Why India Turns Straightforward Officials into Celebrities

Tukaram Mundhe has not discovered a new philosophy of government. He has, by the standards of Indian public administration, done something far more unusual: he has enforced the rules in public, and with visible intent. Since taking charge in May as commissioner of Maharashtra’s Food and Drug Administration, the 51-year-old has led inspection drives that uncovered pest infestations, poor hygiene and expired food in restaurants and other food businesses. He has also drawn attention to the gulf between what hospitals pay for common medical supplies and what patients are charged.

The result has been an odd kind of celebrity. Videos and images from his inspections have spread widely online, and many people have reacted as though a functioning regulator were a rare species. That, of course, is rather the point. In a country where citizens often associate government offices with delay, repeated visits and indifferent treatment, visible enforcement can look almost heroic.

Mundhe is not alone in this category. In Gurugram, district town planner RS Batth won praise for acting against illegal construction and encroachments. Earlier generations had their own bureaucratic saints: TN Seshan, who became famous in the 1990s for strict election enforcement; Kiran Bedi, whose hard line in policing made her a household name; Ashok Khemka, who became known after intervening in a land transaction; and police officer Neeraj Jadaun, praised for confronting a mob during religious violence in Delhi in 2020. The pattern is familiar enough to be almost comical. A civil servant does the job, and the public behaves as though a miracle has occurred.

Yet the admiration is not hard to understand. As retired civil servant Kamal Kant Jaswal puts it, what should have been normal has become exceptional. Thousands of officials do their work without attracting attention, he notes, often because it is less visible or involves little direct contact with citizens. But for ordinary people, the experience of the state is often a long queue, a stamped form, and a promise deferred.

There is, however, a reason these officers also attract criticism. Enforcement can look tidy from a distance and brutal up close. Mundhe has faced criticism from parts of the food and hospitality industry, while Batth has been accused of selective action that falls hardest on vulnerable people. Both deny acting arbitrarily, and both say they are following the rules. That may be true, and it may also be incomplete. A street vendor’s stall may be illegal on paper and the family’s only income in practice. An unauthorised structure may offend town-planning doctrine and still be the only roof a migrant can afford.

This is where the romance of the no-nonsense bureaucrat collides with the arithmetic of daily life. Rules matter. So does the country in which they are enforced. Pushpa Sundar, who briefly served as a civil servant and has written on development issues, says officers can face political pressure and transfers when they refuse improper demands. She argues that they need stronger institutional backing if they are expected to stand their ground. Jaswal knows the problem from experience: in 1974, as district magistrate of Uttarkashi, he says he refused several requests from a senior minister contesting a state election, only to receive his marching orders soon after the minister won.

Social media has made this old tension more theatrical. An action once confined to a district can now be filmed, shared and turned into a national talking point within hours. Mundhe’s inspections have benefited from that machinery of attention, though he himself insists the issue is simple: the rules exist, public-health concerns are real, and compliant businesses have nothing to fear.

That may be true as far as it goes. But the larger lesson is less flattering. When basic government functions are carried out consistently and in the open, they appear extraordinary precisely because so many people have learned to expect the opposite. A country should not need to turn its regulators into celebrities. Then again, countries often get the incentives they tolerate.

Written by Thorben Thiede thorben.thiede@alpineweekly.com