List of comments from retired and serving officers on Delhi's IAS-Neta impasse

Clipping Photo Courtesy: IAS Association Twitter

AGMUT cadre IAS officers on Sunday held an unprecedented press meet in New Delhi's Press Club of India to reiterate how they were not on any strike, and are, in fact, discharging their duties in Delhi administration. The officers, however, added that they skipped some meetings called by the ministers as they were concerned about their safety and dignity after the assault of the Delhi chief secretary at 12 midnight on February 19, 2018. After the press meet of the IAS officers, CM Arvind Kejriwal softened his stand saying that the “officers are part of my family”. But will this lead to any resolution anytime soon? BoI here picks out comments from a few officers -- both serving and retired -- on this IAS versus Neta impasse:

Fashion with a Cause: How civil servants post their photos sporting handwoven saris, jackets

Varsha Joshi, 1995 batch IAS sporting a handwoven sari

REACTING to a trend #IWearHandloom that took social media by storm on Monday, a number of civil servants including Ambassador of India to UNESCO Ruchira Kamboj, joint secretary ranked IAS officers Sumita Misra, Abhishek Singh, Varsha Joshi, Usha Padhee etc., NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, former IFS Nirupama Rao, former IPS Kiran Bedi et al have shared their own photos sporting beautiful handwoven dresses in micro-blogging site Twitter in the last couple of days. The trend began when union textile minister Smriti Irani shared her own photo wearing a blue handloom sari with an appeal for others also to wear…

What provokes IAS officers to oppose lateral entry of specialists and claim they are specialists in governance?

A NEWSPAPER article arguing that prime minister Narendra Modi should have started his innings by ending the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), has provoked a number of IAS officers to resort to social media to strongly defend their contribution to the nation and oppose lateral entry of specialists. Though the article published in a business daily was against “un-fire-able, unaccountable civil service” as a whole, it mainly targeted the IAS with “imperial-era privileges”. Former chief secretary of Delhi Shailaja Chandra, who calls herself an “independent policy analyst” and “Once IAS” argues that the alternative to…

Bureaucratics: By an anarchist’s heart, a historian’s mind and an artist’s eye

IAS officer Varsha Joshi who calls herself a pathological reader has spotted the review of a book titled “Bureaucratics” written by Dutch historian and documentary photographer Jan Banning last year. As described in a blog post (brain pickings), Banning brings “a conceptual, typological approach to the dreariest of desk jobs, blending humor and absurdity with an astute portrait of socio political ineptitude”.
From Indian perspective, the book contains…