Why did you pick up that ideology?
The basic reason for my being a socialist originates in my envying some of the Dhoon school boys, who were better off materially but who in no other respects appeared to me to be worth being better off. That personal experience introduced me to social injustice. And I always felt that the purpose of public service is to work towards the diminution of social inequality. When I find an economic system that says let’s accelerate growth to provide us with the resources to fight poverty, but in the process inequalities will increase, then I do not feel there is integrity of purpose in it. If there were a choice to be made between education or health for all and growth for some, I would at least choose to modulate the consequences of inequality. Whereas so much of what we do is aggravating inequality; despite all the additional resources, inequalities do not decrease, because people are not empowered to build their own lives. And that is why I am such a passionate advocate of panchayati raj. I was very much of one mind on this with Rajeev Gandhi. He had thought the politics of it better than I had, while I perhaps had thought the ethics of it more than he had. So we need more attention to engineer the fundamental political change that would make the delivery system much more people oriented.

As a child, what were your dreams?
From my earliest days, my greatest passion was to travel the world. I thought I should become an air force pilot to do so. I abandoned that dream when my father was killed in an air crash. Then, I read in Dhoon school’s journal a story by Ram Satay recounting his first Foreign Service posting in Kashgar, during the Chinese civil war, and his hike back to Kashmir. That is how I got fascinated with the Foreign Service and decided to join it.
I was very lucky to do well in the exams. But I was rejected on security grounds because I was suspected to be a member of the British Communist party, and even worse, of being a sleeper.
The way I ended up overcoming this challenge was also a very odd “coincidence”. My mother had been orphaned early in life. But she was rescued by an orphanage where she could study, and eventually got a teacher’s diploma. Her first posting was in a village where no one knew what to do with her ---- an unmarried 20 years’ old girl with nowhere to stay. The vice chancellor of the Andhra University had a large house where he was living alone. He agreed to welcome her. By the time I appeared for the Foreign Service exams, that Vice Chancellor, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, had become the President of India. For him, every civil servant had the right to a political opinion, as long as he was not part of a political party. I was not amember of any party. So in the end I got accepted in the Service. Had my mother not known him, there is no way my career would have been made. Had I not done brilliantly in my exams, nothing would have happened either. So again, there is a great deal that is unknown in our lives. And it is a combination of the two --- hard work and unknown factors. That is how I reconcile existentialism, which posits only a freewill, with determinism, which puts us in the hands of some power we have no hold on. What happens is a combination of the two. And in the end, luck is the capacity to spot the opportunity.

To sum it up, 90% of what happens to me is determined by my actions, thoughts etc. while 10% is this element of fortune.
There is a whole realm of the unknown. But religious people make the mistake of pretending to know the unknown. An agnostic like me accepts the unknown but insists that because it is the unknown, by definition, we know nothing about it. I accept the challenges of the known world, and the fact that there are unknown forces operating. I cannot do anything about those forces by definition. But using the faculties of the known world, I can try to face the challenges thrown by these unknown forces or ride the crest of the waves and take advantage of them.

... contd.