V Balasubramanian.
Credit: Special Arrangement
Former bureaucrat V Balasubramanian’s book Fall From Grace: Memoirs of a Rebel IAS Officer will now be available in Kannada.
Titled Kalyana Keduva Hadi (The road to welfare ruin), it has been translated by N Sandhya Rani. The book chronicles corruption in high places.
“This is no boring biography of a lone civil servant,” Balasubramanian tells Metrolife. “It lets you dive deep into the world of ‘insiders’ who closely witness the inner workings of our government.”
The ex-civil servant proudly calls himself a ‘rebel’. “One of the basic civil service rules we’re taught right from the beginning is that we have to keep our eyes and ears open and mouth shut. If you start opening your mouth while in service, you’ll be suspended,” he says.
After joining the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) in 1967, Balasubramanian had the opportunity to work with various chief ministers of Karnataka — Veerendra Patil, Devaraj Urs, R Gundu Rao, S Bangarappa, J H Patel, and S M Krishna. “You find many stories where I refer to the then chief ministers of Karnataka. In the phrase ‘fall from grace’, the fall is not mine but that of the administration,” he quips.
The book talks about scams and controversies and also what earned some politicians a good name. “I’m all praise for chief ministers like Veerendra Patil, Devaraj Urs, and Ramakrishna Hegde. They did not damage the political institutions, but instead protected the bureaucracy. They were collecting money for their parties, not for themselves,” he says.
The English version was published in 2022. Plans for Tamil and Malayalam translations are being discussed.
Kalyana Keduva Hadi, Ladai Prakashana, Rs 600. Available online and in stores soon.