Reading habits of officers

Maninder Singh

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The reading habits of IAS officers evoke considerable interest. Macaulay’s outline of the kind of officers needed for the ICS in India hinted at well-read individuals of broad understanding, liberal education and well-versed in the arts and sciences.

Since the establishment of the civil service in India, the habit of reading appears to have declined.  There was a Director in the Academy who constantly espoused the virtues of reading and passionately suggested that officers should read three national dailies, an equal number of “pink papers” and a couple of “locals”.  He also recommended a new book every week.

The above prescription seems to have done wonders for his son. As mentioned in this column earlier, that gifted boy is now the Chairman of Microsoft Corporation, although one wonders how seriously he took his father’s advice, and whether any such counsel was ever given to him.

Lulled into complacency

It is often said a majority of IAS officers seldom feel the need to read, once they have made it to the service. Having sat through a grueling exam, and having read all manner of guides, magazines, old college notes, text-books, general studies tomes and “hand downs” from successful candidates, they could be excused for being lulled into complacently thinking that all that was worth reading had been read.

In the 80s, it used to be suggested that once IAS officers reach the entrance-gates of the Academy, they only deign to read a Bradshaw — the authoritative railway time-table of the age of trains.  Or, at best, a current affairs magazine or an erudite local daily such as the Ranchi Times, compared to which those who read The Tribune might consider themselves to be part of an eminent and exclusive Ivy League.

An officer I knew invariably had stacks of well-preserved well-thumbed suitably dog-eared copies of Debonair magazine lined up triumphantly on his study-desk. He claimed they were erudite, kept him motivated, and imparted useful instruction in the manner of an Ottoman Sultan, who had a great library and a greater harem, and had boasted intemperately that they were meant for the twin purposes of esoteric knowledge and wordly wisdom.

There were “loyal” officers, who continued to subscribe to the magazines and newspapers they had read, while preparing for the “mains”, which they believed had catapulted them to the stellar heights in Mussoorie and, therefore, treated them as talismans. 

Some officers, who were not great readers, had somehow managed to read a book or two in their leisure hours. These books, then, such as Roses in December were constantly quoted, in the most inappropriate of situations or circumstances.  One officer had surmounted the challenge of reading the voluminous Nice Guys Finish Second.  He would, thereafter, quote incessantly, making many of the anecdotes appear as parts of a grand personal narrative.

Personal diaries

Then there was a bunch of avid readers, who believed in professional and focused reading of their room mates’ personal diaries. An IFS officer, who is an Ambassador now, was a prolific writer of a notebook, whose size swelled by the day.  He was helped in his motivation to write, by the much corroborated fact that he had lately fallen in love. To the pages of that virgin diary were confessed and recorded, in minute detail, for generations yet to come, all the trials, tribulations, heart-aches and unaccustomed joys of first love.

Unbeknownst to the diary writer and budding diplomat was a lurking roommate, whose chief interest in life had metamorphosed into daily reading of the diary and sharing the contents with admiring batch-mates, thirsty for vicarious knowledge and experience. I wonder if that officer ever realized the power and influence of his literary outpourings and whether he ever came to know how critically they were analysed, acclaimed, chewed and digested.

Great Bond

One memorable day, the great Ruskin Bond came.  He was the only writer to ever grace the Academy precincts in our time. A man more lovable, humble and down-to-earth is hard to find.  Although some probationers read many of his books, I wonder how many of us learnt humility from the interaction with the endearing author. 

I remember reading Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in the warm forever-empty reading room of the library, much before the movie made the book even more famous. The first lines of the novel are still etched in memory, ‘In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me a word of advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since’.

There were those officers who read and did little else but read.  Books from the library were carried even into the classrooms, where they fulfilled, amidst the most arid of guest lectures, all the promise of golden hours and transported the runaway reader to realms of gold.    

— The writer is an Assam cadre IAS officer currently on deputation in Chandigarh