They were the tumultuous days of UPA-II with scams emerging after scams against the then Dr. Manmohan Singh government. But, nothing stirred when a very senior IAS officer left the quest to reach the top when he was very close to the summit. In a recent tête-à-tête with Indian Masterminds, he revealed the reasons.
He was Secretary of University Grants Commission (UGC) in Ministry of Human Resources Development (HRD) when he found that he was expected to clear a Rs 200 crore project which was completely flawed and skewed. He opposed it in writing. “I gave the UGC Board a counter-proposal to get the same thing done in Rs 1 crore only. They instead got me eased out. I was without a job for five month before being posted in National Bamboo Mission”, he says.
Watch his interview with Indian Masterminds here-
After some time, he was repatriated to his parent cadre – Uttar Pradesh under Ms Mayawati as that time. The story got repeated here as well. He was transferred thrice in three months. His last post was Principal Secretary Higher Education when he was supposed to clear about half a dozen Deemed Universities – “a complete scam”, according to him, “as none of them fulfilled the criterion. They had already greased the palms of higher ups. I decided enough is enough and sought voluntary retirement.”
Dr Sharma turned to literature ever since raising contemporary issues through his writings. He still has no love lost for the system and its fault lines. In some of his writing, characters have been etched so starkly that their similarities with those in real world, is hard to miss. Same is the case with events described in the books. Doesn’t he feel scared? “Probably my books aren’t so popular to have disturbed them”, he chuckles.
Sale and popularity may be subjective things but his literary work is respected enough as is evident from myriad awards he has been honoured with for his writings.
