Mr Statistically-Suspicious IAS Officer : Sir, we must ensure that a start-up does not become a proxy/front for large foreign or domestic shareholders. Therefore, we should stipulate ‘that no single shareholder shall invest more than 10 percent in the equity capital’.

Mr Structurally-Suspicious IAS Officer : But sir, you know how these large corporations can create layers of ownership behind a corporate veil. So we should add ‘directly or indirectly’ in the definition of a ‘single shareholder’. (Gosh, by inserting just this ‘innocuous provision’, our do-gooder officer has made it virtually impossible to certify the ‘parentage’ of an investor. This poor fellow will have to file a bunch of biographies, whose authenticities will need to be security checked, from Sacramento to Sitamarhi!)

Mr Small-Fetish IAS Officer : And sir, can we really call the second venture launched by Flipkart’s founders a ‘start-up’? After all, they are dollar billionaires now. So we should add a ‘second proviso’ that these benefits will be available ‘only to the first venture of a first-gen entrepreneur’. (Now go figure this one out — who is ‘first gen’ and what is his/her ‘second venture after a successful first exit’. As you can see, by now the policy has become utterly un-implementable.)

Mr Final-Nail-in-the-Coffin IAS Officer : Sir, we must distinguish between start-ups which add to the tech/innovation ecosphere, as opposed to somebody setting up a ‘ pakoda’ (fried potatoes) shop. So sir, these concessions should be made available only to those start-ups which are duly certified by the Inter-Ministerial Board set up under DIPP to identify an ‘innovative business operation’.

There you go again! Even before the ink has dried on Prime Minister Modi’s instruction to create a ‘21st century paradigm to equip Indian entrepreneurs to take on the world’, his elite IAS brigade has created devilish rent-seeking powers in the hands of the Station House Officer (SHO) of Sitamarhi, Bihar (and perhaps also at the Precinct of Sacramento, but we can’t be sure about that).

Modi @4: Digital India Colonised, by IAS!

PM Modi’s Comments Against IAS Officers: Babu Minds Need to be Rewired; Sacking IAS Won’t Do Nothing

Sab kuchh babu hi karengey. IAS ban gaye matlab woh fertiliser ka karkhana bhi chalayega, chemical ka karkhana bhi chalayega, IAS ho gaya toh woh hawai jahaz bhi chalayega. Yeh kaun si badi takat bana kay rakh di hai humnay?

Translation: Will babus (an unflattering, mocking description of Indian bureaucrats from the colonial era) run everything? Just because they’ve cleared an IAS exam, does it also mean they’ve become competent to run fertiliser factories, chemical industries, even fly aircraft or manage airlines? What is this all-conquering force (perhaps he meant ‘Frankenstein’?) that we’ve created?

Prime Minister Modi’s acerbic barb in parliament against IAS officers, a constituency thought to be among his ‘pets’, shocked everybody. Never one to lose control or use unmeasured words, he clearly wanted to jolt and petrify listless bureaucrats. This was music to my ears. I’ve written countless columns bemoaning how IAS clansmen have kept our economy chained and caged in archaic, anti-competitive, ‘socialist’ policies that have ironically spurred unbridled crony capitalism.

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Topics: PM Modi IAS officer Bureaucracy

Published: 17 Feb 2021, 8:25 PM IST

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‘Babu Minds’ Need to be Rewired; Sacking IAS ‘Won’t Do Nothing’

The reality is that unless IAS officers give up levers of economic policy-making, their cynicism will be contagious.

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Topics: PM Modi IAS officer Bureaucracy