in the liquor shop, when 1
heard the Hindus yelling har har mahadeo from one side,
and ihe Muslims shouting Allah ho Akbar from the other."
The judge pricked up his ears. Here was something like the
truth at last. The witness continued:
"I came out to see what all the commotion was about. 1
will conceal nothing from your Lordship, I was a little under
the weather, and at first I could not make out what was
happening. Just then a free-for-all broke out and I was in the
middle of it. A Muslim gave me a terrible blow on the head,
a Hindu followed suit, and last of all a policeman poked me
in the stomach with a lathi. That last did the trick. In an
instant I was coldsober and ran home as fast as I could..That
 118 A Tale Told by an Idiot
is all I know."
There are no independent 'witnesses in a judicial enquiry.
Perhaps that is why no judicial enquiry has yet resulted in
serious punishment to anyone.
In the pre-1956158 era, every report of a serious incident
was analyzed by 'the Inspector General of Police, and, if it
was important enough, by the Home Secretary and the Chief
Secretary as well. Conclusions were quietly reached and
J defects corrected. If a lapse was found it was dealt with, but
there was no fanfare of trumpets to herald the action taken.
The truth came out, shyly perhaps, for truth is a naked wo-
J man in the paintings, nevertheless it came out, and that is the
.main thing. There was no conspiracy of defence because all
concerned knew that justice would be done. It was the public
insistence on finding scapegoats that drove justice and govern-
mental objectivity underground. More important, it led to a
tragic fall in the efficiency of administration. No one wanted
to face a judicial enquiry with libellous cross examinations

' that were protected by the law. Every situation was handled
"tactfully," which is to say it was not handled a t all. Things
were allowed to take their own course, the main objective
being to avoid the use of force a t all costs. It was like allow-
ing a disease to enter a critical stage, at which time the me-
dicine required is inevitably much more potent than what
would have been needed a t an earlier stage. "Tactful"
handling usually ended in firing, with panic-stricken police-
men shooting wildly in the belief that they were saving their
lives. Then-the judicial enquiry and subsequent white-
washing, or at least masterly inactivity on the report of the
enquiry.
This is where you came in. No punishment to those a t
fault, and ultimately the maintenance of law and order in the
' manner to which we have now become accustomed. In other
words, not a t all. The maintenance of law and order is like
the riding of a horse. Once you let it get out bf control, i t
bolts, and recovery of control is a difficult process. Unfortu-
nately, the tendency now was to let the horse have its own
way in what was euphemistically called "the little things"
' -eve-teasing, the beating u p of a harmless hotel-keeper who
asked for his dues, a pitched battle between two opposing
The Beginning.of the End 119
groups on the street. I saw to it that in my division at least
we never lost control of the little things, with the result that
we never had any big things to ct~ntrol.I acquired a reputa-
tion for being "rigid," whatever that may mean, but neither
I nor any of the Collectors of my division had to face a
judicial enquiry. o n the whole, I think the people were happy
with us'. Nine men out of ten are decent, law-abiding citizens,
withoat, unfortunately, the courage to prevent others from 6
breaking the law, or the independence to refrain from joining
them when mass hysteria takes over.
1 did, however, have one experience which could easily
have turned into personal tragedy. My daughter-the one
who had insisted on bringing her pet rooster from Khamgaon q v
-was now a first year science student in the Government
college at Jabalpur. Natural eloquence, and perhaps a
modicum of natural ability, had made her the acknowledged
leader of all the most troublesome girls in the college, the
ones who spearheaded agitations but were tolerated because
they also won prizes. A riot had occurred at a cinema and
some of the boys who took part in it were arrested and pro-
secuted. The students, with the logic that is peculiar to
students, insisted that the cinema authorities had originally
been a t fault, and therefore, whatever may have happened
subsequently, no prosecution would be allowed to take place.
The girls, led by my daughter, enthusiastically supported this
non sequiter, there were meetings and speeches galore and the
situation escalated until a showdown seemed to be inevitable.
The students were adamant that there would be no trial. I
decided that to give in to this preposterous demahd would be
to surrender law and order to the mob and was equally firm
that the trial would take place. All through these develop-
ments neither my daughter nor I discussed the matter at any
time. The eve of the trial came. I directed the Collector to
post two companies of armed police, in addition to the ordi-
nary police, for the protection of the court, and ordered in
writing that the trial should not be allowed to be disrupted
in any circumstances, even if this necessitated firing. There
was no secret about these orders. Nor about the fact that it
was my daughter who would lead-tlie students to the court.
Nor about the likely consequences to her of firing if it took
* 120 A Tale Told by an Idiot
place.
That night, the night before the trial, I was understandably
depressed. My daughter came into the drawing room where 1
was trying to console myself with Bismillah Khan and s a t on
the carpet beside my chair. She said, without preamble, "I
want to hear your version of the case, not from the news-
papers, from you." She has always been very close t o me and
there was,no hesitation about my response. I told her briefly
that the rights'and wrongs of the riot were immaterial, what
was important was' the demand that there should be no trial,
4 a demand that amounted to a cllim of being above the law. I
said, "Ours is'an infant democracy. Once you allow any one
or any group to claim freedom from the legal process-good-
bye to the rule of law, goodbye to democracy. That is why I
have considered the matter important enough to risk my life
for."
"Your life?" There was a tinge of irony in her tone.
"My life. You don't imagine I'll continue t o live if you get
killed?"
She sounded thoughtful, "But your life o r mine are not im-
portant, it's this rule of law thing that matters. I am begin- ,,
ning to see. Cheer up Daddy, there's always a silver lining if
you look hard enough!"
The next day there was no march t o the court, there was no
demonstration, there was n o attempt t o disturb the proceed-
ings, and the t ~ i a lproceeded tamely enough, an anti-climax
t o tension that had once bordered on hysteria. I heard later
-not from my daughter-what had happened. She went t o
college in the morning and all the girls clustered around her
at once for instructions. She broke the mews to them like a
bomb shell-"I'm not going to lead any march." Befor?, they
could recover from the shock she went into an inlpassioned
defcnce of the rule of law, of democracy and, for all I know,
of wqman's right to think for herself. Sheep. That is what
people mostly are. The girls went to class, the boys made a
half-hearted attempt to stop them and got an dven stronger
dose of the rule of law medicine. The lectures were not LIP to
the mark because no teacher had come prepared, in fact
several teachers had not come a t all. I gave full credit to my
daughter in the oflicial report to the Government and showed
 The Beginning-of [he End 121 '
it to her before despatch. Her only comment was, "You don't
think the Principal will let me off the terminal examination
if you show him this?" I did not.
While 1 am on the subject of law and order, I might as well
set down something that thirty-five years of experience has ,
taught me. You cannot maintain law and order if you have
mental reservations about your own safety, your career, the V
degree of force that may have to be used, or the possibility.of
a judicial enquiry, any more than you can hit a drive in
tennis if you doubt your ability to d o so. That is why the
politician and many officials fail to maintain law and order.
I h e y are always in two minds about the end a n d the means
and the consequences, quite unnecessarily so, because the
issues and the procedure are both clear. You are elected o r 9

. paid to maintain law and order. The law lays down how you
shall go about the job. That is all there is to it. But the poli-
ticians-and some officials'-mind does not work as simply a s
that. During the AICC session at Raipur in 1960 a crowd of
about twenty thousand rather volatile aboriginals insisted o n
marching to the Congress panda1 to ventilate their grievances.
1 was then the Commissioner. It was quite clear that they
would have to be stopped en route and I directed accordingly.
An order under Section 144 of the Cr.P.C. was passed by the.
District Magistrate prohibiting processions, etc., in the neigh-
bourhood of thepandal and a strong cordon was thrown around
t:t prohibited area. My orders were that the adivasis must
be stopped if they tried to pass into this area. Having made
all the arrangemenls, I reported what I had done to the then
Chief Minister, D r Katju, who happened to be with Pandit
Nehru a t the time. I emphasized that the adivasi crowd would
be stopped at the perimeter of the prohibited area at all costs.
D r Katju was startled. "What, even firing?" I said, "Even
firing. It will cost fewer lives than if these people got into the
pandal-all of them have axes." I added, rather wickedly,
"Unless I am given orders to deal with the situation in some
other way:" D r Katju was shocked. "But, b u t . . . ."
Panditji cut him short-"Law and order is entirely's matter
for the executive to deal with at field Icvel, you are not con-
cerned. Leave Noronha alone, a t least he's clear in his own
mind."
 122 A Tole Told by an Idiot'
The District Maglstrate and the Superintendent of Police
were put in charge of the police cordon and I went into the
crowd where the D.I.G., Prakash Rai, a very good friend of
mine, had already preceded me. I took no police but left
categorical instructions that the crowd had to be stopped
, at the predetermined point and if firing was necessary no one
was to be deterred by the fact that the D.I.G. and Com-
4 missioner were in the crowd. At that time Rustamji (later
Director General of the B.S.F.) was in charge of Panditji's
security and he fortunately was and is one of my most inti-
mate friends. I asked him t o keep an eye on the arrangements
and to ensure that my orders were carried out. Rustamji was
too good an oficer to need explanations; the situation was as
clear to him as it was to me. For his ear only, I added "If
there's serious trouble when we're in the crowd, I and
Prakash will try to get through it to the other side, it will be
impossible to return." He nodded. I followed Prakash into
fhe crowd, found their leaders after much difficulty, and w n -
vinced them that the crowd would not reach the pandal. Then
I played my trump card, "You want to talk to Panditji-
O.K.,I'll bring him to your camp in the afternoon if you give
u p the idea of going to the pnndal." As soon as I said that,
I knew I had won. they^ could not resist the lure of having
Panditji's darshan all to themselves, and in half an hour or SO
they returned to their camp. I trotted-back to report to D r
Katju and everyone heaved a sigh of relief. Panditji kept my
word;. after lunch he visited the tribal camp and hi$ only
4 guards were Rustamji and myself. The adivasis went mad,
prostrating themselves and touching his feet, and for a change,
Panditji, who hated servility, refrained from losing his tem-
per. Everything passed off beautifully, although Rustamji
said afterwards that throughout Panditji's visit to the camp
4 I was fidgeting with my armpit as if I had ringworm. I had
not, but I was wearing a long barrelled .38 in an armpit
holster!
For the record, I may add that I have never actually had
to open fire and I have dealt with my fair share of tricky
situations. In 99.9 percent of cases where firing has taken
4 place it is precisely because the authorities in charge of t b
situation tried desperately to avoid firing, thereby permitting
The Beginning of the End 123
the situation to escalate until a nervoui policeman let off his
rifle in the belief that he was saving his life. And then of
course everyone with a rifle followed suit. Under the British,
we were worried about bungling, not firing; in independent
India and particularly in the five years I a m dealing with, we .
were worried about firing and not about bungling. The inevi-
table result was-that there were far more shooting incidents
after Independence than in any comparable period wheh we
were the "slaves" of the British. It is not wise to let the
means overshadow the end.
At about this time, a period of "inspired" administration
was ushered in. I t worked something like this: a minister
told the Press (or a t least his tame press men) that the
Government wls going to do so-and-so. After the diqclosure, I
the Secretariat was ordered to examine the idea. If it was
unworkable the minister pleaded a t the Cabinet meeting that
he had already committed himself. If he was important
enough, the consequential legislation was pushed through,
regardless. When fhe measure failed, guess who got the blame?
Yes, you guessed it the first time-the soulless and red-tape-
bound bureaucracy. There was only one occasion when
the bureaucracy got a little of their own back-when a
measure could not be enforced because it was specifically
prohibited by another measure which the same ministry had
passed a year earlier. Even in that case the Secretariat was at
the receiving end of a rocket for not pointing out the earlier
legislation. They should have done so, of course, but there
are extenuating circumstances. When the annual output of
legislation is almost equal to the total volume of legislation
during the whole of the British period, it becomes a little
difficult t o keep track! This mania for legislating naturally
resulted in badly drafted laws; no law secretary can produce
a Bill with 247 clauses overnight unless he cuts out the think-
ing. When the laws enacted were very rightly ruled out as
ultra vires of the Constitution by the High Court, tbe Bench
had to share some of the odium formerly monopolized by the
bureaucracy. Incidentally this had one welcome effect; the
Bench ceased-or almost ceased-to make adverse remarks
about the Executive. After some experience of the laws that
were being passed, they presumably acquired a sympathetic
 understanding of the difficulties of implementation.
I have referred to the ambivalence of the services in the
second chapter. The politicians now became ambivalent in a
curious way; they did not really want their law: to be imple-
mented.Two. examples: the grain levy on cultivators and --
the land ceiling. Repeatedly, governn~entservants who tried
to implement the levy-which cannot be done without a
certain amount of arm twisting-suffered for it. And if you
want to know how the ceiling laws-were-and are being
implemented, take a quick look at the number of privately
owned medium and large tractors in the country. You cannot
operate a 35 to 50 h.p. tractor 'economically unless you have
at least fifty acres of double cropped land. The situation
reminded me (and still does) of an incident in the petrol
rationing days. The rationing officer was a realistic and
reasonably honest man. His boss's habit of sending him slips
with the directive to allow an extra ten gallons to A or B
got on his nerves in due course. One day he went to his boss
and placed a sheet of paper on his table.
"Sir, this is a list of your friends and below it is a list of
mine. If I have left out any names from your list please let
me know."
The boss (an Englishman) was amused.
"But what is all this about ?"
"Wen Sir, I thought it would save time if I prepared these
two lists so that I could look after the people in them with-
out repeated reference to o r from you."
"But what about the rest of the petrol-consuming public?"
"For thtm, justi~ewill be done."
By and large the post-Independence laws did justice to those
who were not in any list. In course of time we got used to
the new standards of implementation, but we never did get
accustomed to the peculiar political habit of strategic retreats.
A law was passed; the massive machinery for its enforcement
was set up, thereby (1hope) reducing unemployment; but if
there was sufficient opposition in the Congress Party itself, the
Government gave in to the opposition and withdrew the law, o r
watered it down to such an extent that, for all practical pur-
poses, it ceased to exist. Later on, when I was in the Secre-
tariat, I rationalized my own procedures accordingly. My
 The Beginning of the End 125

scrutiny of the legislation with which I was concerned was

reserved for the time after the Governinent had finally refused
to withdraw it. )The errors then detected could always be
corrected through amendments, which is one reason why
the amendments often outnumbered the original clauses.
D.P. Mishra, one of the most brilliant ministers under
whom 1 ever worked, used to be exasperated by these
amendments. I soothed him with a tag from Horace, Quod
non expecte ex transverso fit. (It is the unexpected that
happens.) When the Madhya Pradesh Cabinet finally approved
our latest ceiling law, I told them regretfully "It is a pity I
didn't mske at least one of my sons a lawyer This law would
have ensured thirty years of lucrative practice for him." The
Ceiling Act was of course on a par with the other legislation
in respect of quality. Although mv son will not get any profit
* out of it, all the lawyers will.
"Inspired administration" implies the absence of a well-
J
thought-out and firm policy. I t is rather like the new-rich
owner of a car .who sits in it and tells the driver to start
without mentioning any destination. The driver loses both
fear and respect; and good government demands both from
the Services. We reached a new low in sheer incompetence,
because we had neither fear of nor respect for our masters.
But they were well intentioned. They wanted :o do good to
the people, ifit did not involve unpopularity with voters or
political supporters. Hell is paved with good intentions.
But enough of the Services and the rulers. What about
the people? As ever, they were a n abiding delight, mature,
cool, slightly sardonic, the very qualities that have enabled
them t o survive four thousand years of Services and Govern-
ments. They recognized the desire of the Government to help
them, but they also recognized that this desire was linked
with the need to get their votes. Their attitude became one
of enlightened self interest-"Thank you, and some more
please." One example will suffice to illustrate. Agricultural
loans, known as taccavi, were liberally made available to the
cultivators and they borrowed well beyond their repaying
capacity. When I asked a farmer friend how he proposed to
repay the substantial amounts he had borrowed, he said to j
me with a twinkle in his eye "What repayment?'He was
126 A Tale Told by an Idiot
right. Apparently, the Government no longer expected re-
payment of the loans it gave. I t was sufficient if the borrower
voted for them and persuaded his friends to d o likewise.
Every time coercive measures were used by the revenue
o%cers,,a general stay order emanated from the Secretariat
and. the matter was closed. The inevitable result was that
huge amounts accumulated. Equally inevitably the accounts
got into an incredible mess. Today no one, including the
Accountant General, knows the extent of the Government
loans or the interest due on them. Periodically, machinery is
set up for reconciliation, but it gets nowhere. An unfortunate
consequence is that cuitivators who have paid are again
served with notices of demand and put to considerable hard-
ship, until they are saved by the next general stay order.
The people came to accept the Administration's inefficiency
a s a fact of life and to make allowances for it in everything
they did. They were mature.
This chapter teads like an indictment. It is not meant to
be one. I have tried to set down the truth as objectively as I
can, for "The truth shall make ye free."
The dscoits I am writing about really did exist and so did the
other characters. Names and place names have been changed,
but everything narrated here actually occurred in 1956. For
obvious reasons; I am not pinpointing the area where they
occurred.
There were twelve of them in all, a temporary ,coalition of
two gangs, and they walked in single file, keeping as close as
they could to the bank of the nala that was their only guide.
It was near!y full moon and there was plenty of light.
"This should be easy" said Madan Singh. He was the leader
of the more important gang, a heavily built man.of forty.
"The armed outpost will never suspect that we would take
on a job so close to them. And the villagers-well, they are
very non-violent!" He laughed silently.
The other dacoit leader was a m ~ c h ' ~ o u n man.
~er
"Yes, it should be easy" he said "but I hope there's going
to be nothing like what happened in Mahuakhera. . .."
Madan Singh laughed again, that characteristic silent
laugh of his.
"I tell you this will be a completely peaceful affair. I'm the
kindest hearted man alive, if on!y people do not irritate me."
Cbhatar Singh, the other leader, thought of the "irritation"
that had been given in Mahuakhera. A boy of twelve had
panicked and screamed, end after t h a t . . . He closed his
mind to the memory.
They arrived within a furlong of the village and the voices
of men gossiping after their evening meal floated upwind. A
128 A Tale Told by an Idiot
few kerosene lamps glimmered through chinks in walls.
Madan Singh halted and beckoned a follower from the group
behind him. A broad squat man with enormous sloping shoul-
ders answered the gesture. They talked briefly in whispers
and then thc man slipped away rowards the village.
"What have you told him to do?" asked Chhatar Singh,
remembering Mahuakhera.
"Nothing-absolutely nothing. He has merely gone to get
our informer. You should not be so disturbed. I have already
told you that this is going to be completely peaceful."
After a delay of nearly half an hour the messenger returned
-he was Ghasiya the Sonr-accompanied by another man.
He said, "There are six people worth looting in the village"
and gave details. Madan Singh looked at the clustered huts
standing out like an etching in the moonlight and thought
for a minute. Then he gave his orders.
"Two men to close the road leading to Padaria. Two men
to block the lane that opens on to the fields. The rest will
come with me to the chowk. The patel's house is there, we'll
start with him."
The dacoits looked to their weapons and moved off. The
main group, under Madan Singh and Chhatar Singh, procee-
ded to the patel's house and the Sonr, who was with them,
hammered on tha door with the butt cf his rifle. There was a
sudden frighteied silence inside the house. A quavering voice
asked "Who is it?" Madan Singh replied smoothly "This is
the police. We have received news that Madan Singh intends
to raid the village tonight and we have come to guard it."
The door opened reluctantly. Before it could be slammed
again the dacoits poured in. The parel stood frozen.
"We don't want much from you. You have a gun, we'll
take that, and its ammunition. Also you should have about
-two thousand in cash and there are twelve tolas of gold in
ornaments. You seem to be an intelligent man-we would like
to avoid hurting you if we can. Collect everything and bring
it to me. You know me I suppose-1 am Madan Singh."
The pate1 went to a loft in the corner of the room and drew
out a double-barreled gun. He spoke to the women in the
other room and the ornaments came hesitantly from ears and
noses and wrists and fingers. The money was in a hole in the
The Dacoits 129
ground and that too joined the pile at Madan Singh's.feet.
"Now the next house we have to visit is Baldeo's-Baldeo
the Kurmi. Patel, you will come with us. And you might tell
your people that you will die if there is any noise from
. ."
here. .
A woman began t o sob in stifled gulps. Theparel and the
dacoits filed out of the house with the loot.
Cultivators all over the world have an affinity for the soil
which amounts to worship. Amongst no community is this
feeling stronger than amongst the Kurmis, the traditional
cultivators, men who have made things grow for three thou-
sand years of human history. Baldeo was a Kurmi and he had
been saving ever since he could remember to buy the field
adjoining his own holding. I1e had saved the entire price
demanded by now, the whole seven hundred rupees. The sel-
ler was t o accornpany him to the Sub-Registrar's office in the
tehsil town the next day, to execute the documents. Baldeo lay
back on his gadda and savoured in anticipation the enjoy-
ment of possessing that field, that rich and level field whose
black soil was more delightful to the touch than any woman.
H e was a good-natured man. fond of his family and his
children, and he spared a thought from his new field for
them. Perhaps there would be something left over for a few
trinkets, perhaps even for a piece of cloth.
The parel's voice broke into his thoughts, coming muffled
through the door.
"Baldeo bhayya, open! I have some important news for
you-open quickly!"
Baldeo climbed t o his feet with deliberztion and padded
towards the door.
"Coming! I am coming! What is the news?"
H e was unbarring the door as he spoke and the d a c o ~ t s
brushed past him when his mouth was still open. Chhatar
Singh d o s e d the door. The parel, shamefaced, sought
obscurity behind the dacoits. It was Madan Singh who broke
the silence.
"The news is this" he said, "Madan Singh and his Sonr
are here . . .Ghasiya, whom you fools call my executioner.
You have seven hundred rupees in cash and fifteen ro!as of
gold in ornaments. Iland over the lot -and save yourself
130 A Tale Told by an Idio!

trouble-quickly now!"
The reflexes of those who till the soil are slow. To create is
always a slow process, and these are the creators, acquiring
placidness from the plants they tend. Madan Singh's words
did not register on Baldeo for some seconds. When they did,
his mind fastened on the fifteen tofas of gold, subconsciously
rejecting the reference to seven hundred rupees arid therefore
to the field.
"I don't know if there are fifteen rolas" he said, "but you
will take whatever tliere is."
Then, turning to the women who were peeping from the
inner room, he said "Give him all we have."
The women cried inaudibly as they parted with their jewels.
A little pile of dully gleaming gold grew on the cloth which the
Sonr had placed at Madan Sinph's feet. Baldeo stood silent. To
him the inevitable was not to be resisted. There was drought,
and there was the rust that killed the wheat when it was giving
most promis of fulfilment, and there were the dacoits who
came like the locusts when there was most to ravage. All these
things were inevitable. He watched, almost with indifference,
.as the ornaments cla Lered down on the cloth. When there was
no more to give, Madan Singh cast an appraising eye over the
spoils.
"Yes, that's about fifteen tolas. Now the seven hundred
.
rupees . . ."
Baldeo's face assumed the expression of impenetrable stu-
pidity that is a sure sign of falsehood amongst peasants.
"Seven hundred rupees? Where would I get seven hundred
rupees from? You have had all that we possess-now go!"
Madan Sin& gestured impatiently.
:
''You; fool . . when we have twisted a rag around your
fingers and soaked it in kerosene oil and set it on fire, you
will tell us-oh, you will tell us!"
The Sonr, who had the reputation of being the least loqua-
cious of men, surprisingly intervened.
"Wait, Maharaj. I think I can find it without his help. These
cultivators are always the same. Now. . . where is the east?"
One of the dacoits pointed out the direction. The Sonr grun-
ted "Yes, that's it. They bury their savings in the eastern cor-
ner of the main room."
 He went* the corner and found BNeaea'sguzlda spread ont
in it. -. )
''Theyare so stupid, these people. Pull that gadda ollt and
dig."
He was obt+y&l. A dacoit seized a pickaxe f r m the pire of
tools in the room, and very soon, hardly six inches below fhe
surface he found tHe pot. It was full of silver rupees. Madan
Singh said "I think you ought to give a special present to my
Sonr for saving 3 . c ~from the kerosene rag. You-wouldn't think
it to look at him, but he really is clever!"
The Sonr bridred with pleasure, like a dog that has been
pattsd. .
A dacdit emptied the pbt of rupees on to the cloth with the
rest of the ornaments and began tcr-tie it into a bundle. What
Baldeo saw, as he stood stupefied, was not a heap of rupees
aad a pile of jewellery, but a field, arich black field st~etching
before his eyes with crops growingon it. Something happened
to him then. By a curious perversion of logic his resentment
was not directed against Madan Singh but against the Sonr who
had been the immediate cause of discover~nghis hoard. He
snatched up the pickaxe and drove it deep, with a11 his consi-
derable strength, between the shoulders of the Sonr. Chhatar
Singh fired a fraction of a second too late, after the pickaxe
had done its work, but his bullet went true. Hit in the centre
of the chest, Baldeo threw up his hands and crashed full length
on the floor. Madan Singh dropped.to his knees beside the Sonr
and said "Hehp him someone, help him!"
Two dacoits eased the pickaxe gently out of the wound and
the rush of light coloured blood that followed fold its own
story. There would be no more "executions" for Ghasiya.
Madan Singh lifted his head on to his lap and the stoical eyes
flickered briefly up at him. There was nothing that anyone
could d o to help.
Chhatar Sing11 said "He is still breathing. If we can get him
quickly to a doctor perhaps he may be saved. There is no time
."
to lose, let us go
Theyplaced the wounded man as gently as they could on a
village cot and carried him out. No one remembered tht b b t
lying on the floor in the bundle. NO one remembered to fook
a t Baldeo either, which was just as well, for he was still alive.
... -

132 A Tale Told by an Tdiot

The solid '303 bullet had smacked cleanly through his body
and he recovered in due course to buy his field. But we have
done with him now and he passes out of the story.
Dacoits are more superstitious than the average villager
because their lives depend on so many chances. The men with
Madan Singh muttered amongst themselves that this was bad
luck, this was the working of evil spirits. They stumbled as
they carried their burden and were resentful of its weight but
none dared to voice his resentment because Madan Singh stalk-
ed beside them. It took over half an hour to reach the nala
from which they had watched the village, and they had to halt
there because Ghasiya began to cough, each cough spurting
blood over the !itter bearers.
"He cannot be moved further" said Madan Singh. "Two of
you go to Ronsara and fetch the doctor, bring him at all costs,
even if you have to tie him and carry him."
He was obeyed in a grimly resentful'silence. This was mad-
ness, to stop so close to the village, to send for a doctor when
Ghasiya was obviously dying. But again, none dared to voice
his thoughts.
There was an armed outpost two miles away, in charge of a
young naik. He was a keen shikari but shooting in the danger
area was strictly prohibited. He fought a losing battle against
temptation for two o r three honths, then he acquired a -22
rifle with a telescopic sight and solved the problem. The .22
was remarkably effective on bIack buck and chinkara and it
made very little noise. The villagers never discovered that he
used to go stalking at dawn, and his own men preserved a dis-
creet silence since they shared the meat. Today he was out
with his rifle as usual, at the earliest dawn, the almost false
dawn, when stars are still visible. He stalked two or three likely
places without getting a shot before he came to the rlala where
the dacoits were awaiting the return of their messengers. Be-
cause he was stalking he moved silently. Because he was stalk-
ing, he also approached under cover. He had often found a
black buck or a chinkara here, browsing its way back from the
crops. This t i h e there was no animal. His startled eyes fell on
the dacoits, hardly fifty yards away and recognition was imme-
diate. That was Madan Singh seated by the cot and the tall
man was obviously Chhatar Singh. He withdrew behind a bush
 The Dacoits 133
and thought fast. Thera was no time t o go back to his post and
bring his men. Whatever had to be done, had to be done new
and here and by him. He calculated his chances methodicaIly
and without excitement. If he succeeded in killing both Madan
Singh and Chhatar Singh he might get away with it . . . the
dacoits would certainly panic and run. He eased the safety
catch off very gently and rose silently behind the bush, onto
one knee. The cross hairs of the 'scope centred on the angle of
Madan Singh's head, just above the ear. He squeezed the
trigger.
Chhatar Singh had at Idst reached the stage of nervous im-
patience when his fear of Madan Singh became &condary to
the instinct of self preservation. He said, "I do not think we
should remain here any longer. Ghlsiya is almost dead and
nothing can save him. Let us leave him and move."
, Madan Singh interrupted with a snarl.
"You can move if you want to, I will remain with my friend.
You call yourself a rhakur, you coward, you swine."
He was so angry he could not pronounce the words clearly.
Again he bent over the still figure on the cot. It was at this
moment that the rifle spoke. Madan Singh fell forward across
the bed soundlessly. The dacoits, accustomed to heavier wea-
pons, could not locate or identify the thin crack of the .22.
They s t a r ~ r lat Madan Singh, even Chhatar Singh stared a t
him. The .22 spat again spitefully. Chhatar Singh dropped t o
his knees, slowly on to his face, rolled over and died. Then the
dacoits broke and ran, leaving three dead men behind. Ghasiya
too had died at the instant when Madan Singh fell across his
chest.
Baldeo the Kurmi tills his new field now. He was not in the
least annoyed when the naik got all the rewards and the praise.
The business of a farmer is to till the soil, what has ;. to do
with dacoits and killing?

T o the rest of India an essential feature, of Madhya Pradesh is

thc dacoit. Every ministry that assumes ofice promises to d o
something about the problem and vast amounts are spent on
the travelling allowance of policemen. When the ministry
 134 A Tale Told by an Idiot

quits, the problem is where it was. But then, even tk Emperor

' Jehangir, who did not have to bother about fundamental
rights and natural justice, regretted his inability to reform the
dacoits of the Chambal, in spite of mass hangings.
There is a classical Bundela story which may sbed some
light on the dacoit problem, although obliquely. I bffer it to
future ministries in the hope that it may improve their under-
standing of the matter. The son of a rhnkur was sent to the
village school and the school master paid special attention to
him but withcut noticeable results; the boy was more interested
in Sports than in studies. At last exasperated human nature
succumbed to temptation and the school master cuffed the boy
soundly. But he reckoned without his host, as the saying goes.
The boy ran t o his house and reappeared with asword. As his
intentions were sufficiently clear, the school master took t o his
heels, displaying a pretty turn of speed and shouting for help.
The rl~akurcame out of his house and appraised the situa-
tion correctly-his son was losing the race hands down. He
called out "Ho, Guruji, slow down, slow down! This is the
first time the boy has had a sword in his hand with serious
intent, don't disappoint him, don't break his heart!"
It is no fo~toitousaccident that the dacoity problem is con-
fined 10 two clearly defined areas in the state-the Chambal
valley comprising Bhind, hforena, Gwalior and Shivpuri dis-
tricts in the north, and part of Bundelkhand, consisting of
Sagar, Damoh and Chhatarpur districts in the north-east. The
two areas have nothing in common geographically o r ecbno-
mically. The Chambal valley is irrigated and rich; Bundelkhand
is arid, stony, and poor. But both areas are on the main inva-
sion route from the north to the south, the route trod by
countless lakhs of soldiers, Aryans and Scythians and Moguls,
free men and slaves, highbon princes and adventurous merce-
naries on their way to becoming princes. There were many in
these armies who were allergic to authority and discipline, who
deserted on the provocation of a chance word or a chance
blow, the psychological rebels. They settled in the arca, inter-
married with the locals, were reinforced continually by fresh
deserters from succeeding waves of in\ asion. Resistance to
authority and a quick- reckless temper were bequeathed to
them by their ancestors and reinforced by the blood of later
The Dacoits 135
collaterals until at last a new breed was stabilized,.the charac-
teristic breed of the dacoit, the hereditary rebel. It is not for J
nothing that they call :hemselves bagi or rebel.
That then is the explanation of the dacoit. It is nonsense
to blame his existence on economic conditions, for many parts
of the state are much poorer and yet free of the scourge. It is
equally nonsense to ascribe the problem to corrupt and incom-
petent administration-slow disposal of revenue cases with
bribery playing a major part in 'the decision-because the ad-
ministration in these areas is not noticeably wor'se than else-
where. The simple fact is that heredity and environment have
combined to produce a distinctive type of man, who is a law
unto himself and recognizes no other law, quick to anger and
quick to strike, slow to forget or forgive, taking pride in his
ability to survive in the midst of hostile conditions-the dacoit.
IIe is admired precisely because of these qualities, even to the
extent of welcoming an opportunity for him to sire a child in
an otherwise impeccable family. But because of these qualities
there are inherent contradictions in his character-kindness 4
and ruthless cruelty, faith and treachery, generosity and mean-
ness, heroism and cowardice. In a sense, he is not ocly a rebel
against society and the law, he is a rebel against himself.
There are three main reasons why he is a dacoit. Firstly it r
is the only way in which he can be a law unto himself.
Secondly it gives him power and the respect of others, which
no other vocation would give. Thirdly it is profitable. And
there are three main reasons why dacoity in the Chambal and
Bundelkhand areas cannot be eradicated. 1) For every dacoit
liquidated, another comes into being, 2) the respect paid to
the dacoits ensures that they are always like fish in a friendly
sea or like a guerilla amidst a friendly population, and 3) the
police prefer to take a cut in the profits rather than to kill the
goose that lays the golden eggs. So there you have it. Dacoity
is like amoebic dysentery; there is really no cure, there are
only palliatives, remedial measures that make the disease more
tolerab!e. When I first joined the Service, villagers were bul-
lied into forming defence squads which patrolled the area.
Thirty-five years later, when I retired, the same old defence
squads, slightly better armed, were still going out on the same
half-hearted patrols. The trouble is that the section vulnerable
136 A Tale Told by an Idiot
t o dacoits-the better-off people-are too scared and too weak
t o join the patrols, and the rest of the population see no rea-
son why they should risk their necks to protect the Sethji o r
the rich farmer, having themselves, nothing to lose. The only
ray of hope is the increasing fondness o f the younger genera-
tion for la dolce vita. When they are sufficiently corrupted by
the silks of civilization they will be too soft to become dacoits.
During my tenure as Commissioner, Jabalpur-1956 t o 1958
-I was ordered t o ensure that the dacoits were cut down to
size. The on)y way to do it was to participate in the operations
myselr so that senior officers of the police and revenue depart-
ments would do likewise, instead of directing from a safe rear.
More than a hundred dacoils were killed and at least double
that number arrested. The palliatives made the disease bear-
able and most of the people who had fled their villages in fear
of the dacoits, trickled back. Much later, in 1970 and 1971
a h e n I was President of the Board of Revenue in Gwalior, I
established more human relat~onsnot exactly with the dacoits,
but their families. There is excellent fishing and in winter,
some very tolerable duck-and-geese shooting in the region. I
used to wander off on Sundays with a rod o r a gun after I dis-
covered that High Court judges and members of the Board of
Revenue were safe from the gangs; the former because they
dealt with criminal appeals and revisions, and the latter be-
cause they had the final say in revenue cases involving land
disputes. That is how I came to know Madho Singh's uncle,
and Mohar Singh's nephew and Nathu Singh's brother, hos-
pitable and sporting chaps, all of them. And many others. That
is also how I gained some unofficial insight into the real reasons
for the big surrender t o Jayaprakash Narayan and the Sarvo-
daya workers.
The most intelligent of the Big Three was Madho Singh. He
had invested a very large amount in three rice nills in Bhind
district but unfortunately the police invariably mounted full-
scale anti-dacoity operations in November, December and
January, just when the milling season was a t its height and
his supervision was most needed. As a result he began to lose
heavily on his mills.
Mohar Singh,was the most dangerous and the most powerful
of the gang leaders. A total reward of about five lakhs of rupees
 The Dacorrs 137
was announced for his death o r arrest; and five lakbs is a lot of
money. H e took to slipping away from his gang and sleeping
alone in secret places at night because any member could be a
potential traitor with the weight of five lakhs dragging down
his fidelity. Then sleep woul4 not come, each rustle of a branch
became the killer's step, the bight was populated with ghosts
that whispered of death. T o make bad matters worse, he began
to have ill iuck in his encounters with the police and lost a
number of men. In a word, he reached the end of his tether.
The most human story is that of Nathu Singh. H e met a
graduate school teacher in Bina-Etawah, fell in love with her
and got married. She was in love with him too, and her cons-
tant refrain of "I don't want t o be a widow" resulted in his
ceasing all professional activity and virtually retiring from the
life of a dacoit. Rut she harped on the idea of surrender be-
, cause surrender would ensure his life .. ..
That is the background. The rest is well-known, Madho @
Sing'n's meeting with J.P., the convincing of Mohar Singh and
Nathu Singh, and finally the mass surrenders, not only in the
Chambal valley but in Bundelkhand as well. A movement of
this kind snowballs, like mass satyagraha. When the big names
surrender they ensure that all the existing dacoits d o likewise;
they have no intention of leaving their relations and friends
t o the tender mercies of lesser fry. And the future? I quote
Madho Singh's uncle, "Now the patwari will become the Col-
lector" by which he meant that the retirement of the big names
had left the field open for all the new entrants. I f he is right,
J.P's remedy may t u r n . 0 ~ 1t o be worse than the disease.
VIII. "AYARAM, GAYARAM"

I returned to the Secretariat in 1961 after a lapse of twelve

years, in the capacity of Additional Chief Secretary. The Boss
(H.S.Kamath) was now the Chief Secretary and, as I might
have expected, he kept my head well u p t o the bit. There was
a lot of work t o be done in connection with the integration of
the services of the four states that had merged in 1956-the
former Madhya Pradesh, MadhyaBharat, Vindhya Pradeshand
Bhopal. Towards the end of 1961 I went off to participate in
the takeover of Goa as: the first Chief Civil Administrator and
returned after restoring normal administration and framing the
basis for a development plan. I enjoyed working under the
Military Governor, Major General Candeth, and the whole
thing took hardly three months. He wrote me a rather nice
letter after my return:

My dear Ron,
I regret that I have not wlitten to you earlier to thank
you for the work that you have done here as Chief Civil
Administrator. I realize fully well the great responsibility
that was thrust upon you and that the amount of work that
had to be done, especially in the earlier days, was prodigious.
I have learnt a great deal through my association With
you and I hope you, in turn, enjoyed your stay here. May
I thank you for every thing you have done for me and Goar
and especially for your cooperation.
Yours sincerely,
Sd. Unni Candeth.
 Then I was back a t my real job, Services, Home Dcpart-
ment, and second in command to the Boss. When he retired
in 1963, 1 succeeded him as Chief Secretary. .Mandloi was the
Chief Minister, but shortly afterwards, D.P. Mishra took his
place. The first period of Mishraji's stewardship ended with the .
elections of 1967. I t was chiefly notable for a restoration of
the norms of law and order and a rcturnto the firmness of ad-
ministration which we had lost in 1957 when Pa& Ravi
Shankar Shukla died. There is n o t ~ i n gt o highlight because
there are no highlights in a n eflicie~tadministration. Then
came the General Elections of 1967 and with it the era of Aya-
ram and Gayaram.
The honest politician is one who, having been bought, stays
bought. When he ceases to remain bought and sells himself

. again, he is called a political defector. The technique of poli-

tical defection was invented by the Congress, but initially, and
in keeping with their greater political expr;i:nce, they used it
t o strengthen an existing majority, not t o convert a minority
into a majority. Accordingly, no one sat u p and took notice.
I t began with constituencies where the Congress candidate lost
t o an Independent. When this happened; it was accepted a s
proof that the Independent was fit t o be a Congressman. and
he was persuaded to become one. Then came the years of
slender majorities when party members realized the importance
of a single vote-theirs, naturally-and insisted on exercizing
a quite disproportionate influence on party policies. T o coun-
teract such people, members from the opposition were won
over and some of them rewarded with the cakes and ale of
office, which in turn set the more disciplined party members
to thinking that if a sufficient n u m k r of trum got together
they could topple the ruling group and when a new govern-
ment was formed-who knows, merit might be rewarded.
Such toppling was confined t o the party, and was done with
thk c.,vert blessings of the High Command (the Congress Y
Working Committee); tha' is to say, the new government was
st111a Congress government. The very first Congress govern-
ment i n what was then the Central rrovinces and Berar saw
an early example of this kind of power politics when Dr N.B.
Khare, the C h ~ e fMinister, tried to get rid df Rxvi Shankar
Shukla and D.P. Mishra by tendering his resignation t o the
140 A Tple Told by an Idiot
Governor. He expected that this would lead to the dissolution
of the ministry and to his being invited to form a new minis-
try, as the Congress was indisputably the majority party and
he was its leader in the Legislitture. Instead, the High Com-
mand sacked him and Pandit Ravi Shankar Shukla became
the Chief Minister. I t has always seemed to me that Dr Khare
beat Charan Singh (the first Goyamm) to the starting post in
the matter of defection-but within the party as it were. After
all, D r Khare made his move in July 1938!
After Independence the first Congress ministries in the Cen-
tre as well as the states were monolithic in their massive
power, the power of steam roller majorities; no question of
defection from the party could arise, and defection to the party
was, from the Congress view point, unnecessary. But the oppo-
sition began to grow in the sixties. The Congress majority. was
still there, only now it was a slender and uneasy majority, a
majority torn by internecine strife, t;~ecubs in the wolf pack
had grown up and were snarling at the heels of the leader,
whoever Ile might be. One would have expected the leadership
to read the writing on the wall, to close their ranksand unite.
Instead they continued to make up for the doubtful loyalty of
some of their followers by purchasing the more doubtful loyal-
ty of some of their opponents. The Congre-r strength after the
election of 1962 increased in every state by tens and twenties
within a month or two. Sometimes they started without an
overall majority, but in a matter of weeks a little robust horse
trading put them well ahead of the combined opposition.
MadHya Pradesh reflected accurately what was happening in
the whole country. After the general election of 1;57, the Cong-
ress held 232 seats in a house o i 288. They 'efrained from fur-
ther depleting the opposition strength o. 36. But in the election
of 1962 poor old Dr Katju not only lost his own seat, Cong-
ress narrowly missed a trip to the wilderness. They got less
than half the total number of seats, 141 out of 289. But the
Governor asked them to form a government. They did so
under B.A. Mandloi in May-and ,o,by July they had a com-
fortable majority, 176 out of 282 *eats then filled! For the
Congress, it was the day of the Ayarnms. Then came the gene-
ral elections of 1967. In March 1967 Congress hhd 167 se?ts
in a House of 296; God was in Bis Heaven and all was right
"Ayararn, Gayaram"
with the world except for Govind Narayan Singh (and Charan
Singh in U.P.). By November the Congress share hads lumped
to 125 and the Treasury benches were occupied by an S.V.D.
government for twenty uneasy but amusing months. It was the
day of the Gayarams. I n May 1969, Congress was back in
power-without an election. They had acquired 169 seats thro-
ugh methods which they had originally invented but which had
been considerably improved by a little borrowing of ideas from
the S.V.D. Shyama Charan Shukla became the Chief Minister
and when he was moved out by the High Command in January
1972.to make way for P.C. Sethi, he had 191 more or less
faithful Congressmen behind the Government. The Gayarams
had returned. The general election of 1972 coasted along on
an Indira wave. Congress romped home with 220 seats out of
297 but even this left them dissatisfied; by September 1974,
they had eight more Ayarams.
And here is a U.N.I. message dated 14 May 1975 from Har-
yana, the original home of the Ayaram-Gayaram clan,, "In a
dramatic move Haryana Chief Minister Bansi Lal, who is cur-
rently holidaying in Simla, today announced admission of nine
Independent legislators into the Congress, swelling the party
strength to more than three-fourths of the total membership
of the House."
Political defection is caused, at the party level, by the ruling
party's need-real or fancied to gain more support. It is ''
significant that the vast majority of defections are to and not
from the ruling party. It is they who have the cakes and ale
in their gift. When defections take place from the ruling party, v
the real motive is invariably to trade a position of insignifi-
cance for one of power. That kind of defection cannot be indi-
vidual, it has to be on a scale large enough to topple the
government, although, of course, it is always .started by an
individual. Defectors of this type are persons who have no
hope of leading a Swcessful rebellion u ~ i t h ~the
n party; to be
successful they must join hands with an opposition party; in
order to defeat the leader of their party, they have to defeat
the party itself. Now let us return to Madhya Pradesh in Octo-
ber 1967.
D.P. Mishra was thechief Minister, a man I would bracket ,
with the Sardar in quality of leadership. He had been second
 142: A Tale Told by an Idiot
in c o m m d ~ e R a v iShankar Shukla, then there was a dis-
agreement with Jawaharlal and suddenly he quit the Cong-
ress. H e returned after twelve years in the wilderness, found
favour with Indirs Gandhi-some said he was later her chief
adviserin the strategy she f6llowed when Kamraj was "kam-
rajedW-and won the leadership of the party by a decisive
majority. He stood like a colossus in the ranks of state leader- ..
ship, possibly. national leadership, and there was no cloud in
his sky except a little cloud,no bigger thab a man's hand, as the
saying goes, certainly-not a cloud that presaged storms. Its
name was Chvind Narain Singh, the Son of Capt. Avdhesh
Pratap Singh who had created the Congress organization in
Rewa, the biggest princely state of Vindhya Pradcsh. Govind
Narain Singh was a born-and-brought-up Congressman; he
probabfy teethed on the Harijan and must have been weaned
o c Mahrrfmaji's post-prayer discourses. In later years father
and son went to jail togethet during the '42 movement. H e
was a hereditary Congressman, a Congressman by religion as
it were.. Given a million guesses, I would never have picked
him as the man to upset the Congress applecart. He played a
1eadiag.rak in D.P. Mishra's return to power, mobilizing the
Madhya Bharat and Vindhya Pradesh vote for him, and joined
the Councik of Ministers in the first. period of Mishraji's Chief
Ministership. Then things began to go sour. He was, as the
Emperor Jehangir said of India, "a high spirited horse that
needs a good rider." A good rider does not resent high spiri-
tedness in a horse (or a man) but Mishraji misread the high
spiritedness for incipient revolt and reacted accordingly. If the
roles had been reversed and Govind Narain Singh had been
in his place, a frank talk with a few unliterary~ords-inter-
spersed would have cleared the air once and for all. But
Mishraji was not Govind Narain Singh. Secret enquiries were
made on a variety of charges and they were secret only i n
name. Any person of normal sensitiveness would have resented
the action taken, particularly if he was a minister. Ultimately,
when Mishraji came back for his second term in 1967, Govind
Narain Singh was dropped from the Council of Miniskrs. He
bided his time, a hunter waiting for the tiger to come to a kill.
J Incidentally, he happens to be a shikari of note.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. If Mishraji did not
scorn the Rajmata of Gwalior, at least his pryedures justified
her belief that he did so. The Congress candidates for the 1967
election from the former Gwalior state were selected without
consulting her and even her suggestion for a discussion on
the subject was brusquely rejected. Considering that the only
chance for Congress candidates to win in that area was throttgh
the support of the House of Scindia, her suggestion was not
unreasonable. But the candidates werc selected on the advice
of Gautam Sharma, a minister from Gwalior and a sworn
enemy of the Rajmata. The situation was so full of tension
that something had to break. The Rajmata's patience did; she
resigned from the Congress, set up her own candidates in the
whole Gwalior area and made a clean sweep at the 1967 polls. J
Every single one of her candidates was elected and most of the
Congress candidates including Gautam Sharma lost their de- '
posits.
Mishraji's stand was that feudaiism could never be defeated
in alliance with the former rulers who, by definition, repre-
sented feudalism. He may have been right; but in Vindhya
Pradesh he went out of his way to get the support of the for-
mer ruler of Rewa and that was about the only reason why
Congress won. In Gwalior they ended up without a single seat.
As a penalty bonus they acquired fifty-five dedicated opponents
all belonging body and soul to the Rajmata, and constituting
a phalanx that could be thrown into battle at her sirtgle corn-,
mand. Even at this stage a rapprochement collld have Seen
arranged because the Kajmata was not personally interested in
State politics. She had also won a Lok Sabha seat and the indi-
cations were that she would sit in Parliament, resigning her
membership of state assembly. Gautam Sharma saw to it that
this did not happen. Mishraji was persuaded to make a sarcas-
tic statement inviting-or challenging-her to take the seat she
had won in the Assembly. That burnt all the bridges. She resig-
ned her ,Parliament seat and took her place in the Vidhan
Sabha.
Napoleon once said that a good military machine is not
alone enough to ensure victory. Also needed are time, place .r
and opportunity. Govind Narain Singh now had the first two
and he was patieht enough to wait for the third. Mishraji
handed it to him on a platter. He provided Madhya Pradesh
 144 A Tale Told by an Idiot
with a clean, firm and dynamic administration which involved
a drastic cut in the influence of the M.L.As. You can't have
a clean, firm and dynamic administration if government ser-
vants do the bidding of the politicians and not justice, except
when the bidding of the politicians happens to coincide with
justice. The people were happy; but then the people do not
make or unmake governments, they only make M.L.As ill($
it is the M.L.As who do the rest. The peoples mandate runs
for a couple of months, until the electiors are over; thereafter
the M.L.As take charge and continue for five years. With luck,
that is. Mishraji irritated the M.L.As and the ministers (or
most of them) and the waiting list of aspirants for both offices,
on two main counts; because he was right and he knew it; and
because they were wrong and he took pains to let them know
*! it. Being right and letting people know they are wrong; I can-
not think of a more effective prescription for trouble.
Mishraji became Chief Minister in March 1967. By July the
undercurrent of hostility towards him had zssumed the dimen-
sions of a Gulf Stream. He was aware of it. But he sat back
defiantly and dared the snarling cubs to do their worst. Even
when life-long Congressmen like D r Rai resigned he took no
steps to win them back although the merest sign of a concilia-
tory gesture would have sufficed. Wiser now in retrospect, I
think he wanted to teach the party a lesson; that indiscipline
does not pay. He knew that his opponents had no chance of
displacing him from the leadership of the CLP and he had
already made up his mind what to do if defection to the
opposition toppled his government; he would ask for the dis-
solution of the Legislature and for fresh elections. The Law
Ministry had advised Indira Gandhi that this was possible even
if the demand for dissolution was from a Chief Minister who
had lost his majority. She made at least two widely publicized
statementsjust before the debacle, hinting broadly at dissolu-
tion if the M.P. Government fell. The second and last of these
statements came exactly twenty-four hours before the actual
mass defection. Secure in the knowledge of her support,
Mishraji adopted a policy of masterly inactivity.
Govind Narain Singh did not. At about this time his father
died and the last obstacle to his openly. fighting the Congress
vanished. Father and son were very close to each other. If
 Kaptan Sahib, as Avdhesh Pratap Singh was fondly known, bad
lived, I am quite sure Govind Narain Singh would have been
irresistably restrained from leaving the.Congress, let alone
fighting it. But he died. Govind Narain Singh returned from
the funeral, lost and embittered. To a friend he remarked,
"I haverjust returned from my father's kriya karrn (obsequies);
now I must set about those of Uncle (D.P. Mishra)." He threw
himself into the battle with inexhaustible energy and determi-
nation. Throughout the blazing summer and the soaking mon-
soon he raced the length and breadth of Madhya Pradesh,
personally contacting every disgruntled M.L.A., selling his
plan for revolt to them and to the R'ajmata, to the Jana Sangh
and to the Socialist Party (they had seven seats!) to everyone,
however insignificant, who might possibly join in the fight
against Mishraji. Mishraji knew; but he played bridge in
Pachmarhi and thought about administrative mattels. Gra-
dually Govind Narain Singh welded his dissonant team into-
' well, not a homogeneous body, but at least a mob heading in
the same general direction. Once I hinted at the situation to
Mishraji. He smiled, "I listen to your advice on administrative
matters; leave the politics to me!" and I was content to do so.
The Vidhan Sabha convened soon after the rains to pass the
Budget, as we had taken only a Vote on A c c ~ u n timmediately
after the elections. Rumours were persistent about mass defec-
tion and the impending fall of the Government and then I
suddenly got information that D-day was tomorrow and that
the Deputy Speaker, Narbada Prasad Shrivastava, would be
one of the defectors. I passed on the information to Mishraji;
he disbelieved the latter part but was persuaded to ensure that
the Speaker (K.P.Pande) and not Shrivastava would be in the
Chair on the morrow. The question hour passed off with un-
accustomed ease because the opposition was eager to proceed
to the showdown'. Then events moved with lightning speed.
Govind Narain Singh and twenty-nine others. got up and
crossed the floor. The defectors includcd Narbada Prasad
Shrivastava, and Dharampal Singh Gupta, the Chief Whip of
the Congress Legislature Party. Mishraji immediately sent a
slip to the Speaker asking for the House to be adjourned until
the next day. If Shrivastava had been in the Chair as origi-
nally planned, the request would have been disallowed, but
 146 A Tale Told by anrdio!
Pande rightly granted it. There was pandemonium for a while.
At last the House adjourned. Then came hectic consultations
with Belhi and with party members. Ultimately the Governor
was asked t o adjourn the House sine die and, soinewhat to my
surprise, ha did so. The referee was o n the side. of the champ,
as he usually is. Years later, in sirnilar circumrtancts, a
governor sacked a perfectly legitimate government (non-
Congress) in Bengal for not convening .the House in~mediately
to tes: its niajority. The fact that the House was to meet in a
week's time according t o the existing programme cut no ice
with him. Here, however, we got our adjournment without
difficulty.
Govind Narain Singh whisked tiis Ga).arams off t o Delhi,
at the Rajmata's expense, to keep them safe, but he might a s
well have saved himself the trouble. Mishraji would have
nothing t o d o with them. He did try to win over the Socialists
and the splinter groups in the Opposition who were supporting
Govind Narain Singh but they would have nothing to d o with
him. Ultimately the House was summoned. One day before it
met the Prime Minister again hinted at dissolution and
Mishraji was confident that it would come. H e asked Iny
opinion and I said that a chief minister who h a d aiready lost
his majority, was to all intents and purposes n o longer a chief
* minister and could not therefore avail himself of the constitu-
tional provision under which he could ask for fresh elections;
that was the privilege o f the chief minister with a majority.
He did not agree with me. Neither did the Law Secretary.
The night before the House met Mishraji belatedly decided
t o contact the defectors. As soon as Govind Narain Singh
came t o know opthis he shepherded his flock t o the residence
of the Speaker and sought his protection, alleging that efforts
were being made to kidnap his supporters. Hc wanted to spend
the night o n the Speaker's lawn and was permitted to d o so
with his followers. They slept peacefully while he lode herd
over them, equipped with a lovely little 275 Righy. But n o one
tested its accuracy by making an attempt to kidnap any of his
charges.
The next day the House met. The Education grant was put
to the vote and the ~ o v c r n m e n lost.
t The Speaker adjourned
for twenty-four hours and Mishraji got o n the phone
"Ayaram, Gayaram" 147
to Kamraj. Once, twice, thrice. We wondered what was
happening and found out at last that there had been a com-
plete v o l t e f ~ c eat Delhi. Now they directed Mishraji to resign.
Bitter and disillusioned, he did so at midnight. Of all the dirty *
tricks a party can perpetrate on one of its leaders, this was the
dirtiest. If they had given him the least inkling that there would
be no dissolution he would have played Govind Narain Singh's
own game and, I am quite sure, beaten him at it. As Punjab
and Haryana proved, a defector .is like a drop of mercury,
running with the tilt of the container. Govind Narain Singh's
men were no exception to the rule. But the attitude of the ~ i ~ h '
Command had convinced Mishraji that dhey were bent on
making an example of defectors and he played along with them
loyally. T o this day I am not sure why the High Command
changed its attitude but I suspect that at about this time they
were trying to do to Charan Singh in U.P. what Charan Singh
had already done to them, and U.P. was more important than
Madhya Pradesh. Or a principle.
In parenthesis, and for the benefit of chief ministers afflic-
ted with Gayarams, it may be noted that the Centre has now
finally accepted the view I had propounded to Mishraji, namely
that a dissolution can only be demanded before the I i a d e r of
the House has lost his majority. Once his government has
bten out-voted he has no rights or powers greater than those
of an individual legislator. I have not, however, known of any
chief minister admitting even to himself thatihe has lost his
majority, until his government is actually defeated-in spite
of Mjshraji's experience.
Govirld Narain Singh called his coalitiori the Snmyukta
Yidhayak Dal, literally, the United Legislature Parry or S.V.D.
for short. They did not wait for M~shraji's resignation. As
soon as the Government had been'defeated they and 1111 the
opposition parties (the Jana Sangh, the Rajmata's group. the
Socialists) went in procession on foot to Raj Bhnvan, prcsum-
ably so that heads could be counted, and demanded that they
be invited to form a government. The invitation came the next
day, giving plenty of time for the entire adrninistrativc machi-
nery t o wonder what would happen to them. They had seen
chicf ministers change but never the government. It was
rat5er like the Viet Cong taking over from Thieu or the Indian
 148 A Tale Told by an Idiot
, government taking over from the Portuguese in Goa. The
Secretariat corridors Were full until1 I came out and emptied
4 them with a few well-chosen words. For myself, I was too busy
to worry; and in any case I never worry about things which
are outside my control.
The Rajmata refused to lead the new government o r even
to join it. Instead, a Coordination Committee of the constitu-
ent parties was formed, over which she presided, a kind of
super government, with limitations. I t could not, for obvious
reasons, be in day to day touch with the administration,and
in the end it came to occupy much the same position as the AIL
India Congress Committee v i s - h i s the Congress Government
of India. Its main utility lay in ironing out differences-and
there were many-between the various parties in the S.V.D.
The government itself was a motley crew. ranging from men
of undoubted ability like Govind Narain Singh and Saklecha
(the Jana Sangh leader) at one end, to a minister whose charge
for ordering the transfer of a peon was ten rupees at the other.
The more stupid the minister, the greater was his nuisance
value; he had only to threaten resignation to get his own way,
for one resignation would have split the S.V.D. a t the seams.
The only two unifying influences were Goyind NarainSingh
and the Rajmata, each in a different way. Govind Narain Singh
did it through the amazing gift he had of persuasion; he could
bring almost anyone round'to his point of view if he so desired.
The Rajmata achieved the same object by agreeing to every
demand of every group and acting as the spearhead of all the
(often conflicting) demands. She could afford to do so because
her position gave her pourer without responsibility; if things
went wrong the baby was always in the Chief Minister's lap.
The Official Secrets Act made dealing with the Coordination
Committee a little complicated. Govind Narain Singh conce-
ded my request that no Government official be present at their
meetings as it would have been difficult to refuse classified in-
formation to a Committee which included the Chief Minister.
We, however, remained available offstage for consultations
with him when required, and the modus vivendi worked. What
did not work so well was the desire of the Coordination Com-
mit:ee that I should implement their decisions directly and not
on.orders from the Chief Minister. I declined to do so and
 "Ayuram, Gayaram" 149

Govind Narain Singh supported me. Then the Committe began

to dub me "Mishra's man." Again Govind Narain Singh came
to the rescue, remarking dryly that every Chief Secretary was
by definition the Chief Minister's man, so that now I was his
man. But the Coordination Committee never bid like me; and
I was quite incapable of liking them. By and large they were a
set of unprincipled a1 ~ateurs.
For that matter, the S.V.D. government was itself an
amateur government actuated mainly by the desire to be
different from the Congress government that had gone before.
Since all governments have an underlying common purpose
-to govern-and since the procedures of governing have been
finalized after centuries of trial and error, radical changes are
only possible at the cost of efficiency. In their desire for speed,
the S.V.D. took quick decisions and equally quick counter-
, decisions. For example, orders, particularly transfer orders, J
were issued and cancelled with bewildering rapidity. I sugges-
ted at a Cabinet meeting that we should ask the Centre to pro-
vide tw6 express trains for Madhya Pradesh, north to south
and east to west, both equipped with wireless. I explained
that these trains would expedite the movement of officials on
transfer.
"But why the wireless?" asked Govind Narain Singh,
amusedly.
d
"For quick transmission of cancellation orders, Sir."
D.P. Mishra had been strict about transfers which were
made only on administrative grounds, so of course the S.V.D.
had to order them freely and on no grounds, unless the recom-
mendation of a political worker is a ground. D.P. Mishra had
. abolished land revenpe on uneconomic holdings, so the
S.V.D. had to abolish it o n economic holdings as well. D.P.
Mishra had always protected the Services when they acted in
execution of their duties, s o , the S.V.D. had to suspend
an I.P.S. superintendent because he arrested some Jana
Sangh workers during a communal riot. Things would have
been much worse but,for Govind Narain Singh. He cajoled,
persuaded, threatened resignation, to salvage the bare essen-
tials of administration. If it had not been for him the S.V.D.
government would have collapsed in three months under the
weight of its own incompetence. But even he had to give in to
150 A Tale Told by an Idiot
force n~ajeltreon occasion. One of the ministers made a p:o-
posal which was, on the face of it, administratively irrproper.
Govind Narain Singh marked themfile to me for examinatio~r
and I opposed the suggestion vigorous;y. He then wrote (in
Hindi) "I entirely agree with what the Chief Secretary has
said but, for political reasons, I accept the proposal of the
Minister." And that was that.
As time passed 1 noticed a peculiar thing about Govind
Narain Singh. He had toppled a Congress government but he
was still a Congressman at heart. Some inner compulsion
made him protect Congress interests at every turn. The Jana
Sangh wanted to have Education but he fobbed them off with
Home, reasoning-correctly I think-that they could build up
a permanent following through the primary schools whereas
the police would follow them only so long as they were in
power. Again and again I saw him aligning himself with Con-
gress indirectly by elbowing out the Jana Sangh who were
their main rivals; neither the Socialists nor the defectors nor
the Rajmata group counted for much. It was as if he had kil-
led th,e thing he loved and was trying to bring it back to life.
The commllnal situation, contrary to expectations, did not
deteriorate. The Jana Sangh who were responsible for law
and order, held their followers in check, and the Muslims
realized that they would get short shrift if they started trouble.
It was as it had been in the princely states when they existed.
Everyone knew who was the top dog and the top dog knew
that he had to keep the peace. If, to the Jana Sangh, the Mus-
lims were foreigners, at least they ensured a modicum of safety
for them. But great care was taken to see that no key post in
any department went to a Muslim.
I
My own position was not an easy one, trying to prevent the
ministers from behaving as if today was their last day on earth,
the only day and the only sunshine in which to make hay.
There had been little corruption in Mishraji's regime; now the
lesser fry made corruption a way of life and Govind Narain
Singh could not stop them. All I could do was to makeita little,
a very little, more difficult. In his capacity as Chief Coordi-
nator in the ministry he ensured that all controversial-which
means money-spinning-files went to him through me, and I
ensured that he had the bencfit of an honest man's opinion.
-.
The result was that gradually I became public enemy number
one to the more venal ministers, who took care t o enlist the
Rajmata on their side. I t was I a!~dnot the Congress who con-
stituted the opposition. At one Cabinet meeting a minister
whose proposals I had opposed said, sourly, "You don't seem
anxious to continue as Chief Secretary, Noronha, o r else you
would not go on in this way."
I said, with as much respect as I could muster "Sir, my real
desire is to become a tehsildnr, but unfortunately you'll have'
t o give me the salary of the post in which I'm confirmed, a
Commissioner's pay." Again, and for the umpteenth time,
Govind Narain Singh smoothed over an awkward situation.
When the Class 111 and I v' employees of Madhya Pradesh
went on strike he asked for nly reading of thz situation. I told
him that in my experience of such affairs the greatest difficulty
was the desire of individual ministers to gain popularity by
arriving at a compromise with the strikers, a desire that inevi-
tably encouraged and prolonged the strike. Once the Govern-
ment had reached a final conclusion, the battle should be
fought out t o the bitter end with n o question sf a ~ e g o t i a t e d
peace. He said, "That's what I thought. I'm pushing off on a
shikar trip. Only you will know where I am. Send a wireless
van with me and tell me when the strike is over. You will be '
in sole charge during my absence."
And that is how it was. The strike lasted for cxactly'seven
'
days, after which it was called off unconditionally. When lie
heard the news over the radio that night he sent me a laconic
wireless. "Congratulations. Request permission t o retwn."
I served the S.V.D. for a little over a year and by that time
Govind Narain Singh and I were both getting a little tired of
them; A coalition government without a minimum common
ideology and united only in a common hatred of the Congress
is torn apart by its own compulsions. I t is not a satisfying
government t o serve o r t o lead. When, therefore, I was asked
late in 1968 t o g o to Punjab on deputation as Adviser t o the
Governor I gladly agreed. The send-03 I got from govern-
ment servants of all ranks was terrific; it surprised me, coming
$0 soon after the strike I had broken, but it surprised the
S.V.D. even more. As a farewell present Govind Narain Singh
wrote me the following letter-
152 A Tale ToId by nn Idiot
My dear Noronha,
On the eve of your deparrure for Punjab to take u p
your new assignment as Adviser to the Governor, I write
t o congratulate you on being selected for this very impor-
tant post specially in view of the critical situation which
Punjab is facing politically and as a border State. I arn
sure you will handle your new duties with the same effi-
ciency and sincerity that you have always displayed in
whatever duty was assigned t o you.
At the same time I want to thank you for the outstand-
ing work you have done during your tenure under me.
At all times I could rely on you for a frank and honest -
opinion, untainted by any political slant; and even wheni
I over-ruled you, I could still rely on you to carry out
my decision loyally, faithfully, and competently. You are
one of those very few i n the administrative services whom
1 admire and respect for their intelligence and integrity.
I am directing that a copy of this letter be placed on your
C.P.F.
With kind regards;
Yours sincerely,
Sd. G.N Singh

Virtue may not always be ~ r own

s reward but it.has compen-
IX. PUNJAB JNTERLUDE

Article 356 of the Constitution makes provision for circum-

siances in which the administration of a State cannot be carried
on by a duly elected government, as for example, when Aya-
rams and Goj~aramschange from one side to the other with so
much rapidity as to make a stable government impossible.
That is exactly what had happened in Punjab, and the Presi-
dent-in practice, the Government of India-had accordingly
issued a proclamation taking over the government of the state. .
As is usual in such cases the new government was the Gover-
nor and two Advisers, Gyan Singh Kahlon who had once been
Chief Secretary, and myself.
Lachman Singh Gill was the last Chief Minister of Punjab
pefo:e it came under President's rule in 1968 but the last real
Chief Minister was Pratap Singh Kairon, founder and builder
of the new Punjab. The men who came after him were pure
anticlimax, midgets grotesquely perched on the seventeen
hands stallion which is Punjab. Punjab ignored them and went
aliout its business, prosperity increased, and production in all
spheres, particularly the agricultural, rocketed. Unfortunately
the midgets had a free hand with administration (the people
could hardly help here) and by the time 1 arrived the services
had been ground down to btdrock. The Punjab services are
second to none in the country but a succession of ferocious
and idiotic Tipu Sultans had reduced them t o the level of a
sullen, dispirited, demoralized mob by the simple process of
hounding them until they said "yes" to everything. Not Kairon. +
He was big enough to know the value of a good sword which is
154 A Tale Told by an Idiot
a good officer.
Article 31 1 of the Constitution is supposed to be the safe-
guard of the Civil Services. Lct us have a look at it.
"(I) No person who is a member of a Civil Serviceof the
Union or an all-India Service or a Civil Service of a State or
holds a civil post under the Urlion or a State shall be dismis-
sed or removed by an authority subordinate to that by which
he was appointed.
'32) No such person 'as aforesaid shall be dismissed or
removed or reduced in rank except after an enquiry in which
he has been informed of the charges against him and given a
reasonable opportunity of being heard in respect of those
charges, and where it is proposed, after such enquiry, t o
impose on him any such penalty, until he has been given a
reasonable opportunity of making representation on the pe-
nalty proposed, but only on the basis of the evidence adduced
during such enquiry:

Provided that this clause shall not apply

(a) where a person has been dismissed or removed or
reduced ip rank on the ground of conduct which has
led to his conviction on a criminal charge; or
(b) where the authority empowered to dismiss or remove
a peison or to reduce him in rank is satisfied that for
some reason, t o be recorded by that authority in writ-
ing, it is not reasonably practicable to hold such cn-
quiry; or
(c) where the President or the Governor, as the case may
be, is satisfied that in the interest of the security of the
State it i s not expedient to hold such enquiry.

"(3) If, in respect of any such person as aforesaid, a ques-

tion arises whether it. is reasonably practicable to Iiold such
enquiry as is referred to in clause (2), the.decision thereon of
the authority empowered t o dismiss or remove such person or
to reduce him in rank shall be final."
The main criticism of Article 311 has always been that it
gives too much protection t o the corrupt and/or incompetent
Government servant. It does nothing of the sort. Surely the
right to a fair trial, which is all that clause (2) confers, is not
a barrier against justice! In rry experience the only cases where
Article 311 has been invoked by the High Court to set asids a
dismissal are cases where the disciplinary authority did not
bother to, or was too ignorant to follow; the correct proce- '
dure. The real- protection of venal Government servants has ;
invariably been the politician. My own criticism of Article 31 1,
based largely on what I saw in Punjab, is that it does not
adequately protect the honest ahd independent Government
servant. Suspension.under the service rules is not deemed to be
a punishment, isn't it? I have seen Government servants under
suspension for as long aS five years in Punjab with no charges r
as yet framed against them. During this period they were
automatically reverted from the post they were holding to a
lower post, if, as was usually the case, they were not confirmed
in the post they were holding. That meant a minimum drop in
pay, of 25 to 30 per cent. But they did not get even this lesser
amount; all they got was one-third of it; which is what the
rules allow. Try living on one-third of 75 per cent of your
salary for years on end, with a houseful to support and then
fell me that, suspension is not a punishment! In Punjab a few
long suspensions soon brought the civil service into line.
,
In parer.thesis, constitutional safeguards are no protection
if the Government is determined to act in bad faith. The Cons-
titution itself can be amended, as has happened in the case of
Article 314 which was supposed to protect the'I.C.S., and
Article 362 which dealt with the rights and privileges of lndian
Rulers; or it can be bypassed. In the case of Article 314 I
said, at the time when it was on the anvil, that a simple con-
tract, rather like the covenant executed with the Secretary of
State for Indis, and enforceable in a civil court, would have
more teeth in it than the proposed Article' 314. I said exactly
the same thing in respect of Article 362 t o one of the Eastern
States Agency rulers who was a friend of mine. But in both.
cases majority opinion preferred to rely on the faith of the
Government and on the Constitution. And look where it got
them!
Let us return t o Article 31 1 and to Punjab. Apart from sus-
pension without framing charges, men were suspended on the
most trivial charges by ministers; sadistic child-ministers pul-
ling the wings off flies. The punishment inflicted in the end was
 156 A Tale Told bj, an Idiot
a minor one; but the period of suspension could not, under the
rules, be treated as duty and the unfortunate victim got only
suspension allowance for the whole period of his suspended
animation. Article 31 1 did nothing for-him.
The worst obscenity was the deliberate framing of false
charges, then suspension, followed by a protracted enquiry
which somehow never got off the ground. Article 311 sat as a
.silent spectator.
1 No, I do not blame the serviccs for being demoralized. Those
who could pull strings, were deputed to the Centre but the vast
majority had to grin and bear their humiliation. One of the
portfolios allotted to me was Home. This covered ,the police,
and these poor devils had taken a worse beating than even the
I.A.S. As soon as I appraised the situation I made a quick tour
of all the districts and in each I said the same things. "Justice
will be done, there will be no witch hunting, and no digging up '
''
of the past. Your future depends on how you serve now, not
on what you did under Lachman Singh Gill o r anyone else.
Now get on with the job."
They got on. Within a couple of months the civil services
were again in the proud position of being amongst the best in
the country. I asked much of them and they never let me down.
It required real toughness to bounce back from a near knock-
out in this fashion; but then the Punjzbi is tough!
The bumper cotton crop in Ferozepur was attacked by in-
sects and Gyan Singh Kahlon, the other Adviser who was in
charge of agriculture, decided to go in for aerial spraying on
an extensive scale. The insecticide used was extremely poison-
ous so that it was imperative not to enter a sprayed field for
at least an hour after the spraying. Thousands of leaflets were
distributed giving the necessary instructions and, in addition,.
the Agriculture Department personnel .went from village t o
village emphasizing the precautions .that had to be taken.
Nevertheless, the canny Punjabi farmer insisted on entering
his field immediately afier the plane had finished, to see whe-
ther the insects had died. They had. So had he, in nearly forty
cases. I was on tour in Ferozepur district at the time an6 when
1 was told that a deputation of farmers wished to meet me, I ,
prepared for the worst-when people die, it is always the
Government's fault. I gave them a time and they rolled u'p in
due course. They did nct say a single word about the forty dead
men; all they wanted was more planes so that the spraying '
could be finished quicker. I promised to plead their case with
Gyan Singh.
Then came a drought and with it the typically Punjabi pas-
time of stealing water out of turn. There were a few murders
.
and I agreed to make the Punjab Armed Constabulary avail-
able to Gyan Singh for patrolling the canals. Before they set
out I took the precaution of disarming them and giving a few
instructions: If water was seen in a field'which had no right
to be irrigated at the time, the zamindar was to be interviewed
with the help of the broad police belt, which, in such circun- '
stances, is an excellent persuader. My instructions were faith-
fully, even enthusiastically, carried out, and the water thefts
stopped. A few days later Chavan, then Home Minister at the
Centre. came to Ferozepur and asked me to meet him. at the
aerodrome. I put two and two together and went, anticipating
trouble. T o my surprise he said that the Punjabis werc full of
praise for me, on the ground that I had saved the crop. He
asked, with a twinkle in his eye, what I had done to deserve
such popularity. I told him. I do not think people anywhere
else would have looked beyond the belts and given thanks for a
crop that had been saved.
There were three priorities in the Punjab of 1968 as I saw
J
the situation; to restore the morale of the services, to restore
law and order (which had reached a new low) and to ensure
the holding of fair and free elections. The Governor, D r
Pavate, agreed with' me. What is more important, he gave me
a free hand, and I went to work. Once the morale of the ser- .
vices was restored, the rest was easy. But I ran into trouble on
the eve of the elections. Hardly twelve days before they were
to begin, I received a message from L.P. Singh, the Union
Home Secretary, asking me, on behalf of the-Government of
India, to transfer the D.I.G. Jullundar as complaints had been
received that he was favouring the Akali Dal. I told L.P. that
I had made personal enquiries into the matter and that there
was no evidence whatsoever of political interference by the
D.I.G. We were very close to the elections and Juliundar
range was the most important in Punjab, containing the three
vital border districts of Amritsar, Gurd'aspur and Ferozepur.
 158 A Tale Told by an Idiot
Particular care had to be taken of polling stations on the
border, and it was imperative that the D.I.G. should know the
+
area, the people, and the police. His transfer at this stage
would be an administrative blunder of the first magnitude,
which would be interpreted-correctly-as unwarranted inter-
ference in administration merely because a few people desired
it. I then told him that I wou!d net make the transfer on my
own initiative. If-this embaras'sed anyone, 1' was prepared to
' go on leave immediately. If the Government of India wanted
the transfer they should issue a spicific order to me on their
responsibility and I would carry it out.
The Governor was kept informed throughout and he agreed
with my stand. Ultimately the transfer was not made and I
did not go on leave.
As eiection temperafures rose there were visits by V.I.Ps and
hectic canvaHsing. That was all in the day's work but I made
it clear-more than once-that neither Government resources
, nor Government machinery could. be associated with elec-
tioneering in any way. S.C. Sarkar, Editor of The Searchlight
in Bihar wrote to me enclosing a cutting of their editorial for
15 January 1969.
The editorial reads, in part:
"Correct Stand."
"Since the first genera1 election there has been persistent
demand in the country- that Ministers should not utilise the
resources of the State to carry on election propaganda for
their party. But the Congress, which was in power at the Centre -
and in the States, turned a deaf ear to this demand. When the
non-Congress parties came to power in certain States and their
Ministers aJso started utilising the governmental resources for
furthering their party campaign the subject assumed an ur-
gency and even New Delhi began to realise that the misuse of
powers was a game at which two could play. So far as the
&ople are conferned, they are equally.op~osedto Congress as
well as non-Congress Ministers misusing the resources of the
Sta:e to campaign for their party candidates in elections. The
first ever step in response to the pubfic demar~dwas taken
recently by the West Bengal Governor, Mr Dharnm Vira, who
decided that except for the Prime Minister no 0 t h ; Minister
Punjab Interlude I 159
visiting the State for the purpcsa of electioneering would be
ascorded V.I.P. treatment by the Government. Why the Prime
Minister was made an exception was not explained. After all,
there is no difference between her and, say, the Deputy Prime
Minister when they go for canvassing votes for congress candi-
dates.
However, it was left to 211e Punjab Government to take a
correct stand in the matter. In a statement made to the Press
on Monday, the Adviser to the Punjab Governor, Mr Noronha,
made it abundantly clear that the Government was not giving
any V.1.1'. treatment either to the Prime Minister or to any
other Central Minister now touring the State for election pur-
poses. He said that the State Government had not even arranged
a car for the Prime Minister, now on election tour of Punjab. Of
course Mrs Gandbi will have no dearth of cars for her tours.
But the point is that even after two decades of independence,
&e have not yet developed democratic standards in many
spheres. In Bihar as also in Uttar Rradesh, the Governor's
regimes have placed all the resources of the State at the dis-
posal of Central Ministers, who are visiting these States for
improving the prospects of Congress candidates. I n Lucknow,
a spokesman of the U.P. Government has brazen-facedly ad-
mitted it. Government planes and vehicles have been placed a t
their disposal to be used by them as they like. It may be that
some Central Ministers also do some minor official work but
there is no denying the fact they are touring these Statss prim
cipally for electioneering purposes.. .. A good example has
been set by the Punjab Government. Both the Governor,
Mr Pavate, and the Adviser, Mr Noronha, deserve to be con-
.
gratulated for the initiative. ."
The real point of these two incidents is not that I was a hell
of a fellow but that-mark carefully--nothing whatever hap- J
pened to me because of them. And nothing is what usually
happcns, cantrary to popular belief amongst government ser-
vants, whcn they act correctly. I even got a Yadma Bhusl~an
after my retirement!
The elections were helu K . ; ~ I I O Uincident
~ and as soon as the
results were declared-the Congress failed to get a majority or
to form a government-I handed over charge and returned to
Madhya Pradesh.
 The time to write about any place'is exactly two months after
arrival. Earlier is too early; everything is new, wonderful, a
splash of colour, confused, exciting, inchoate. Later is too
late; plus ca change, plus c'est la nremc chose, greys and blacks
' and never a gash of sky in between.

I have now been in Punjab exactly two months and this is,
therefore, the last and perhaps the only true word on Punjab.
Unbandage your eyes and prepare for education.
4 The Punjabis are the ten lost tribes of Israel. Nothing else
could account for their thirst for travel. If you want to take a
real census of Hoshiarpur, Jullundar and Ludhiana districts.
you will have to do your counting in the U.S., Britain and
Canada, because that is where most of them are. There are
more Punjabis outside Punjab than in it.
This factor should be taken into account when assessing
public opinion .in Punjab because it is likely to be considerably
i n f l y d by Punjabi opinion from Birmingham and Bhopal,
-fmm Wisconsin and Varanasi. Quebec and Quilon. (The Pun-
jabi keeps in touch with his relations wherever they may be.)
Elsewhere in India you can discuss Nixon's victory with a
'~llrug,but not in Punjab. The person before whom you shrug
J is likely to have a c o u s i ~who
~ either shook hands with Nixon
o r heaved a rock a t him. There is a strong feeling about both
Republicans and Democrats here and it would be unwise to
ignore it. I won five rupees by betting on Nixon and had to
listen to twenty minutes of enlightened anti-Nixon opinion
before I was paid. ,

One would expect the Punjabi to be cosmopolitan and blas6.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. At heart he is still
v the, farm boy from Khubban who grows the best cotton in
India and the best wheat and the best rice and-the list is in-
exhaustible. I t does not make the slightest difference that he
happens to be an industrial magnate whose overdraft any bank
would welcome, he still has his roots in the rich earth of his
home village. And this, I think, accounts for his vitality. He
falls, he burns, but he iises again, reborn like the Phoenix,
drawing new life from the good earth to which he is inextri-
cably linked.
.P i i j a b Interlude '161
I have never, of course,-seen a Punjabi looking with love-
lorn eyes at his wife but I have caught him unawares looking
at his land and I imagine the expression musthe the same. I t
is this vitality derived from the soil that makes the Punjabi a
great builder and rebuilder. On and off for three thousand
'
years (before that, is only hearsay) Punjab has been destroyed
and rebuilt and destroyed and reboin. There is no old Punjab I

-there is only and always a young Punjab, a brash young

Punjab that makes mistakes but never the mistake of growing
tired and wise and . . . useless.
In 1947 and 1948, Punjab had for all practical purposes
ceased to exist. Destroyed villages and desolate fields and
human misery stretching ISI endless lines of refugees on the
march from horizon to horizon-that was all. Four years later
Punjab was exporting more grain than it had done before
Partition. Last year in forty-five days 1,400,000 tans of wheat
were procured from only eleven districts. It was literally an
inundation of golden grain from which exhausted and harassed
officials were tempted to flee. It was the Phoenix reborn.
There are two reasons for the Punjabi's success in this
colossal task of rebuilding. o n e is his vitality, of the earth,
earthy; the other is his willingness to experiment and invest J
and his reluctance to keep capital idle, resulting in the rapid
turnover of funds that is so essential to prosperity.
The burying of earthen pots full of money is unknown-or
almost unknown-in Punjab. A man who makes money from
his farm thinks first of all about the farm and invests what is
needed for its improvement. Then he thinks about consumer
goods, a sewing machine for his wife, clothes, good food and
a good house, and finally he thinks of the Government and pa-
tronizes the nearest bar. The Government of Punjab should be
grateful for his indulgence. The excise revenue from liquor is
-hold your breath-Rs 28 crores per annum.
The third and perhaps the most important reason for the
Punja5i's prosperity is Mrs Punjabi. She forces him into an
unending battle to out-Jones the Joneses. Which reminds me
of the tycoon who was asked why he worked so hard. He said,
"I want to see if there is any income which my wife cannot
live beyond.'.'
While on the subject of Mrs Punjabi, let me say, with the
 162 - A Tale Told by an Idiot
courage born of anonymity, that Punjabi women are not
beautiful. Beauty can only make itself apparent by comparison
with ugliness. There is no such thing as an ugly Punjabi woman
-and, therefore, there can be no such thing as a beautiful
Punjabi woman. That is my final word and let there be no
argument-at least not until I see the next beautiful Punjabin.
When I leave Punjati I will carly with me not a coherent,
continuous, sequential memory but a series of vignettes. Many
of them will not be the conventional ones-my vignettes will
be offbeat snoopings that have carved a little niche in my mind.
A distant shot of Anandpur Sahib framed against the sky,
tender and remote and detached. A robust borderer describing
his bumper crop as a do katal ki phasal, a two-murders crop,
meaning thereby that it was enough to commit two murders
and get away with them. A cold winter's morning and the
partridge rocketing from cotton fields with an exuberant
cr_owd of Rai Sikhs beating them out and a policeman telling
me in properly awe-struck tones: "These are the only people
in Punjab tough enough to deny an investigating policeman a
cot to sit on." A lookout post in a magnificent pipal tree on
the frontier and a couple of jawans keeping ceaseless vigil and
' .
a line of camel and bullock carts on the Grand Trunk Road,
reproducing a scene three thousand years old .. ..
X. M Y MASTERS

After my retu~rnfrom Punjab I took two months leave which

I spent in a thoroughly irresponsible manner wandering by bus
and train and car over my old haunts, shooting and fishing. I
e n j e e d myself but all good things have to end and my leave
was no exception to the rule. Govind Narain Singh and his
S.V.D. government had fallen; the Raja of Sarangarh, persua-
ded by Govind Narain Singh's magic to leave the Congress and
join the S.V.D. at precisely the time when a blind man could
see that it was breaking up, lasted thirteen days as Chief Minis-
ter; and Congress with the help of a sp!urge of Ayarams, again
led by Govind Narain Singh, was back in power headed by
Shyama Charan Shukla, the son of Pandit Ravi Shankar
Shukla about whom I have written earlier. He did not want
me as Chief Secretary but he created an ex-cacire post, the
Controller General of State Income and Expenditure, on the
scale of the Chief Secretary and appointed me to it.
The post of Chief Secretary is one that calls for, above all
things, a personal equation with the Chief Minister. The two
have to work as parts of one whole, the upper and lower jaws,
as it were. The Chief Secretary must be ab!e to think with t'le
Chief Minister's mind, so that he can act on his own when the
need arises, in the full assurance that he is acting in accord
with the line of thought of his principal. The Chief Minister
on his part has to have the most complete confidence in the
Chief Secretary. None of this is possible unless they are both
on the same wavelength. It follows therefore that the Chief -
Minister must be free to choose his Chief Secretary without
 164 A Tale Told by an Idiot
niggling questions of seniority vitiating the issue. I did not
have a grievance because I was not made Chief Secretary or
because a junior was. On the other hand I was grateful to
Shyama Charan for creating a post which would spare me
from financial loss, although I personally would still have had
no grievance if this had not been done.
Having got that off my chest, let me say that my three years
as Controller General were a~nongstthe happiest of my life. I
had n.arning office throughout the year. I went punctually at
11 a.m. (the opening hour for the area where my office was
J located) and returned home equally pun~tuallyat 11-30 a.m.,
leaving no arrears. But in January ,1972 Shyama Charan
Shukla was eased out to make room for P.C. Sethi. Then came
the general elections and after some months I was sent for
and told that I was to be Chief Secretary. I indicated my
reluctance bluntly. I had already done about five years as
Chief Secretary and now I had hardly three years t o go be-
fore retirement. No chief secretary should hold the post for
more than five years, or else he stamps too much of himself
into the administration. Nor should anyone be appointed who
has less than three years to serve, because he tends to mark
time for his retirement. I pointed out all this, but was over-
ruled. Twenty-four hours later I was back in my old room in
the Secretariat, the room I had vacated in 1968.
So much for chief secretaries and the dice that govern their
destinies. The real purpose of this chapter is to talk of their
masters, the chief ministers, instead. I served as Chief Secre-
tary under three-,D.P. Mishra, Govind Narain Si-lgh and
P.C. Sethi-and with all three I was fortunate enough to esta-
blish the kind of relationship without which smooth working
is not possible, a relationship of mutual trust. With all three
I passed through difficult times; with D.P. Mishra, famine,
widespread student trouble and the Bastar firing; with Govind
Narain Singh the perpetual tensions of the S.VID. and the
government employees strike; with P.C. Sethi, repeated
opposition attempts, egged on by dissident Congressmen, to
create law and order situations. In spite of all this there was
never any weakening of trust on either side; on the other hand,
external tensions built up a kind of intimacy between us which,
if I were not afraid of presuming too much; I would call
M y Masters 165
friendship.
D.P. Mishra knew that I referred t o him in private as "the
sea-green incorruptible" after Carlyle's discription of Robes-
pierre. As far as I know, he did not resent it. But he got more
than his own back on me when I needled him for praise of my
Hindi. I said, "Sir, I hope you've noticed the improvement in
my Hindi." He nodded gravely. "Yes I've noticed it." Then
he added "The only trouble is that reading your Hindi has v
almost destroyed mine." Hindi was the State language and
most of our work was done in it. I cheated sometimes by writ-
ing briefly on the note sheet "Meri rai sanlagn note n?e prastut
hai ( M y opinion is in the attached note)." The attached note
was in English. But I was and am a dedicated exponent of the
use of Hindi in states where it is the mother tongue, and in the
Centre. You cannot have a nation without a national language;
and being fond of English, I hate t o see it being murdered in r
the usage of today. Mishraji wrote the kind of Hindi which
could have become the national language-simple, terse, un-
afraid of borrowing from Urdu o r English. H e used afsar (offi-
cer), ingineer (engineer), and barkhast (dismiss) without
qualms, in spite of the fact that his Xrishnayan is one of the
all-time greats in modern Hindi literature.
H e was thz idol of the services, just, strong and with a
crystal clear mind. I t rarely took more than ten minutes for
him to understand even the most complicated file; and every
government servant could be sure of his support if he had acted
in good faith. On a t least two occasions I myself got that sup-
port, when, in my opinion it was politically undesirable for
him to give it. The first concerned a very eminent SarvoJaya v+
worker, second only to gayaprakash Narayan in the mid-
sixties, who became a nuisance in the western part of the state.
He was working amongst the tribals there and tribals take
things literally. He convinced them that they should insist on
their rights; they included the neighbour's goat and his wife
i n d freedom from arrest amofigst those rights. I permitted the
Collector t o detain him under the Defence of India Rules,
without obtaining Mishraji's orders. There wa. a devil of a
row on an all-India basis. I frankly admitted that I had been
unaware of the gentleman's eminence and suggested that he be
released. Mishraji said, "No. rhat would amount to reversing
166 A Tale Told by an Idiot
\
your decision and a sign that I lacked faith in you. Let him
remain in jail for a month o r so, then release him yourself,
without referring the matter to me." He paused for a second,
"Like you did when you detained him."
The second occasion arose dullng a Vidhan Sabha debate
in which I was personally under vicious and violent attack on
the allegation that I had engineered the death of the ex-ruler
of Bastar. It did not bother me unduly because the allegation
was entirely false, and I told Mishraji that it would be advis-
able not to answer it when he replied to the debate; any defence
of me might draw the attack o n t o himself. He looked u p ex-
~.~essionlessly and said nothing. But most of his reply was
devoted t o a brilliant and sometimes impassioned defence of
his Chief Secretary. And, as I had forecast, the opposition
promptly switched their attack t o him: But it is things like this
which distinguish the meri who are fit to rule from those who
merdy want t o ruie. I could not help remembering a complete
contrast, T.T. Krishnamachari and H.M. Patel in the Mun-
dhra case. T h e n , T.T. had thrown Patel to the wolves!
When I first became Mishraji's Chief Secretary he used to
ring me u p frequently between eight and nine at night. I think
people .had told him that I was rar from being a teetotaller
and he wanted t o see for himself whether I was in working
condition after dark. Presumably he was satisfied, one way o r
the other, because the phone calls ceased after some weeks,
and he maintained more reasonable business hours rhereafter.
A couple of years later he had to send for me and the I.G.
Police.at midnight, in an emergency. The I.G. gave me a paan
in the car and I was chewing it when we arrived at Mishraji's
house. H e finished his business with us,and then, when we
w e n leaving, he called me aside. "I'm sorry to have disturbed
you so late at night, but there's really no need to have a paan
when you come to me." He knew that I did not usually in-
dulge in paan and he must have.thought I had taken it t o dis-
guise the odour of Black Knight. I disabused him of the
impression. "The paan was an accident, Sir. I wopfdn't dream
of trying to hide anything from jau!" He laughed and the
matter ended.
While I am on the subject of drink, I must confess that t h e
hypocritical attitude of my country towards it gets on my
M y Masters 167
nerves. It is bad to drink if people know you drink, but.
secret drinking-which .people get to know about even
quicker-is alright. And every person who drinks is a dmn-
kard. My own attitude (which I have never attempted to
conceal) to liquor is that I can take it or leave it. However, I v
infrequently leave it. Which reminds me of a story related by
P.C. Sethi at a Cabinet meeting, possibly in my defence.
Birbal's detractors told the Emperor Akbar that he was fond
of his glass and one day he agreed to go with them and catch
Birbal redhanded at a party. When they arrived the party was
in full swing. Birbal greeted the Emperor with every courtesy
and seated him, after which the cup bearer arrived and offered
his wares. Apart from sharab (liquor) there are nine other
names in Urdu for the same thing. Birbal asked what was
being served and the cup bearer gave one of the other names.
~ i r b a took
l aglass and Akbar joined him. After a while the
cup bearer came again, and again they had a glass, with
a different name. This was repeated a third time. But when the
cup bearer came a fourth time with a fourth name, Birbal, who
was now feeling the effects, said "You lie. This is sharab, it in-
toxicates, take it away!" I rather spoilt the effect of the story by
murmuring "He must have had a weak head, there were still +
six names and six glasses to go before they reached sharab."
Mishraji's attitude to administration was refreshingly practi-
cal. He always wanted an honest opinion from his subordi-
nates, even if it was unpalatable. In return he expected, and
rightly, loyal implementation of even unpalatable orders. "It tl
is your job to advise, it is mine to decide, and the decision is
binding on you." 'An officer who had an appointment with him
was never kept waiting because "a waste of his time is a waste 4
of public money." He gave pride of place to the mai-,tenance
of law and order, explaining "The genius of our country lies
in the creation of wealth, What is required ia the safety in
which that genius can develop, not dictation as to how it 1
should develop. Every great and good government in India
from Chandragupta onwards acted bn this fundamental truth."
Incidentally it was Mishraji v 30 coined the phrase "a holiday
from planning" during the development of his hypothesis that
inflation waslargely due to the Plans, which of necessity in-
volved spending first and relying on increased production
 168 A Tole Toid by an Idiot
later, to recoup the expenditure. It amused me considerably to
watch the Government of India violently rejecting the sugges-
tion on p.aper and following it it1 practice, for a t least two
years!
Curiously enough, while Mishraji could pick out officers
pith an unerring eye, he was a poor judge of politicians.
Everyone h e selected as an aide let him down s er or later.
O r perhaps that is a behavioral norm amongst T pollIcians. O n
second thoughts, it may not be; no one let down Pandit Ravi
Shankar Shukla. Possibly Mishraji's real trouble was that in
spite of his greatness he never saw people as people but only
as cogs in a machine. It is not for nothing that he was called
"the iron man.'< Iron is cold.
If D.P. hlishra was the iron man, Govind Narain Sing11 was
just the opposite, the human man, with more than a touch of
the enfont terrible about him. The day after the debacle I went
ro Mishraji to say goodbye and ask whether I could be of any
help. He was all alone, the house was quiet, no hordes of
visitors, no rush of work. We chatted for some minutes, then I
discovered he had no car. I'he man who had given permits to
hundreds of people for cars had no car. He smiled wryly, "I
suppose it's too late to get one now." I said, "I don't think so,
may I try to get you a permit?" He flared up at once. "Do
you think I'm going t o ask for favours?" I soothed him. "You
needn't d o a thing, you needn't enter into the picture, I'll do
everything on your behalf." At last he was persuaded but as I
wzs leaving he said, warningly, "Remember, no favours!"
I went to Govind Narain Singh and told him that Mishraji
had no car and was in need of a Fiat. I also made it clear that
I was acting on my own initiative and not on his request.
Govind Narain Singh looked sourly at me. ''I had a better
opinion of you, Noroaha. Did you have to ask my permission
' for such an obvious thing? Give him a permit for whatever
car he wants and see that he gets'it immediately." Mishraji
got his Fiat within twenty-four hours.
Govind Narain Singh had a first-class brain. But no one
who'saw him acting as he sometimes did, would ever have be-
lieved it.We once had an argument as to whether a tiger, struck
o r surprised sharply from behind, would rush away or turn and
attack. I thought the latter, lle insisted on the former. Soon
 My Masters 169
afterwards we happened to be in Kanha Kisli Sanctuary and
1 suggested we take a drive after dinner t o see the animals. H e
agreed. We set out in a jeep with me driving. A couple of miles
from the rest house we came upon a tiger lying on the bank of
a nala hardly ten yards from the forest road, immersed in
whatever thoughts tigers think. H e took not the slightest notice
of us. I stopped the jeep, switched off the headlights, and kept
the spot on him. A few seconds later I discovered I was minus
Govind Narain Singh; he had slipped soundlessly away. Then
the tiger gave a great shriek, exactly like a child that is sud-
denly frightened, and streaked away. Govind Narain Singh
stood up laughing inxthe circle of the spotlight beam. "I told
you they rush away. Did you see?" He had stalked u p behind ,
the tiger and slapped its bottom. T o this day he will not admit
, how idiotically he behaved. "The tiger's impulse was predic-
table" he says, "ard nothing that is predictable is dangerous."
Yet this was the same man who could on occasion exhibit
a subtlety of mind that was quite astonishing. During the 1967
elections he was contesting from a seat adjacent t o that allot-
ted t o a Muslim Congressman to whom he was personally
opposed. He took the opportunity of canvassing for him, un-
asked, and when the loaded question "What have you to say
about cow slaughter?" was flung at him he replied honestly,
del~berately,and with malicious forethought, "I am in favour \
of it. If you don't eat the cow, the cow will end by eating you
and your children," and he went on to expound. The candi-
..
date was a Muslim . he lost. I have no doubt that Govind
Narain Singh honestly held these views. He merely picked the
time and the place and the opportunity t o voice thein when
they would d o the most damage to the candidate. This type of
subtlety one would hardly expect from a man who slaps a tiger
on the bottom, just to prove a theory!
Govind Narain Singh agreed with the Emperor Jehangir-
Hindustan was a high spirited horse that tleeded a good rider.
But he put it differently. InIhis inimitable way he paraphrased
'the Ramayana. When Sri Rama was going into exile Bharat
asked him for guidance. "I have no experience of ruling, I am
young, what shall I do?" Instead of giving him a lecture on
kingship, Sri Rama gave his padtrlca (wooden slippers) to place
on the throne. The hint was sufficient; India is a country where
 170 A Tale Told by an Idiot

v
slippers a r c used to discipline people as well as puppies. As a
result, Bharat ruled so welt and so firmly that the real Ram-
rajya was daring the period of his regency, and when Sri
Rama returned the country was richer and more powerful than
it had ever been before. There was an essential.similarity bet-
ween this theor). of administration-the firm rider-and
Mishraji's t h e o j of law and order being the crux of adminis-
tration. Mishraji, however, was in a position to implement his
theory; all that Govind Natain-Singhcould do was to expound
it to the Coordination Committee of the S.V.D., who were
busy with more important things than administration.
Nevertheless, in the very narrow field that was left to him
for independent action (things without political significance
and these are few) he did his best. He saw the crying need to
tap groundwater resources and went all out to do so. A tube-
wets organization was set up and driven relentlessly until it
really and truly produced results. There were no funds; he
decided, most improperly and against my written advice, to
give export permits for gulabi gram in,return for donations at
a specified rate, to the Chief Minister's Scarcity Relief Fund,
v and all the money went into tube-wells, more than a crore. It
was typical of the man that having once decided what he
wanted to do, he gave his-orders precisely and briefly; and left
the details in my hands without the petty nagging that passes
for supervision amongst politicians. He said "Make sure that
the money goes onlv into tube-wells." I did so by working out
a method of crediting the donations directly into the accounts
head cf the Chief Mirrister's Scarcity Relief Fund, with no one
handling cash. Thereafter it was transferred by degrees into
the account of the tube-wells organization as and when
required. With Central aid and loans from banks, that one
crore produced four crores worth of tube-wells. It will also
produce, if my guess is correct, a rocket from the Bhave Com-
mission (set up under the Commissions of Enquiry Act) which
is looking into the matter of gulabi ehnnu exports under
Mihhraji as well as the S.V.D. government. Justice Bhavc's
report has already reached the Government and will have
been published by the time this book appears in print, so I am
not anticipating-much.
The Constitution empowers the Centre to impose restrictions
 on the movement of goods and produce between one state and
Another; the states have n o su'ch powers. During Mishraji's
first tenure as Chief Minister the 1967 elections cropped u p
and funds were needed to fight them. A ban was imposed o n
t h e export of gulabi gram outside Madhya Pradesh-quite
illegally-and only those who contributed t o Congress funds at
a specified rate per quintal were given export permits. Needless
t o say, the major part o f t h e money so collected reached Con-
gress hands but not the Congress coffers because there was no
system, no procedure a n d no check. When the S.V.D.govern-
ment took over, the Jana Sangh component was very keen o n
instiluting a judicial enquiry into the affair but Govind Narain
Singh successfully stalled them; I have mentioned earlier his
curious solicitude for Congress interests. Later on h e adopted
the s a n e method t o raise funds for tube-wells, but the money
' really did go into tube-wells. That, however, does not detract ,
from the illegality of the export ban itself.
Also during Mishraji's first tenure, and just before the ;967
elections, enormous amounts of money were spent on scarcity
. relief works in Damoh district which covered the constituency
of the then Revenue Minister, K.B.L. Guru. The Revenue
Department deals with scarcity ielief. Most of the motley was
misappropriated at various levels. In this mattcr Govind
Narain Singh had to give in to Jana Sang11 importunity and
K.N. Nagarkatti, a retired I.C.S. officer, was appointed under
t h e Commissions of Enquiry Act t o hold the enquiry. He-
completed he work expeditiously and placed the major respon-
sibility on G u r u and Mishraji. Govind Narain Singh fought a
superb and subtle delaying action with the result that nothing
concrete was done about the Nagarkatti report during the
S.V.D. regime. Nor did the Shyama Charan ministry resurrect
the skeletons of either gulabi chana o r scartity relief. That was
left to the Sethi ministry.
In 1973, for reasons which have never been clear t o me, the
Sethi government ordered a fresh enquiry under the Commis-
sions of Enquiry Act into gcilabi clrnna, scarcity relief in
Damoh and, for good measure, a relatively minor misappro-
priation relating to purchase of mats t o be used in primary
schools as seats. This last occurred during t h e S.V.D.period.
. Jvstice Bhave was placed in charge of all three enquiries, and
 172 A Tale Told by anldiot
Madhya Pradesh saw the phenomenon of one Congress govern-
ment wholeheartedly cooperati'ng in action designed to discre-
dit a previous Congress government. I had the melancholy
satisfaction of being right but over-ruled by three govern-
ments, those of Mishraji, Govind Narain Singh and P.C.
Sethi; the first two when I pointed out the illegality of the ban
on export of gulabi chana, and the third when I opposed a
fresh judicial enquiry. Some people think before acting; others
I think after acting; by and large post-Independence govern-
ments do not think. The Bhave report will figure largely in
Opposition propaganda during the 1976 elections.
In quickness of perception and ability to grasp the essentials
of a problem, Govind Narain Singh was in the same class as
Mishraji. Like Mishraji he also decided quickly and stuck to
his decisions. But he put his ideas across through an uncanny
gift for persuasio:l, whereas Mishraji got his own way by
virtueof a dominating personality. It was very difficult to say
"no" to Govind Narain Singh; Mishraji never gave his colle-
agues the opportunity to say "no." Cabinet meetings under
Mishraji seldom lasted more than half an hour; he knew what
he wanted and he got it. In Govind Narain Singh's time they
dragged o n for hours; but J noticed that in the end he also got
what he wanted. The only difference was that he made the
other ministers believe they had got what they wanted. There
was something to be said for his method because it left no resi-
due of bitterness behind. I t did, however, add to the Chief
Secretary's work because he could never forecast what exactly
the Chief Minister had already decided in advance-and this
Chief Minister's decisions were certainly taken in advance of
the Cabinet meeting, just as Mishraji's had been. I t helps a lot
to know what the decision is going t o be; one can draft the
Council Order whhe the discussion is still going on, and so
save time. Govind Narain Singh could have done much for
the State if only he had led a team instead of a mob.
- Ability, energy, drive-those qualities he had, but the over-
' all impression he left on those with whom Ile came in contact
was humanness. He was a man first and a Chief Minister afrer-
wards, treating people as human beings, liking people and
being liked in return, dealing with them from ground level and
not from Olympia. When I went to Punjab I got permission
My Masters 173
to retain the government bungalow allotted to me in Bhopal
and left my wife and family behind. A few days after I had
gone, there was persistent hooting at the gate very early in the v
morning. My wife came out and found Govind Narain Sing11
there, in a jeep. He asked "Is everything all right, are there
any problems?" She reassured him and he went away, declin-
ing the offer of a cup of tea. Thereafter, on an average of once
a week until I returned, he repeated the visit for a brief five
minutes each time, just to make sure that she was being look-
ed after. When he resigned, he was the only Chief Minister I
ever heard of to go to the Secretariat and thank all the govern-
ment servants for the way in which they had served him. He
was visibly moved when he said "You are government servants
4
and owe nothing to ministers. Nevertheless you served me far
and beyond the call of duty and I will always be grateful to
you." There are few ministers who realise that government
ser'vants owe them nothing and who are grateful for loyal
service willingly rendered; the vast majority take service for
granted, and get the kind of service they deserve. But Govind
Narain Singh was well served.
.It was during his time that I lost one of the many battles 1
have lost in my career. The Jana Sangh were very keen to re-
duce the retirement age of state government servants from
fifty-eight to fifty-five, ostensibly for reasons of economy. I
pointed out that the persons to be retired were holding senior
posts which would have to be filled; the only economy would
arise from leaving the consequential juniormost vacancy un-
filled. This could as well be done without reducing the retire-
ment age. Administratively, a sudden reduction in the retire-
ment age creates a large number of vacancies at senior levels
and causes disruption. If the age had to be reduced, let the
reduction be staggered-first fifty-seven then fifty-six then fifty-
five. My arguments were countered by Saklecha, the Jana
Sangb Deputy Chief Minister, with the claim that greater em-
ployment opportun~tieswould ensue. I said :hey would not if
vacancies were left unfilled; and if even the junior vacancies
were filled, there would be little economy. But I was butting
my head against a stone wall. The real reason for reducing the
retirement age suddenly, whoever does it, is t o get rid of the
older cadre of government servants who are close enough to
 174 A Tale Told by an Idiot
retirement to be independent; their successors can be selected
without regard to seniority and on the basis of commitment to
the party in power. The simplest and most honest way to
achieve the same result would be to make commitment a condi-
tion of government service, enforceable under the Government
Servants Conduct Rules. Govind Narain Singh gave me no
support; the finer points 'of administration did not interest
him. And the retirement age was duly reduced to fifty-five.
Incidentally, when the Congress came back into power, they
raised the retirement age to fifty-eight, thereby ensuring the
commitment of those who got another lease of life. One of my
J few heroes was my father who died when I was fifteen; he used
to say "look after your sword and your sword will look after
you." The politician has never realized that his real and only
sword is the Services, nor has he learned to either look after
o r use it.
I cglled on Govind Narain Singh immediately after he took
theoath of office as Chief Minister and asked permission to
v speak frankly. He said, "You will anyway, but the permission
is granted."
I placed my 4untain pen on the table and said, T d p e n
cost me one rupee eight annas. But it is mine, not the Govern-
u' ment's and only I can tell it what to write. Secondly there is
no reason at all to continue me as Chief Secretary if you want
someone else."
For once he became grave. "As long as I am Chief Minister
n o one will give orders to your pen. And if at any time I want,
v another Chief Secretary, I will tell you so myself." He kept
his word absolutely regarding the pen, and he never did want
another Ch~efSecretary as long as I was holding the post.
The iron man, the human man, and now-the gentleman.
Prakash Chand Sethi was exactly that. Mishraji could be the
Judge of Christ "It is expedient for the good of the people
that this just man should die." Even Govind Narain Singh
could be regretfully ruthless on occassion. But I cannot imagine
P.C. Sethi being anything but kind, and decent, qualities which
are singularly .out of place, if they exist in any great degree,
when one is a politician. The Governor, Satya Narain Sinha,
who was certainly a politician, cast himself in the role of
Sethi's mentor as soon as he became Chief Minister and told
My Masters 175
him a story to indicate <he attitude he should take with the
services. A new bride entered her husband's house for the first
time and was greeted with a resounding slap by her mother-
in-law. Tearfully she asked how she had offended. The mother-
in-law said, "You haven't offended yet. That's just to teach
you what will happen if you do offend." When I became Chief
Secretary there were eight Class I officers undersuspension, on
relatively trivial charges. By degrees I got Sethi to realize that J
the services were not daughters-in-law and after that the situa-
tion eased.
In Independent India, governors were originally drawn from
the ranks of retired politicians and retired service men. So
long as this practice continued things went fairly smoothly.
Then they began to -be drawn from the ranks of "kamrajed"
politicians and the fat was fairly in the fire; the "kamrajed" .J
politician wears a permanent chip on his shoulder a ~ i dcan
never reconcile himself t o being "kamrajed." Sinha started me
on my second term as Chief Secretary with the %aM statement
that he had selected me for the post. I thought to myself,
"IJh-huh, here we go for barbed wire" but there was nothing
much I could do except to sit down in the saddle and hope my
horse would carry me over, because Sethi in his innocence
thought the Chief Secretary was selected by the Chief Minister.
So did I. And since I have never believed in divided loyalties,
the Governor soon came to regret his choice. If it had been
his choice. It was an educative experience for both of us; he
was the first Governor of his type I had met, and I was possi-
bly the first civil servant of my type that he had met. D.P.
Mishra o r Govind Narain Singh would have coped with him
easily; but Sethi was a gentleman.
The trouble about our Constitution is that it was framed
for a mature democracy in which conventions and practices J
developed-over hundreds of years carry more weight than the
written word. Everything in England is technically done by the
king, who would not dream of doing anything at all. Here, at
state level, the executivepower vests in the Governor (Article
154) and the executive action of the Government of a State
must be expressed t o be taken in the name of the Governor
(Article 166). Furthermore the Chief Minister has to communi-
cate to the Governor all'decisions of the Council of Miaisters,
 176 A Tale Told by an Idiot
furnish such information as may be called for, and send for a
Council decision any matter which the Governor desires to be
so sent (Article 167). The biggest bundle of dynamite is Article
164 according to which (a) the Chief Minister shall be appoin-
ted by the Governor (b) ministers shall be appointed by the
Governor on the advice of the Chief Minister, and (c) the
ministers shall hold office during the pleasure of the Gover-
nor.
If taken literally these provisions put a tidy package of
power in the Governor's hands. No one however took them
literally, until .Satya Narain Sinha came along. He dropped ,
several hints that important files should come t o him before
orders were paQsed; to all of .which I turned a forgetful ear.
Then he must have mentioned the matter in Delhi because I
got a letter from L.P. Singh the Home Secretary, drawing my
attention t o the constitutional provisions I have quoted, and
suggesting that they should be followed. I wrote back infonn-
ing him that all important cases were naturally Council cases,
to be decided by the Council of Ministers as a whole and not
by any individual minister; that the agenda for every Council
meeting along with the relevant precis was sent in a p c e to
the Governor; that Council decisions were similarly communi-
cated to him; and that this procedure provided him with ample
opportunity to keep in touch with day to day administration
so that he could decide for himself what information or case or
cases to send for under Article 167. There was no reply.
The only time I had any real difficulty with Sethi over a
service matter was in the case of R.S. Khanna, the Sales Tax
Commissioner. The story is worth relating because it illustrates
how popular governments function in the conditions of our
democracy. Section 2 of the Madhya Pradesh Sales Tax Act is
susceptible to different interpretations. Khanna's predecessors
had adopted one, but after examining the matter he came to the
conclusion that a different interpretation was in fact correct.
J
Incidentally, this different interpretation would have brought
.
In an additional revenue of two to three crores of rupees, but
at the cost of a fair amount of hardship to the trading com-
r munity. He did not, however, immediately enforce his own
interpretation. The matter was referred to the Finance depart-
v
ment and discusSed exhaustively with the Finance Minister.
 My Masters 177
S.N. Mushran, and with the Finance Secretary. N o one dis-
agreed with him. When pre!iminary action t o implement the
interpretation was taken, the traders, quite predictably, made
a concerted attack o n the Sales Tax Commissioner with no
- holds barred. As soon as this happened Mushran slipped
neztly out of the picture, leaving Khanna t o hold the baby as
best he could; he had done everything, the tacit concurrence
of the Finance department was s w ~ p under t the carpet in the
teeth of the Finance Secretary's protests. In fact the only per-
son who stood by the truth was Pasricha, the Finance Stcre-
tary. The Deputy Minister for Finance in particular (Shekhar)
was vociferous in demanding Khanna's head. Much t o my
surprise, the matter suddenly erupted a t a Council meeting
towards the end of December 1973, without being on the
agenda a t all. I sensed that considerable propaganda had
already been done against Khanna amongst the ministers; he
was being accused of deliberately disobeying the Government's
orders, which was a s far from the truth as the silent Mushran r
was from speech. There was.even a demand for his immediate
suspension, I managed to get over this hurdle by suggesting
that a categorical order should issue from the Government
over-ruling his interpretation and directing him to follow the
previous one, while I examined the case t o see whether there
had been any flouting of the Government's orders o r policy.
Fortunately, my brainwave was accepted, and orders were
accordingly issued the same night.
A scapegoat is not demonstrably a scapegoat unless it is
sacrificed. Khanna therefore had to be sacrificed if the uproar
in the trading community was to bz quietened. Acouple of
days later, as the Chief Minister was leaving on one of his
periodic trips to Delhi, his orders were obtained by Shekhar
to suspend Khanna. I received them while I was still congratu-
lating ~nyselfon having got out of an awkward situation, if not
with c r e d ~ tat least without visible scars. The order of suspen-
sion was utterly unjust; Khanna had done nothing without the
explicit consent of the Finance department; in f x t he had
zctually done no:hing as yct. After the rcceipt of the Govern-
ment's clarification o r instroctions, but with the prebious con-
sent cf the Flnance Minister, he had writtensuggcsting that the
optnion of the Advocate General should be obtained. Shekhar
 seized upon this letter as a deliberate defiance of the Govern-
ment's orders to resume the old interpretation, and manzged
tc, put his point of view across to Sethi. I went through the '
whole file and satisfied myself that the Chief Minister's orders
were based on a misapprehension. I sent him s letter by
' special messenger giving all the facts and asking for reconside-
ration. I followed this u p the next day with a Telex message
pointing out that according to the rules, an I.A.S. officer could
not be suspended unless charges had been framed against him;
and no charges had as yet been framed against Khanna. Sethi
replied that his orders were meant to be implemented after
complying with the regulations and this gave me an obvious
way out; I asked the Finance department t o draft charges,
knowing of course that there was no foundation o n which to
frame them. In the meantime, Sethi returned from Delhi and
I explained the case t o him personally, pulling n o punches in
the process. I n situations like this it is not sufficient to state the
facts, however forcefully; it is also necessary t o suggest a way
out. My task was made easier by the all-India Press which had
taken u p Khanna's case as an example of the victimization of
a n honest government servant by unscrupulous politicians.
Ultimately Khanna wrote a demi-official letter explaining that
he had done nothing against the government's orders, the
Government accepted the explanation, and the case was
closed.
Sethi was imposed by the Centre on Madhya Pradesh. When
he became Chief Minister, Shyama Charan Shukla, the outgoing
Chief Minister, still had a convincing majority in the Congress
Legislature party. D.P. Mishra elected to help Sethi against
Shayma Charan and the three corners of the triangle emerged
finally as Mishraji plus Sethi versus Shyama. The battle lines
were so clearly, even bitterly, drawn that Sethi referred
publicly to- the ministry he had s~cceededas "Ali Baba and
the Forty Thieves" (there were forty ministers i n Shyama
Charan's government). There are people who are "against the
Government" whichever government it may be and there are
others who are "for the Government" with the same fine
impartiality. Sethi's dilly supporters a t the beginning belonged
t o the latter category. When he formed a ministry it con-
sisted of Mishra's men and a few who were Chief Minister's
My Masters 179

men (any Chief Minister who happened to be in power).

"Sethi's men" were conspicuous by their absence. But zhree
years later "Mishra's men" and."Chief Minister's men" had
all merged into Sethi's men, a political transfiguration that
astonished everyone intelligent enough to notice it. Sethi had
passed through his apprenticeship with flying colours and
emerged as a seasoned strategist on the battlefield of politics.
It was fascinating to watch the evolution of the boy into the
man, if I may say so with all respect. To begin with he waS
difident, unsure of himself, and this made him lean heavily on
Mishraji. By easy stages the state came t o be ruled b y remote
control-Mishraji's control. To one who had served under him
for so long, the hand of the Mastel was clearly visible in the
posting of officers, tbe pattern of administration, the reaction t o
developments. But ruling by remote control is difficult becauke
one has to take decisions on another man's assessment .of
events; and one has to rely on the other man's reactions being
exactly the same as one's own. They never are. That is why
Napoleon, who had to rely on Marshal Ney, lost the battle of f

Waterloo. I t was not Ney's fault, it was just that Ney's assess-
ment was diKercnt from what Napoleon's would have been. If
Ney had pressed home the attack on Wellington a t Quatre
Bras in the early stages of the blttlz, there would have been n o
need for Waterloo. Napoleon must have grown impatient with
him; Mishraji grew impatient with S ~ t h ion two counts-
because some battle< were lost and because he was not willing
t o concede that his own battle plans may have been defective.
AS a reshlt he interfered increasingly, and more and more
directly, and now it was Setlli who became impatient. Bis-
marck served the firsf Kaiser faithfully and laid the foundations
of a new and tremendously powerful Germany. But the Kaiser
matured too, and Bismarck continued to domineer, with the
predicataple result that they parted company, a n event im-
mortalized in the Punch cartoon "Dropping the Pilot." Sethi
grew up. I t remained only to drop the pilot.
One of "Mishra's men" in the Sethicabinet was Chandra
P r a ~ a pTiwari who had originally been i n the P.S.P. before
joining the Congress. He was honest and sincere but a trifle
headstrong, hailing from Vindhya Pradesh which later merged
into the new state of Madhya Pradesh in 1956. In the prc-1956
 18fl A Tale Told by an Idio
period when Vindhya Pradesh was a separate entity, Birlas had
set up a paper plant, the Orient Paper Mill, in that backward
and underdeveloped area. The then (Congress) government of
Vindhya Pradesh gave the company a lease for extraction of
bamboos for a period of twenty years at the rate of Rs 6 per
ton and extended it for another ten years in October 1956 by a
supplementary agreement. The extension was granted on the
very eve of the states' reorganization just before the powers
of the Vindhya Pradesh government were handed over to the
new Madhya Pradesh government. The rate was reasonable in
1936 but no provision was made for periodical revision as is
the normal practice in long-term leases. Consequently, by 1966
Birlas were still paying Rs 6 per ton for their bamboo in the
erstwhile Vindhya Pradesh and the non-Birla politicians
were howling blue murder. D.P. Mishra constituted a com-
,mittee with me as the Chairman to examine the whole matter
and recommend- what rate should be charged to the Orient
Paper Mills (a) for bamboo extracted in the former Vindhya
Pradesh region covered by the old lease and (b) for bamboo in
the rest of the stater We reported that legally no revision was
possible for the existing Vindhya Pradesh lease during the
period of its validity. For the rest of the state we recommended
Rs 30 per ton from 1965 onwards ilpto 30 J u n e 4 6 8 and Rs 35
per ton from 1 July 1968 based on the existing prices and our
forecast of future trends. Neither we, nor anyone else, dreamt
that prices would ever rise to the levels of today, but we did re-
commend a provisioi~for periodic revision in all future con-
tracts or leases. Before orders could be passed on our report
Mishraji's government fell. The S.V.D. who succeeded him,
carefully froze the case because it was a potential source of
disruption, the Socialists and the Jana Sangh-Rajmata axis
holding diametrically opposite ~ i e w s .What happened to it
during Shyama Charan's stewardship 1 dc not know, but
Chandra Pratap Tiwari successfully resurrected it when Sethi
came to power. The case was processed and brought before
the cabinet and a decision was taken to charge Rs 30 per ton
from 1 July 1965 to 30 June 1968, Rs 40 per ton from 1 July
1968 to 30 June 1972, and Rs 50 per ton from 1 July 1972 on-
wards, outside the Vindhya Pradesh lease areas. Some time
later Tiwari had an interview with the Prime Minister in which
 My Masters 181
he apparently offered to send her a note on the subject. Later
on, it was sent, with a copy to Sethi. I t practically put Sethi
in the dock for favouritism to Birla, not directly but by clever
implication. Sethi was furious; he saw the shadow of Mishraji
,behind Tiwari in the whole affair and was bent upon demand-
ing Tiwari's resignation. Other ministers intervened and the
matter was smoothed over for the time being but shortly after-
wards the Forest portfolio was taken away from Tiwari. A few .
months later the Council of Ministers was (slightly) reshuffied
and Tiwari was finally dropped. Sethi had come of age; and
with the dropping of Tiwari he had dropped the pilot as well.
Mishraji too ceased to occupy the role of man-behind-the-
scenes.
The dropping of Tiwari was not the end of the story. First
expectations that there would be a chain reaction of resigna-
, tions from the ministry were belied. The nettle of danger hav-
ing been firmly grasped, there was no stinging. Ministers who
had been confidently forecasting that Sethi had bitten off more
than he could chew were among th+e first to assure him of their
undying loyalty and almost overnight the Cabinet became t o
a man, "Sethi's man." If, in a future incarnation, politicians
are reborn as women, and if they remain true to type, the
marriage vows will have to be re-cast.
On an average, Sethi spent the larger part of each month in
Delhi, and there was considerable criticism of this,practice.
But looking back now, I think he was right. The favourite
pastime of disgruntled politicians is blackguarding the Chief
Minister in Delhi, particularly if he happens to be the Prime
Minister's nominee. Most probably they never get t o the Prime
Minister but they do reach people who are close to her, and
the constant propaganda ultimately has its effect. Sethi's
periodic trips did much to wash out the mud stains o n his
image and to this important .extent they served a useful, even
a State, purpose. If his piactice was reprehensible, the fault
lies in a system that permits gossip and hearsay t o damage a
man.
He was always extremely kind to me and our personal rela-'
tions were cordial. I gave him my honest-opinion and I carried
out his orders-even against that advice-to the very best of
my ability. When the time cirew near for my retirement lie
 A Tale Told by an Idiot
asked me to accept an extension. I explained that I had strong
views on the subject and refused. The Times of India described ,
my exit with admirable brevitv (20 May, 1974):

Few functions to bid farewell to retiring civil servants have

been as lively as that held in honour of the outgoing Chief
Secretary of Madhya Pradesh, M r R.C.V.P. Noronha, in
Bhopal the other day.
"He took the opportunity to glve some sound advice to ad-
ministrative and police officials when he asked them to sink
their differences and stand shoulder to shoulder to meet the
challenges ahead.
"Being a man of the world, he put his finger on the heart d
:hc matter a t once. 'Gentlemen' he declared 'trouble betweeh
' the administrative and the police officers usually begins with

temperamental differences between the wives of the District

Magistrate and the District Superintendent of Police. I t then
'
travels both up and down the hierarchical ladder. So, gentle-
men, if you really want to serve the counrry, please control
your wives.'
"Easier said than done, M r Noronha, one IS tempted Po
retort. But then the former Chief Secretary of M.P. is known
to be capable of doing unusual things. For example, unlike
many of his peers in the I.C.S. who will d o almost anything
t o seek extension of service beyond retirement, m s said to
have firmly refused repeated offers of extension o r re-employ-
ment by the State Government.
'It's time for me to go, and I will not stay in servicc a day
longer' he is reported to have remarked before jumping on his
motorbike and speeding .away.

And so-the end of this book. It has covered thirty-five

years of a period that was always difficult. sometimes dark, but
never dull; a period of which Horace might almost have been
thinking when he wrote:
Spondet Forruna mulra ~rzultis,praesrar nemirii-Fortune
makes many promises to many and fillfils none.
(Episrlcs I-iv- 16)
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ii