The question to ask is: Should officials be living at taxpayers’ expense in a neighborhood inhabited by Lakshmi Mittal, K.P. Singh and Sunil Mittal? If I have a humble little flat in this very expensive part of town, it is only because of an inheritance from a grandfather who was one of the five contractors who helped Edwin Lutyens build New Delhi. Only very, very rich Indians can afford to live in this area now. And, of course, officials who live off your money and mine. My suggestion to the ex-bureaucrat was genuine. If municipal officials in cities like Delhi and Mumbai understood the worth of the real estate they occupy, they could make much better use of it.

Vast, expensive tracts of real estate in our metropolises are wasted on housing officials and politicians who should live with Gandhian austerity.

The trouble with Indian bureaucrats, even retired ones, is that they are so confident of their omniscience that they do not listen to those they think of as lesser beings. In long years of covering government, I have observed that the best and the worst of our bureaucrats have some traits that are common. Infallibility, self-importance, arrogance and omniscience being the ones that come immediately to mind. If you point out, as I like to, that the state of governance in India would not be as bad as it is if the bureaucracy was as good as it believes it is, they blame the political class. They tell you that the politicians who get elected these days are of inferior quality and this is why governance is a mess. But is it not the job of the permanent civil service to guide semi-literate, often inexperienced politicians in the right direction?

... contd.