In a lengthy social media post on Monday, Daulat Desai, a 2008-batch IAS officer, serving as joint director in Maharashtra’s Medical Education and Drugs Department (MEDD), announced his resignation from the prestigious service, saying it was “quite depressing to lie dumped in the backyard.”
Before being moved to MEDD, the senior bureaucrat served as Kolhapur’s collector and was in charge of managing the 2019 floods, which devastated the western Maharashtra district. Even though the flooding severely damaged the agriculture and property, his management of the situation was generally praised.
Desai said in his post: “With mixed emotions, I inform you all that I have resigned and voluntarily left the so-called steel frame, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS), leaving behind all that power, security, status, and reputation! Although seeking good health is the immediate motivation behind this choice, Desai wrote in the post that it was extremely distressing to be dumped in the backyard, especially after completing the most difficult stint as Collector and District Magistrate Kolhapur.”
Desai said that he sidelined the entrenched interests of the strong, established, and powerful in the social hierarchy and always focused on the voices of the helpless and vulnerable. “My decisions didn’t tremble, but my hands did,” he wrote in his social media post. “I occasionally accepted criticism from folks who were offended and dissatisfied with it. I did what I could within the confines of the laws and regulations to advance society,” he continued.
The bureaucrat declared that it was time to let go of the “aura” of IAS, become a “ordinary man,” and fight for survival in society. “I am content and fulfilled, with absolutely no regrets.”
Desai later stated that his decision to resign was motivated by his want to “pursue something new,” not by his desire to wait until retirement age, in keeping with his disbelief in that idea. The officer further addressed the reference to a sentence from his post about feeling dropped in the backyard, explaining that he said so since his most recent posting was “very calm” in comparison to his previous deployment in Kolhapur, which was a “happening area.”