List of poetry books written by Indian diplomats

“Once the storm has passed

Once the dust has settled down

Who remembers the blood-sworn vow?

The cloud serpent

Again, steals the water-womb.

The sacrifices made

At the altar of trade

An uneasy head wears the broken crown” —Anshuman Gaur, 2001 batch IFS

Do you know former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao is also a poet? Or that poet-diplomat Abhay K had published five collections of poetry? “When the mood is on, words, thoughts and images flow with ease”, reads the preface of the book — Snowflakes of Time (Poetry Collection) — written by another former foreign secretary, Kanwal Sibal. As Keats wrote once, if poetry comes “not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all”.

Here below are some of the poetry collections written by Indian Foreign Service officers, both serving and retired:

PVRK Prasad, an obituary: 1966 batch retired IAS and close aid of former PM PV Narasimha Rao died, aged 77

A book written by PVRK Prasad

IN MID-1990s, PVRK Prasad was one of the most influential bureaucrats in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). During his four and half years tenure in the PMO, he first served as the joint secretary and then the additional secretary during which period he also handled the post of media advisor to the then prime minister PV Narasimha Rao. PVRK Prasad is no more. According to reports, Prasad…

How the steel frame strangulates “railway officer” Ravina’s ideations…In a fiction by IRTS Ateesh Singh

“Ravina Shekhar starts off ‘Right Time’ from an overcrowded platform just like a newly announced train in the Railway Budget. As she chugs along an over-wrought career path, the steel frame strangulates her ideations and the high horses of power mock her polished percipience. Train operations fascinate her but there are scoffing side games in the loop lines which derail mainline work…” Hold on. Ravina Shekhar is not a real railway officer but a…

Ravinder Kumar, the rail bureaucrat with his best compositions of Rubaiyat and Ghazals

Ravinder Kumar, 1984 batch Indian Railway Personnel Service (IRPS) officer and chief personnel officer of South Central Railways, is coming out with an audio CD titled Khwaab-O-Khyal at the ensuing 1984 batch Civil Services Meet at Indian Habitat Center, New Delhi. The CD contains his best compositions of Rubaiyat and Ghazals. This rail bureaucrat has written a dozen…

Know more about 3 new books on Rashtrapati Bhavan

ON SATURDAY, three books on Rashtrapati Bhavan containing various facets of the President’s estate, were released. Under Pranab Mukherjee as the President of India, a number of new initiatives — multi-volume documentation project, smart gram initiative, visitor’s conference, laureates and leaders summit —were taken up. But which are these three new books and what do they contain? Here is the brief description of each one of those:

Ayodhya Revisited— a new book by former IPS Kishore Kunal claims “Ram temple” was not destroyed by Babur

NOW a former IPS officer Kishore Kunal has come out with a 824-page book —Ayodhya Revisited, and also a new theory — Ram temple of Ayodhya was destroyed during Aurangzeb’s time, and not by Babur as was believed earlier. The new book on Ayodhya written by this 1972 batch Gujarat cadre former IPS (incidentally a batch mate of cop-turned politician Kiran Bedi), has been published at a time when major political parties are gearing up for…

Sentinels of Raising Hill — how 2 civil servants capture North and South blocks alive

ON MONDAY, just a day before the Budget session of Parliament begins, officials of all finance ministry departments had a get-together at the historic Great Hall which is often used as a common passage to cross from one side of North Block (finance ministry ) to other side (ministry of home affairs). Those who were present included expenditure secretary Ratan P Watal, DEA secretary Shakti Kanta Das, revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia, disinvestment secretary Neeraj Kumar Gupta and chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian among others. The occasion was the launch of an exhibition on coins and currency in India, but it was during the function, senior finance ministry official and 1979 batch ICAS officer Mohan J Joseph…

“Masala Bumbu”: How this diplomat brought journalist Inder Malhotra, ex-adviser to PM Baru and environmentalist Pachauri – all in one place

Ambassador Gurjit Singh

WHO could bring veteran journalist Inder Malhotra, former media adviser to PM Sanjaya Baru and environmentalist RK Pachauri, currently battling a sexual harassment charge — all in one place? A book titled “Masala Bumbu: Enhancing the India-Indonesia Partnership” edited by India’s ambassador to Indonesia and 1980 batch IFS Gurjit Singh and…

Pradip Baijal Book: Now, another ex-secretary targets former PM Manmohan Singh

AFTER ex-coal secretary PC Parakh, here is yet another ex-bureaucrat -- former disinvestment and telecom secretary Pradip Baijal – who has written a tale-all book that is expected to hog the limelight for the next few days. There have been striking similarities in the way those two former babus chose to come out with the books. After all, both these former bureaucrats are embroiled in ongoing CBI cases, and their books attempt to reveal…

Sanjay Kumar Panda: Meet the secretary who talked about “zero defect” in a book two decades ago

OVER two decades ago, present textile secretary and 1980 batch Manipur-Tripura cadre IAS Dr Sanjay Kumar Panda published an Oriya book on handloom where he talked about “zero defect”, a phrase that has now caught the imagination of everyone after prime minister Narendra Modi made the “zero defect, zero effect” a national slogan so as to pursue quality in manufacturing. First, let’s see how Panda argued about production of handloom without any defect (zero defect)…

33 Indian diplomats, 1,150 years of experience in IFS and a book on diplomacy

WHEN 33 Indian diplomats who have collectively put in more than 1,150 years in Indian Foreign Service (IFS) decide to pen a book, the final product is bound to be a treasure of thoughts and ideas on international relations and contemporary history. The book titled “India and the World – Through the eyes of Indian Diplomats” edited by former IFS officer Surendra Kumar, is said to be a “healthy cocktail of reflections and reminiscences, hardnosed analysis and…

Govt wants “conducive frame of mind” for bureaucrats, organizes yoga camp, workshops on stress relief

Cover photo of Harry Cohen's "Demonics of bureaucracy"

COME Saturday, the Central government’s new initiative of stress relief-cum-rejuvenating programmes will formally begin in New Delhi. The department of personnel and training (DoPT) will first hold a two-day programme this weekend on stress management for officers of DoPT and the cabinet secretariat. It will be followed by yoga camps, workshops, sports, cultural events etc. for IAS and other government officers across the country. According to the official statement, this exercise will help bureaucrats maintain a “conducive frame of mind” and ensure…

How mythological figures like Hanuman and Vibheeshana can help an Indian diplomat? A book on Applied Diplomacy

THIS book written by a former diplomat and curated by an IAS officer is a ready reckoner for young diplomats. “Applied Diplomacy through the Prism of Mythology” released on Wednesday in Thiruvananthapuram establishes a link between diplomacy and mythology. Written by former ambassador TP Sreenivasan, and curated by 2014 batch IAS officer…

Any guess on UPA ministers, bureaucrats who requested Vinod Rai to drop names from CAG reports?

THIS photo shows former Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) Vinod Rai (standing left) with three UPA ministers: P Chidambaram, Pawan Kumar Bansal and SS Palanimanickam (of the DMK). Rai was the then the banking secretary, and he posed for this official photo ahead of one of Chidambaram’s budgets during UPA-I. Bansal and Palanimanickam were then the MoS, Finance, and in hierarchy Rai was junior to all those three ministers. But days before the release of his supposedly tell-all book, “Not Just An Accountant”, speculations have risen about the names of the UPA ministers who had visited his home with a request to…

Thomas Mathew: More about the IAS who spots 110 species of birds in Rashtrapati Bhavan

A FORTNIGHT ago, the President of India received the first copy of the coffee table book titled Winged Wonders of Rashtrapati Bhavan that tries to capture the avian world inside the Presidential Estate. And the man who brought out this 338-page book after clicking photos of as many as 110 species of birds was none other than additional secretary and 1983 batch Kerala cadre IAS Thomas Mathew. The bureaucrat who...

Beyond the Book: K Natwar Singh’s UPSC interview, his IFS probation and Rs 350 salary

One Life Is Not Enough – Former diplomat K Natwar Singh’s new book will make a good fodder for gossips in Delhi’s corridors of power, at least for the next one week or so, as Singh's is an inside story of the corridor’s biggies with no holds barred. In fact, Singh’s 31-year-long diplomatic career and then the political journey that abruptly ended with oil-for-food scam, were well documented. So, BoI here picks out a few nuggets about Singh’s preferences in civil services exam, and the limited choices he had to splurge his huge salary: Rs 350 per month in 1953.

Pulok Chatterji has leftist leanings, never too enthusiastic about PM’s US focus, claims Baru book

Pulok Chatterji (right) with Manmohan Singh

IF Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s former media adviser Sanjaya Baru is to be believed, “affable, pipe-smoking and understated” Pulok Chatterji has leftist leanings. That’s not all. Baru’s new book, “The Accidental Prime Minister” also claims that Chatterji, thanks to his leftist leanings, was never too enthusiastic about Dr Singh’s focus on improving relations with US, a serious charge hurled against one of the top bureaucrats of UPA’s rule for the last 10 years. In UPA-I, Chatterji was a powerful…

What Sanjaya Baru’s book says about TKA Nair and Pulok Chatterji; PMO reacts

SANJAYA Baru, former media adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called PM’s adviser TKA Nair “a bureaucratic lightweight” who except for a stint in the IK Gujral’s PMO, had neither held the rank of secretary in “any of the powerful ministries on Raisina Hill-home, finance and defence-nor in any key economic ministry”. Baru’s 301-page book titled “The Accidental Prime Minister--The Making and Unmaking Of Manmohan Singh”, published by Penguin, has not even spared current principal secretary Pulok Chatterji, who “like Nair, suffered from…

DoPT document recommends books on integrity, competence, emotional abilities to govt officers

“High Performance with High Integrity” is a book authored by Ben W Heineman Jr and published by Harvard Business School Publishing. A recent Government of India document has recommended this and many other books to enhance competency of Indian bureaucrats. After each chapter of the document called…

Corridor's other NK Singh, Twitter buzz and "Memoirs of a CBI officer"

ON Sunday afternoon, when NK Singh was trending in social media site, Twitter, initial reaction of many was like this: What controversy has Rajya Sabha MP and Nitish Kumar confidant (also a 1964 batch retired IAS and former finance secretary) created now? But the buzz was around the other NK Singh, a former IPS officer who dared to arrest one of India’s most powerful politicians and ex-prime minister…