Dilip Cherian | Why India Sent A Retired Cop As NSA To Port Louis

When India quietly decided to send Rahul Rasgotra to Port Louis as National Security Adviser (NSA), it wasn’t just another routine posting. It was a deliberate signal.

For years, the Mauritius NSA position has typically gone to officers with a strong external intelligence or military background. Mr Rasgotra breaks that mould. A retired IPS officer whose career was shaped by domestic intelligence, counterinsurgency and border management, first in the Intelligence Bureau and later as director-general of the ITBP, he brings a very different sensibility to the role. That difference is precisely the point.

Mauritius today is no longer merely a friendly island bound to India by history and diaspora ties. It has emerged as a strategic gateway in the Indian Ocean Region, central to maritime security, cyber networks, financial intelligence and counter-radicalisation efforts. At the same time, China’s footprint on the island has been expanding steadily, if quietly. In this setting, sentiment counts for little; situational awareness counts for everything.

Mr Rasgotra’s appointment suggests India is rethinking how it defines “external” security. Many of today’s threats are hybrid in nature — cyber intrusions, illicit financial flows, extremist networks and grey-zone influence operations. These do not respect borders or bureaucratic silos. They demand an officer who understands how internal security vulnerabilities spill outward, and how external pressures seep inward.

Seen this way, the choice is less a departure and more a recalibration. India appears to be prioritising ground-level intelligence, institutional coordination and threat anticipation over traditional diplomatic optics. Mauritius, after all, is no longer just a friendly outpost; it is a strategic listening post in a crowded ocean.

The VRS wave in Uttar Pradesh

There’s something quietly unsettling about the recent spate of voluntary retirement pleas by senior IAS officers in Uttar Pradesh. This isn’t the usual background grumbling of a stressed cadre. When experienced babus start opting out mid-career, it begins to look like a pattern.

Officially, the reasons are predictable — health, personal priorities, family considerations. Unofficially, the whispers are louder and far less benign. Career stagnation, stalled empanelments, blocked central deputations and a growing sense of professional suffocation feature prominently in private conversations. For many, the prevailing sentiment seems to be that the system no longer rewards competence or experience, but rather proximity and visibility.

What sharpens the unease is the perception that only a handful of districts and postings act as real career springboards. If you’re not in the right place at the right time, your trajectory flattens early. Over time, that breeds disengagement. And disengagement, in a service built on motivation and institutional pride, is corrosive.

Equally telling is the near-complete silence of the UP IAS Association. Once a forum for collective introspection and quiet course correction, it now appears largely ornamental. When officers stop even voicing concern internally, it usually means they’ve concluded that speaking up achieves little.

This matters because Uttar Pradesh isn’t just any state. It prides itself on scale, ambition and governance reform. But reforms need seasoned hands to execute them. When senior babus choose exit over endurance, the state doesn’t just lose numbers, but it loses institutional memory, administrative ballast and mentorship for the next rung.

A red card for the steel frame?

The removal of IAS officer Santosh Verma in Madhya Pradesh is one of those rare moments when the system doesn’t just clear its throat politely but actually raises its voice. Between a viral video with deeply offensive caste remarks and serious questions about how his own promotion papers were stitched together, the state government clearly decided this wasn’t something that could be managed with a quiet transfer and a stiff note in the file.

What tipped the scales wasn’t just Mr Verma’s now-infamous comment on reservation and inter-caste marriage — tone-deaf, incendiary and astonishingly casual for a senior babu. It was the uncomfortable possibility that the man making these remarks may not even have been entitled to wear the rank he held, thanks to alleged forged documents and a questionable integrity certificate. That combination is toxic: prejudice on camera and procedural impropriety on paper.

The government’s decision to recommend dismissal, which really is the nuclear option in service law, suggests this case has moved well beyond damage control. It’s about institutional credibility. The IAS isn’t just another job; it trades heavily on moral authority. When an officer appears to misuse both speech and system, the fallout isn’t personal; it’s structural.

Of course, Verma will get his day in court, and due process must run its course. But the larger question lingers: how did things get this far without alarms going off earlier? Was everyone asleep at the wheel, or was it one of those cases where inconvenient facts were politely ignored?