No More a Civil Servant

Anil Swarup

No more a Civil Servant is the concluding part of the trilogy authored by a former civil servant who served for almost 38 years in various capacities in the government. His first two books are Not Just a Civil Servant and Ethical Dilemmas of a Civil Servant.
The first part of the book is a reflection on events that happened around the author during the last few years of his service, as he looks back on his interactions with the Prime Minister and the all-powerful Prime Minister’s Office. He also reflects on his association with his batch of 1981 in the Indian Administrative Service, recalling it as a wonderfully vibrant batch.
In the preface to the first book, No More a Civil Servant, he had written, “There was so much to be done, so much that one could do and so much excitement. I spent sleepless nights in the sheer excitement of the potential.” He feels now that not much seems to have changed even after retirement. The excitement is still there, with only one significant difference: that he is master of his own time. Life as no-more-a-civil-servant is turning out to be even better. The author discovered his true worth and those of many others as well. In the first segment he speaks with pride his association with friends, including those in the industry, for whom his being or not being in harness made no difference to their association with him.
The second segment of the book is devoted to the wonderful work being done by Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and also talks about the people who were the triggers for making them effective. The author came to be associated with some of these people during his tenure as Secretary, School Education and Literacy, Government of India. They made him believe that a lot of good work can be done because it was already being done. The Nexus of Good Foundation emerged out of this belief. There are some remarkable stories of such CSOs that, in association with the respective state governments, have not only delivered but have provided many such models that have been scaled. All these stories give a lot of hope for the future.
Civil servants are more often than not at the receiving end of sharp criticism. What many of them are doing despite an adverse set of circumstances goes unnoticed. The last segment of the book contains a few such stories where civil servants have managed to deliver against all odds. This has been done with the objective of dispelling cynicism amongst both, the officers and the public at large, and to demonstrate to them that many civil servants are capable of brilliant achievements of great public value, even in the face of severe odds.