Unassuming Gujarat cadre official, often jokingly called 'Ashok Bhatt of bureaucracy'

By Rajiv Shah
At that time I was working in the Communist Party of India (CPI)-supported People’s Publishing House (PPH) as assistant editor, doing the job of book editing. The year was 1977. A year earlier I was picked up by Mohit Sen, a CPI Central Committee member, from National Herald, where I was working as trainee proof reader, getting a stipend of Rs 250.
In the Congress-owned Herald, I was supposed to be learning the “trade of proof reading”, though I would publish articles in the paper. One of my articles – to my utter surprise – was also published as the main article on the editorial page in Patriot, a prestigious left-of-centre daily run by one of the top-notch journalists of those times, Edatata Narayanan, and well known freedom fighter Aruna Asaf Ali. None in the proof reading department, not even the chief proof reader, could ever think of writing in any newspaper.
I knew Mohit from my college days, when he spotted me as a CPI (Marxist)-backed Students Federation of India (SFI) cadre. He was called to deliver a lecture in Kirori Mal College in Delhi University on freedom movement, and I asked him a provocative question on Gandhiji, who was considered an “opportunist” in the CPI(M) scheme of things. I was a little surprised: he said he liked my question and appeared to answer very reasonably.
Be that as it may, one day, while I was still busy doing book editing (most of it was style and proof editing), some of us, who were supposedly more loyal to the CPI ideology, were given passes to go to a drinks-cum-dinner party at the Soviet Embassy. Though a teetotaler, I reluctantly agreed to go – my first ever “high-profile” party. I don’t remember what was the occasion, but I felt a little left out till I spotted the then Sanjay Gandhi protege Ambika Soni entering in. I also saw two others coming along with her -- one shorter than Soni and the other even shorter.
I knew the shorter one pretty well, he was a leader of the Congress-backed National Students Union of India (NSUI). He was very close to Delhi School of Economics post-graduate student Firoz Chandra, who had brought me to the CPI-backed All-India Students Federation (AISF) after SFI split in Delhi 1974. Soft-spoken, very insightful, the NSUI leader was my Indian School Coffee House friend at Delhi School. I exchanged pleasantries with him and the “even shorter person”. I may have shaken hands with the second shorter person, but don’t think I asked his name.
Years passed by. On returning from Moscow where I was posted as special correspondent of Patriot daily, in 1993 I joined the Times of India in Ahmedabad as assistant editor. In 1997-end, I was asked to move to Gandhinagar, the Gujarat capital, to cover Sachivalaya and political affairs. As part of my introductory bid, I would meet one IAS bureaucrat after another – and one of them happened to be the “even shorter” person who had accompanied Soni at the Soviet Embassy party along with the NSUI leader. On meeting him, I immediately recognised who he was: Sudip Kumar Nanda.
I recall Nanda today, because he passed away at the age of 68 in a town near New York, where he was visiting his daughter. On my  very first direct interaction in Gandhinagar I found him to be a very unassuming official. I would often tell him where I had seen him first, the Soviet Embassy, and would ask him how was it that he joined IAS in 1978, a year after the Emergency. Wasn't he close to the notorious Sanjay Gandhi coterie? He would naturally look a little puzzled, but agree that he was at the Soviet Embassy party, and immediately add how he wrote a scathing letter to Indira Gandhi on Emergency, criticising what were then known as Sanjay Gandhi-sponsored Emergency excesses.
Thereafter, during my 14-year stint as the Times of India representative in Gandhinagar, I must have met Nanda umpteen number of times. One of his best qualities was, whenever I would write any scathing tit-bit on him in a column called True Lies, which I mostly handled anonymously till I retired in early 2013, he wouldn't care to show his displeasure. He would would just laugh it out after telling me he had read what had appeared. 

Some journalists covering Sachivalaya, especially my friend Bashir Pathan of Indian Express, would  jokingly call Nanda  Ashok Bhatt (photo) of bureaucracy, and not without reason. One of the senior-most Gujarat ministers under Keshubhai Patel (till 2001) and Narendra Modi (post-2001), Bhatt was known for his very close relations with journalists, something other BJP ministers would avoid, especially under Modi. Another senior minister Vajubhai Vala would make fun of Ashok Bhatt saying, with a newspaper in his hands having  story about him, "he could undergo a painless operation... He wouldn't even need anesthesia"!

Seemed to love publicity (but surely not crazy like Bhatt), Nanda would offer me “exclusive stories” to me whenever I would meet him in person. One of the stories he gave me was on how the department he headed – food, civil supplies and consumer affairs – had decided to encourage, and if possible enforce, distribution of fortified wheat flour. 

Nanda told me why fortified atta was more healthy, even gave me copies of articles in foreign and Indian journals, insisting, what he was doing was something unique in India. It’s quite another thing that a few years later health rights activists came up strongly against fortified food, pointing out how it harmed health. The fortified idea died out after Nanda was transferred out of the civil supplies department.
Nanda believed he was an excellent commentator on things he could write on as a bureaucrat. During my interactions, he would often give me to read his “unpublishable” political commentaries, though as for the articles which he thought were publishable, he would send them directly to my editor, Bharat Desai, with whom he thought he had developed very good rapport. 

If I remember correctly, a couple of them (or one or two more) were published in a column meant for commentaries by experts. Often failing to get any response from Desai on his unpublished pieces, he would want me to pursue and see "what could be done", even hand me over his articles. Desai perhaps found his pieces too repetitive, hence would set them aside.
I don’t know much about where else did Nanda write, but in 2006, he handed over to me his PhD thesis, published in a book form, "Tribal Migration: A Case Study of Dahod District". I decided to take its soft copy, and readily agreed to do a story in the Times of India. The thesis showed the goody-goody side of the Gujarat government’s developmental work in the state’s eastern tribal belt. He claimed he knew tribals and tribal districts in and out, as he had served as district collector and secretary in-charge in  a few of them. 

The book claims, offering what I thought were questionable government data, on how developmental work in tribal areas had drastically helped stall much of the distress migration to other parts of Gujarat, and how tribals had taken advantage of checkdams and other watershed projects to go in for natural farming. All this, I thought, would need to be verified on ground. I wrote a news story based on his thesis (copied here).

Despite being senior-most in his batch (1978), Nanda apparently wasn't in good books of the Gujarat powers-that-be (was it because of his Congress past?), one reason why he couldn't become chief secretary. Instead, he was transferred out of Sachivalaya to be made chairman and managing director of the Gujarat State Fertilisers and Chemicals (GSFC), a state public sector undertaking (PSU) -- nothing unusual when a junior babu is made to supersede a senior one while choosing a chief secretary. Nanda retired from IAS in 2016. 

After my retirement in 2013, I hardly met him, except at a Gujarat Media Club function, where we couldn’t talk much. I presume, as a Times of India man, I needed him for stories, but out of the Times of India things weren't the same, as bureaucracy stopped interesting me as much. I did try to talk over with him on phone a few times, but I regret, I couldn't establish the same rapport. 

Nothing unusual: While  most "seasoned" IAS bureaucrats of about my age have retired since I shifted from Gandhinagar to Ahmedabad, I too have changed my priorities. There are of course some who love to keep in touch with an "old friend", go out of the way to help. One of them suggested to me the domain name for the news blog that I edit now: Counterview. He told me once, "Though we don't meet, we are in touch in the virtual world."

Be that as it may, Nanda was an excellent person, didn't have the aura of arrogance many IAS babus suffer from, spoke out frankly about what he believed in, had the quality of listening to others, sought opinions, and was known for taking quick decisions, something his juniors recall even today.