Bada babus can have a tipple at IAS Academy

The prestigious IAS academy in Mussoorie is raising the bar, but of a different kind.

For the first time in the history of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie, the training school for the country's future bureaucrats, a liquor bar was opened recently in the officer's mess, according to reports. The bar is said to be for senior Babus who visit the pristine Queen of Hills since in-house training courses have become quite frequent, sources quoted in a report said.

So, while senior Babus are kept in good humour, will the probationers be left to trudge down to Kulri for a bottle or two? According to sources, for the time being, probationers and employees will be prohibited from using the facilities. But, then, don't we all know how prohibition works in institutions and the country. Look at Gujarat where prohibition is in force. Stories abound about liquor being injected into tomatoes and apples and sold for a premium.

Sure enough, there's a debate brewing in cyberspace on the pros and cons of the bar in the Academy's premises. Raj Nandy, a management consultant, writes that the move is not right for an academy that trains future “second-rung ‘rulers' (the first being the elected representatives or politicians) responsible for implementation of public policy.”

While denying that he has any moral hang-ups over drinking alcohol, he questions the “relevance and primacy of a pub in an eminent national institution which was set up to instil, inter alia, noble sentiments of dedicated public service into its trainees”.

“Can we lag behind?”

However, there's another view. “If there can be bars for Armed Forces cadres, then why not for IAS probationers? I wonder why it took so long to open…After all, we are training bureaucrats, not sanyasis,” writes a blogger.

But Nandy feels that the Academy is “nullifying the very purpose of its establishment or existence by letting these young minds wrapped up in their hedonistic side during their budding years of the ‘probation'..., especially at an age when pleasure-loving emotions are said to be relatively stronger ...”

As the debate rages, the tipplers among would-be Babus are sure to follow good, old Omar Khayyam and “...rather be merry with the fruitful grape, than sadden after none, or bitter, fruit...” Nation-building can wait.

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