Reading memoirs of senior bureaucrats can be both revealing and boring. If they offer a peek into the making of history, the accounts can often come with a hefty dose of sermonising. Retirement can sometimes give the author a larger-than-life persona, with smugness creeping in over doing what was right and fighting the good fight. The ability to laugh at oneself is perhaps the last thing that survives in many such memoirs.
Readers can approach JS Deepak’s I Dared to Dial Differently without any such trepidation. Happy to poke fun at bureaucrats, ministers, the system he served and, occasionally, himself, his memoir is as entertaining as it is revealing about how government and policymaking actually work. A 1982-batch Uttar Pradesh-cadre IAS officer, Deepak had a 38-year career spanning personnel, industry, health, education, telecom and trade. He served as secretary, telecom and IT, and also as India’s Ambassador to the WTO in Geneva.
I have known Deepak since he joined the Department of Telecommunications as joint secretary, telecom, and that makes some parts of the book particularly personal. I still remember my first meeting with him when he was briefing journalists on the 3G auction design. Unlike a conventional bureaucrat, he was handing out his visiting card to journalists and asking them to call if they needed details or wanted to understand anything better. It was a simple but unusual gesture in a system where access to senior officials was often carefully rationed.
The telecom chapters consequently have a special resonance. Deepak’s account of the 3G auction shows the painstaking work behind creating a transparent, market-based mechanism after the 2G controversy. The auction eventually fetched Rs 1.06 lakh crore, almost 5.5 times the reserve price, and he mentions that the Financial Express called it the “best of breed of telecom auction”. But Deepak also revisits the 2G controversy and makes a claim that could itself generate headlines.
While agreeing that there was a real loss to the exchequer, he maintains that the CAG’s Rs 1.76 lakh crore estimate actually underestimated it and that the loss should have been more than Rs 2 lakh crore. His reasoning is that the CAG treated the 800 MHz and 1800 MHz spectrum allocated for 2G as economically comparable to the 2100 MHz and 2300 MHz spectrum auctioned for 3G/broadband wireless access. Deepak writes that lower-frequency spectrum requires far fewer towers for the same geographical coverage, making it more valuable. It is an argument that is bound to reopen an old and politically charged debate.
The BSNL episode is perhaps even more revealing because it shows the cost of dissent, and here the Financial Express plays a direct role in the narrative. Deepak had questioned a Rs 36,000-crore procurement when BSNL’s market share was declining, and the tender had effectively been reduced to a single bidder. He estimated that the proposed deal could result in an overpayment of more than Rs 8,600 crore. On December 24, 2009, cabinet secretary KM Chandrasekhar called Deepak to his office.
Referring to a front-page Financial Express story headlined “BSNL expansion plans questioned”, he asked him: “Are you the officer who gave the dissent note to the BSNL board?” Deepak then gave him a no-holds-barred briefing, following which the cabinet secretary began dictating a note to the prime minister. The Central Vigilance Commission eventually advised that it would not be prudent to process the tender, while the Sam Pitroda committee recommended scrapping it. Deepak notes that the FE investigation described it as a “bid that would’ve cost BSNL a bomb”.
But it would be a mistake to read the book simply as a catalogue of policy battles. Some of its most enjoyable pages are about people, particularly ministers. Deepak’s portraits are candid, sometimes affectionate and sometimes devastating. His treatment of Suresh Prabhu is classic Deepak. He recounts Prabhu launching into a speech about pulses at the inauguration of a medical SEZ called Pulsas. Even after being told that ‘Pulsas’ referred to the medical term pulse rather than the Indian staple, the minister simply carried on talking about the health benefits of pulses.
Anand Sharma gets a different treatment. Deepak describes him as all charm and fluff, a minister who was sociable and generous but left much of the ministry to his officials. The stories of WTO trips and dinners at his favourite Indian restaurant in Geneva bring the human side of diplomacy into what could otherwise have been a dry account of trade negotiations.
Then come the delightful digressions that make this a memoir rather than an administrative case study. The section on Kayasthas is a wonderful diversion into the community’s history, its presence in the bureaucracy and its reputation for food and drink. Deepak moves easily from Kayastha cuisine to alcohol and wine, including his experiences of pairing Indian food with wine in Geneva. Even an account of a jailer persuading a reluctant hangman to turn up for an execution with the promise of two crates of rum is told with an amused eye.
The chapters on the WTO, FTAs and China are useful for understanding Deepak’s policy worldview. His broad argument is that India needs to use its negotiating leverage more effectively at the WTO, pursue FTAs that deliver genuine market access and investment, and compete with China by building scale, skills and manufacturing ecosystems rather than relying only on protection.
These sections are perhaps where the book could have been tighter. Some of the detailed narration of the 3G auction mechanics and WTO negotiations could have been reduced without weakening the larger argument.
What stays with the reader, ultimately, is not the detail of an auction or a WTO negotiating position but the personality behind them. Deepak has had a ringside view of some of the most consequential episodes in the country’s economic and administrative history. He has had his battles, setbacks and disappointments, but the book does not carry the bitterness that often accompanies bureaucratic memoirs. There is enough humour, self-awareness and affection for people to keep the crusader instinct in check.
His account is, therefore, more than an IAS officer’s memoir. It is a ringside account of how the country is governed, made considerably more enjoyable by an author who knows how.
I Dared to Dial Differently: An Insider’s Account of the IAS
JS Deepak
Hachette
Pp 344, Rs 799