SILLY POINT humour mk kaw

SILLY POINT

humour mk kaw

The Expanded Acronym

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F you wish to put down someone who pretends to be a mighty potentate, the easiest way is to expand his acronym in a droll manner. Thus, IBM could find itself designated as ‘Institute for Bungling Morons’. Microsoft may have to come down a peg or two if it is made to say that ‘Most Intelligent Customers Realise Our Software Only Fools Teenagers’. Indian school children make fun of NCC as ‘National Chappal Chor’ and MBBS is expanded to read ‘Miyan Biwi Bachon Samet’.

No wonder the heaven-born service has not escaped the onslaught of wags and funsters. IAS has been lampooned as the ‘Indian Avatar Service’ to right size those members of the tribe who take on airs. It becomes ‘Invisible After Sunset’ as an appropriate description of those who try to ape the lifestyle of Wajid Ali Shah. And for the numbskulls, who periodically put their foot in the mouth, the acronym translates into ‘I Am Sorry’ as a permanent defence mechanism against violent reprisals, judicial, administrative or journalistic.

How far is the criticism justified? Do all or most IAS officers exhibit a nose-in-the-air attitude, looking down upon other human beings as lesser creatures?

The fact of the matter is that the combined onslaught of journalists, writers and other influential members of civil society, such as those untiring scribes of Letters to the Editor columns and those angelic bearers of the ever lit candles at India Gate or Jantar Mantar have reduced their status to  that of babus and pen pushers. A scholarly friend recently informed me that the pejorative expression ‘babu” was derived by our colonial masters from the Bengali phrase for fish, of which their local recruits used to smell all the time.

The implied criticism that senior bureaucrats have stopped drafting policies on momentous issues and are now considered fit only to convert the staccato barks of their political masters into a Government Order couched in chaste bureaucratese is justified. This explains why a large proportion of those whom the CBI books for Tihar Jail are politicians and not bureaucrats....READMORE