Why I left the Indian Administrative Service (IAS)?

The present rage on the OTT platform is the movie ‘12th Fail’ which documents the struggles of Manoj Kumar Sharma in becoming an IPS officer. The lives of everyone may not have been as dramatic as that of Manoj, but most of us who took the UPSC Civil Service exams certainly lived some part. The lanes of Rajendra Nagar with its bookstalls and tea shops, or the small pigeon hole rooms in Mukherjee Nagar/Jiasarai are all too familiar to any aspirant. All of us also remember the pile of books that filled the entire room and neatly pasted information posters on the wall.

The gruelling exam cycle went on for more than a year starting from filling out the prelims form, then taking a long subjective Mains exam and finally the terror of the interview board. I still remember that eternal struggle to clock 12-14 hours of study time and looking at pictures of toppers who cleared the exam. Their folklores survived in those Delhi bylanes while they moved on to the LBSNAA Mussoorie. Any successful or unfortunate not so aspirant can talk about these struggles on and on.

I felt like destiny's child when I cleared the exam on my first attempt and entered the hallowed Indian Administrative Service (IAS). I wonder if anything else can match the sudden orbit shift in an ordinary student's life when you turn from an aspirant to a small-time celeb and newspapers and aspirants cannot have enough of your wisdom words. It touches not only you but your entire clan. I remember distant relatives distributing sweets in their neighbourhoods when someone with whom they hardly ever spoke cleared this exam.

So how does one reconcile with leaving something that one struggled for so hard? After reliving a part of that struggle watching 12th fail with family, my son incredulously asks me, "Why did you leave the Indian Administrative Service?”. It was difficult to explain to my toddler what IAS officers did and it is even more difficult to explain why I left.

I owe this answer to many who have been a part of my life. Whatever it is, it was certainly not an easy choice. After 16 years in service, it doesn't remain a service but becomes a way of life, a sort of alter ego or identity that one cannot even imagine leaving. Many still ask what did your parents say? How could your family let you do that?

I do not say that the service did not offer what I was looking for. The kind of diversity, respect and exposure that IAS provides can rarely be matched by anything else. And IAS officers also serve. The exam selects brilliant people and despite challenges in everyone’s professional life, they contribute in different manners. Yes, there are aberrations among IAS officers, but they exist in all walks of life.

Having been there and done that, I can say for sure that it is easier to enter the service than to leave. While one is preparing, you just need to work hard and everything is black and white, you either get selected or you do not. The decision to leave is mired with ifs and buts and everything appears grey. There is the persistent thought of this being a one-way street, with no chance of coming back to this comfort zone of respect and an assured career path. I could live what the poet Kunwar Narayan meant in his poem ‘Antim Unchai’:

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It was difficult but I could also hear a clear voice inside my heart that it was time to move on. There are no rights and wrongs in life, but what matters is if we can hear our inner voice. In the end, everything remains a personal choice based on what one is seeking in life. All the reasons I have can be argued equally against, but I present them in all humility to my friends and well-wishers, who have often tried to understand my thought process.

The first reason was that I felt too comfortable in life. It is difficult to express that, but seeing the next twenty years of my professional life was unnerving in a sense. I had seen a good part of what the service had to offer, and the chances of getting surprised were getting narrowed down. A sign of youth is that one is full of possibilities in life. You can be an entrepreneur or you can travel and explore the world. You can also think of joining the elite IAS. There is a thrill in finding new challenges in life, and continuing here was sort of accepting old age, metaphorically at least.

The next important reason is that I feel India is going to change in the coming decades. I remember how we waited for months to get a landline, and how the world changed with the advent of mobiles. Today's smartphone users cannot even imagine that time. I believe emerging changes will be far greater in the coming decades. I also believe that while the Government would continue to be a regulator and a facilitator, the private sector would be the real leader in this change. Indian per capita income has doubled in the last seven years, and we can only imagine what the next few decades are going to be like. While I had just begun to toy with this idea, I met the founder of a Unicorn. Realising that he could create a wealth of billions of dollars in such a short period was an attractive thought. The creativity, the pace and the horizon to achieve myriad things thrilled me beyond words.

Also, when we think of life in IAS, we often think about life in the field or the districts. There one is closer to real India and creating an impact, however small, gives satisfaction. As one rises the hierarchy, the canvas becomes large. It is difficult to conduct small experiments and see them succeed owing to the scale of impact. Working in the secretariat, be it in a department or any government corporation is somewhat closer to the work in the private sector.

A lingering thought also was that we have only one life. I had seen IAS for sixteen years and I felt excited with the idea of reinventing myself. The modern world is complex and people not only change jobs but their areas of work.

I also felt that we called IAS to be the steel frame of the country but as democracy matures, real representatives of people i.e. elected politicians take charge. In today’s competitive electoral politics where the electorate is impatient for results, politicians love to work with a committed rather than a neutral bureaucracy. There can not be two power centres and thus there is nothing called ‘strong bureaucracy’ in modern times.

In most developed countries, bureaucrats are relegated to the background and civil services are rarely the first career choice. I believe in developing countries like ourselves where the rule of law is still not perfect, being in the services makes certain basic services guaranteed. One is saved from unlawful harassment from the State or can be assured of finding a hospital bed in crisis times like COVID-19. As markets mature and a country progresses, these become less attractive. This may also be seen in the career choices of children of serving bureaucrats, with very few opting for civil services.

It may also be said that a person needs to be self-driven in services like IAS. Government jobs do not offer incentives to innovate and often officials fall into the mediocrity trap. The ecosystem makes it challenging to continuously upgrade oneself. There are other reasons like generating wealth and earning like my other IIT batchmates or having exposure to different kinds but I will not say they mattered when I decided to move on.

It is not that I am not scared, I had more sleepless nights than I had while preparing for the UPSC exams. This was the most difficult decision of my life and I still get nightmares with thoughts like this isn't some ?? ??? ?????? ??, ???? ?????? ???? moment. Maybe this deserves a separate blog and one day I will pen that.

But I am happy and proud I could do this. It wasn't easy and it will not be easy but I am excited. Once again in my life, I feel the sky's the limit and I again have a reason to dream. It has already been more than two months and every day I have butterflies in my stomach. I asked GenAI to generate an image for me entering the unknown and it is the one you see at the top. Wish me luck on this ride!

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