By Sharad Gupta

It was sometime in 1994-95 when the 1979-batch IAS officer Vijay Shankar Pandey felt stifled and suffocated within the service as most of the people around him was ‘neck-deep in corruption’. IAS officers are supposed to be the most powerful people in the government. Yet Pandey felt helpless. He mustered courage and started a movement to clean up the system. And the laundry service had to start from the top – the IAS officers.

They launched a campaign to ‘identify three most corrupt’ in their own cadre. Identification was to be done by secret ballot by 550 members of the UP IAS Officers Association. The ‘corrupt’ being in majority tried their best to torpedo the move. They even tried emotional card – the movement will not only malign the service, give it a bad name, but also break its unity and harmony, was the argument supplied. This also didn’t cut ice but the only consolation for them was that results of the voting won’t be declared unless a person was voted as ‘most corrupt’ at least 100 fellow officers.

Read the full story https://indianmasterminds.com/book-review/ringside-view/politics-is-the-fountainhead-of-corruption-in-bureaucracy-says-ex-ias-officer/