Dilip Cherian | In Poll-time TN, Lack Of Command Clarity Is Process, Not Malfunction
If you thought the battles for dominance in Delhi were complicated, Tamil Nadu offered a tighter, sharper version: two authorities, one position and zero clarity. Amid the election season chaos triggered by the Election Commission of India, a new DGP took charge and immediately assigned additional charge of DVAC to an IPS officer. Hours later, the home secretary stepped in and appointed someone else for the same role. Same day, same government, two orders.
In theory, hierarchy should solve this. DGP runs the police; The minister of interior manages the administration. The files need to move in a straight line. They seem to have come back on their own here. Of course, the Election Commission’s previous amendment had already confused the scenario; had assigned the same charge and then actually withdrawn it. The DGP appears to have read the first note; The interior minister read the fine print. Less ego clash, more comment duel.
But this is not about religious confusion. DVAC is not just another department; This is the anti-corruption nerve center of the state. Control over this is more about leverage than procedure.
We’ve seen this pattern before, especially in elections. Authority becomes flexible, procedure becomes creative, and uncertainty…becomes beneficial. Call it a turf war, a procedural glitch, or just administrative theatre. Either way, it’s a reminder: In the Indian State, uncertainty is not a problem. Most often it is this feature.
IAS exit dilemma
We are often told that leaving the IAS is an act of bravery. The popular imagination treats resignation like flipping a switch, but in some cases, it’s closer to petitioning through a system that’s in no rush to let you go.
According to the rules governing the All India Services, the resignation of an IAS officer is merely an “offer” until the government accepts it. There is no fixed timeline for this acceptance. This means you can resign and technically remain in service for months or even years.
Before considering your request, the Center conducts its own checks such as state cadre pending dues, contingency and disciplinary cases. If there are any problems, the resignation can be rejected outright.
Even otherwise, the case where the Prime Minister is the ultimate authority in IAS cases goes a long way.
If the government believes that your departure is inappropriate or improper, it may accept the resignation or delay acceptance to ensure “administrative continuity.”
Kannan Gopinathan, whose resignation was reportedly not accepted for years, is in a strange limbo. It is neither completely inside nor outside the system. Or Shah Faisal, who managed to return to office because his resignation was not officially accepted, turning the bureaucratic delay into a legal loophole. There is also financial trouble. Unlike voluntary retirement, resignation means giving up retirement benefits entirely.
This raises an uncomfortable question: If the state can delay your exit indefinitely, is resignation really a right or a warrant? In a service designed to ensure continuity and neutrality, this asymmetry of power may be intentional. Governments don’t like uncertainty, and they even less like outbursts, especially from people who know where the files are buried.
So yes, it is known that it is quite difficult to get into IAS. It turns out that getting out can be even harder.
The real economy we don’t count
Whenever a new case of corruption emerges, the usual reaction is given as if we had encountered an exception. A bad apple. A fraudulent network. A system was briefly derailed. Then come the numbers.
In the case of Subodh Agarwal, associated with Jal Jeevan Mission, the figure hovers around 900 crore and is climbing. It’s a headline trick, but anyone who follows how these things work knows that the true economics of the scam are never fully detailed. Only those that can be proven count. The thing that moves is usually much larger.
Because this is not smash and grab corruption. It was designed. Tendering has been adjusted, qualifications have been adapted and approvals have been harmonized. The money does not disappear, but circulates efficiently along a chain that looks suspiciously like management, often with different beneficiaries.
Herein lies the discomfort. We keep calling these “scams” as if they were intermittent blackouts. However, when you stack these by sectors, states and years, a different picture emerges. It’s a systematic thing. Continually. Almost predictable. At some point, we stop asking how a Rs 900 crore scam happened and start asking how many such flows never make the headlines.
The irony is hard to miss. A plan aimed at distributing water ends up introducing liquidity of another kind. Funds move faster and much more reliably through pipes. Villages are waiting for supply; The system does not do this.
This brings up a strange thought. Clearly, corruption is not a parallel economy lurking in the shadows, but is deeply intertwined with the main economy. Because if you take a step back, this model is hard to ignore. When the numbers are added up, it starts to look less like losses and more like an alternative GDP that is unofficial, uncalculated but very real.
And maybe it’s much bigger than we want to admit.
