In the grand theatre of governance, where wisdom and prudence were once considered the pillars of administrative service, emerges a voice from the abyss—an erstwhile high-ranking bureaucrat, whom we shall, for the sake of brevity, call the Retiree. This distinguished specimen of public service has taken it upon himself to issue a diktat to the nation: Thou shalt not question the omniscience of the IAS officer in power today, for they are the harbingers of all knowledge and governance.

The Retiree, once perched on the tallest branches of administration, now finds himself croaking from the depths of irrelevance. His proclamations reek of a devotion not to public service, but to a brand of ideological servitude that blinds him to reason, morality, and even the faintest echoes of reality. He has found his true calling not in post-retirement reflection but in a self-righteous crusade against intelligence, progress, and above all, the idea that power should ever be questioned.  

The Gospel According to the Retiree

According to this self-anointed oracle of bureaucracy, any discussion about the plight of farmers, the destitute, or the socially disadvantaged is not an exercise in governance but an act of sedition. To even suggest measures that may alleviate their suffering is, in his lexicon, to flirt with the ghost of Karl Marx. Indeed, the mere act of questioning economic disparity or proposing a fairer system he maligns such an individual with the most damning of all titles—A Communist!  

One would imagine that a person who once wielded the pen of policy and the sword of executive power would at least grasp the basic tenets of governance. But no, the Retiree sees the world through a peculiar prism, where stark ignorance is wisdom, mental derailment is intellectual prowess, and logic is but an unfortunate affliction of the weak-minded. His convictions, as unshakable as a weathered bureaucratic file gathering dust in a forgotten ministry, are not merely wrong but stunningly oblivious to their own contradictions.  

Trump, Putin, and the Retiree’s Political Waltz

The Retiree’s ideological compass points resolutely to the extreme right, and his devotion to the gospel of Donald Trump is near religious. Why? Because Trump, like Retiree, thrives on the belief that knowledge is overrated, that institutions exist to be dismantled, and that those who question authority are to be ridiculed rather than heard. But here lies the comedy of it all: while the Retiree worships Trump as the supreme leader of the far-right, he conveniently ignores the rather inconvenient reality that Trump himself now embraces Vladimir Putin, a man who—by any stretch of the Retiree’s fevered imagination—would qualify as an extreme communist.  

But such glaring contradictions do not trouble the fortified walls of the Retiree’s mind, for inside that citadel of circular logic, only one rule exists: I am right, because I say so. The fact that Trump, his ideological messiah, is dancing a diplomatic tango with a leader the Retiree would otherwise despise does not cause him the slightest distress. No, because to acknowledge such paradoxes would require a cognitive flexibility that he has long since abandoned in favor of the simple, comfortable dogma of the far-right echo chamber.  

The Bureaucratic Landmines in India’s Progress

The Retiree’s existence is not merely a minor embarrassment to the IAS fraternity; he is a cautionary tale, a stark reminder of how the corridors of power sometimes breed men who mistake their titles for infallibility. The Indian Administrative Service, for all its imperfections, has been the backbone of governance for nearly eight decades. It has weathered crises, delivered policies, and, at times, served as the last line of defense against political waywardness.  

But then, there are anomalies like the Retiree—bureaucratic landmines, waiting to explode with ignorance, bigotry, and an inexplicable hostility to progress. Such individuals do not merely fail to serve the people during their tenure; they continue their reign of intellectual terror long after retirement, spreading their warped legacy with the enthusiasm of a zealot.  

A Nation’s Imperative: Shun the Croakers

If India is to move forward, it must learn to distinguish between administrators and ideological zealots, between wisdom and dogma, and most importantly, between governance and hollow grandstanding. The Retiree represents the rot that festers when power is mistaken for intelligence, when ideology eclipses logic, and when the civil services, meant to be impartial and rational, become breeding grounds for blind allegiance to extremism.  

We must not merely reject such individuals—we must hold them accountable for the damage they do, both in service and in retirement. The true measure of an administrator is not in the power they wield, but in the integrity with which they wield it. And by that measure, the Retiree, in all his croaking glory, is nothing more than a lamentable footnote in the annals of bureaucracy—a relic best left in the past, as India strides toward a future where governance is dictated not by ideology, but by reason and justice.