Tiger Hunting Stories

Book excerpt: 'An IAS officer's must-read anecdotal account of how official karma prevails over personal dharma.' - Y.V. Reddy, former RBI governor India is famous for Jim Corbett's tales of hunting man-eaters in the Kumaon region. Equally fascinating are the tiger hunting tales that senior bureaucrats recount, of achievements real and imagined, when they look back on their career. K. Pradeep Chandra has many stories of this kind to tell, and for those interested in the IAS, they are of immense use. From a career that spanned thirty-four years, there are examples of fighting corruption, ignorance and casteism. There are also problems that defy solution - an old woman whose insistence on division of land results in a tragedy, an attempt to find an acceptable solution to ownership of shifting lanka (island) lands in Rajahmundry. And there is a taut chapter on a prolonged negotiation with naxalites when lives of fellow officers are at stake; a lesson that a course book may not offer. Pradeep Chandra also shares about the challenges of working with powerful politicians like N.T. Rama Rao, Chandrababu Naidu and K. Chandrasekhar Rao. At the beginning of his career, his father had told him, 'If you can make a concrete difference in the lives of 100 poor people, you would have some meaning in your life.' As the author discovered, this was perhaps the hardest thing to accomplish, and what gave his work the truest value.