Dilip Cherian | Trust Seasoned Hands, Not Sound Bites, To Smooth Delhi-Dhaka Ties

India-Bangladesh relations today feel like they’re running on muscle memory, while politics keeps tugging at the steering wheel. For years, the relationship worked because institutions, security agencies and seasoned diplomats on both sides quietly did the heavy lifting. Now, when tempers flare and rhetoric rises, their experience matters more than ever. Thankfully, India has a formidable bench of people who understand Bangladesh beyond the headlines.

Look at the depth of institutional memory India possesses. Former R&AW hands such as Amitabh Mathur, Amar Bhushan, Ravi (C.K.) Sinha, Shashi Bhushan Singh, Alok Tiwari, R. Kumar and officers like Shashi Bhushan Singh Tomar have spent decades building networks, countering misinformation, handling crises and shaping quiet backchannel understanding. Add to that seasoned neighbourhood watchers like Alok Joshi, Ashok Sinha and Vivek Johri, and you see why India’s strategic brain trust is deep.

Even the Intelligence Bureau has officers who know Bangladesh from ground reality, not PowerPoint briefings — people like Sheel Vardhan Singh, Balbir Singh, Surendra Singh, Ramakant and Sumit. Diplomatically too, voices such as Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty have long cautioned that our Bangladesh policy cannot be driven by ego or electoral reflexes.

Which is precisely the challenge today. Dhaka’s political volatility and rising nationalist pressures have made diplomacy reactive rather than strategic. Visa disruptions, rhetorical blame games, and episodic friction show what happens when politics outrun institutional wisdom.

For stable ties. Delhi must lean on this institutional memory — the officers who understand nuance, can read Bangladesh’s domestic pulse, and know when to use firmness and when to use patience. Relations aren’t collapsing; they’re being stress-tested. And this is when seasoned hands, not sound bites, should guide the relationship.

Gujarat: Prime postings, familiar faces

There’s a curious rule of gravity in Indian bureaucracy: spend time in Delhi, return to your cadre, and you somehow land a little closer to power than when you left. Gujarat offers a textbook case. Officers who’ve done stints in the Union government — especially anywhere near the Prime Minister’s Office — seem to glide smoothly into the state’s most influential chairs. Coincidence? Maybe. But patterns like these rarely lie. They usually tell you something about power, comfort zones, and a state government that clearly prefers familiar hands on the wheel.

Truthfully, Delhi-returned officers do bring weight. Exposure to the PMO, big-ticket ministries, and national policy machines gives them scale, visibility, and a ringside view of how politics and governance truly tango. Any government would want that expertise. The problem begins when this turns from a professional advantage into an unofficial entitlement program.

Because what does it say to equally capable officers who stayed back, kept systems running, faced public heat, dealt with the grind, while someone else comes back from the capital and jumps the queue? Merit starts to look suspiciously like “central connections.” And when governance starts smelling like a loyalty ecosystem, morale and institutional fairness quietly take a hit.

Gujarat prides itself on efficiency and administrative discipline. But efficiency isn’t just about trusted names and cosy familiarity. It’s also about widening the talent pool, rewarding competence grounded in state reality, and resisting the temptation to build a closed circle of Delhi-certified insiders.

Sure, this trend may make political management easier. And when posting patterns mirror proximity rather than performance, it’s not just a bureaucratic quirk but a governance signal. The question is: Who’s it really meant for?

Rajasthan Housing Board’s curious concession to babus

The Rajasthan Housing Board (RHB), established to bring the housing dream closer to economically weaker, lower, and middle-income individuals, has quietly employed a regulatory sleight of hand by slashing administrative charges for IAS, IPS, and IFS officers purchasing luxury flats. Gone from the usual 10 per cent to a cosy five per cent, this tweak translates into roughly Rs 8-9 lakh in savings per flat for senior officers. Meanwhile, the very citizens the board was supposed to champion continue to pay full freight with no such concession in sight.

This appears to be a classic case of policy capture by design. The housing board’s mandate, enshrined in statute nearly five decades ago, is unambiguous: facilitate housing schemes that serve public needs, with transparency and fairness at the core. Yet here we are, watching a body created for equitable access hand out elite perks to the elite themselves.

This isn’t merely optics. It’s the subtle reinforcement of an old trope that public institutions ultimately serve the system that powers them, not the people they were set up to uplift. If we’re serious about housing for all, babu incentives must align with social equity, not cushy deals for the officer class. In its current avatar, the RHB appears to have lost its compass, and its public mandate along with it.