Not yet tired

The 1959-batch Uttar Pradesh cadre IAS, Surendra Singh rose to become the Cabinet Secretary in 1994. He continues to be active after retirement

- Narendra Kaushik

SURENDRA Singh, a math-ematics post-graduate from Allahabad University, had made up his mind to join the civil services early in his life. India had won her independence only about six years before he went to the university. The ability to contribute to nation building of the newly independent country drew him to this decision. Other options, like joining the corporate sector, did not appeal to him.

Moreover, his father Sumer Singh, an engineer educated at Thomson College of Civil Engineering (now Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkie), knew what the IAS stood for and was in favour of him trying for the elite service. “All of us in the family agreed that I should try to join the civil service,” the 1959-batch Uttar Pradesh cadre IAS, who in August 1994 rose to be the Cabinet Secretary, the highest administrative post in the country, recollects.

Singh cleared civil services examination in 1959 with mathematics and British history and British constitutional history as his main subjects. On May 11, 1959, he joined the IAS Training School, Metcalfe House, Delhi, as a probationer. Three months later, the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) was set up at Mussoorie and he moved there along with the rest of his batch. A year later, nine of them—eight from UP cadre and one from Delhi-Himachal Pradesh cadre— were introduced to the then State Chief Minister, Dr Sampurnanand, in Lucknow.

On May 1960, he was asked to report to LM Bhatia, the then District Magistrate of Varanasi, as an Assistant Magistrate. For the next five months, he was an understudy to different officers, learning about revenue, law, development and other important subjects.