I.A.S. & I.P.S.

I was talking to a friend yesterday and the question of Doctors and Engineers becoming IAS or IPS Officers turned up and I remembered an incident that happened during my college days. Those were the days when the National Cadet Corps (NCC) was running full fledged and I was a cadet. Just before the final year of my college studies, we had a NCC camp and our Commandant was briefing us about the rules that have to be followed during the course of the camp and the equipment that we should bring with us.

After this briefing, the Commandant asked us what we were going to do after the completion of our undergraduate studies. Most of us said that we would try for a job, some said that they would go in for higher studies etc. Then when it came to the turn of our Under Sargent (a Mechanical Engineering student), he said that he was going to do his IPS - this was way back in 1972. Our commandant flew into a rage. He wanted to know why the Under Sargent opted to do Engineering if he intended to go and become an IPS officer. He might as well have done a B.A.. or a B.Sc. and left the Engineering seat to a person who would practice what he had learned, maybe for the good of the country. He asked the student whether he knew what the Government was spending for his studies, and also the time he had wasted and the time and effort that his lecturers have wasted imparting their specialized knowledge to a person who was not prepared to use the knowledge and skills that he had gained during a span of five year.

This just left me wondering and wondering.