IRMS: A Comedy of Errors, Revisions, and Re-Revisions
Disclaimer:
What I write today is
a modified version of this blog:
https://anindecisiveindian.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-great-irms-hoopla-from-backbones-to.html
Four years ago, the
Indian Railways Management Service (IRMS) was launched with great fanfare, its
ambition pitched as high as a mountain peak: to fuse eight quarrelsome railway
services into one harmonious brotherhood and finally banish the ancient ghost
of departmentalism. But the lofty vision soon sprouted cracks wide enough to
run a Bullet train through without slowing down. After a circus of
somersaults that would make seasoned acrobats weep with professional envy, the
government hit the reset button and returned to the familiar embrace of CSE and
ESE—an old habit burnished as a breathtaking innovation. And to crown the
absurdity, the buzzword IRMS—a
term that somehow meant everything and nothing—was not retired but triumphantly
retained, as though mere nomenclature could mask the retreat. Officers will now
brandish their departments, coyly tucked into parentheses—IRMS (Traffic), IRMS
(Mechanical), IRMS (Accounts), IRMS (Civil)—as if those brackets were magical
cloaks capable of concealing the well-known rivalries simmering underneath. Although the Bard
suggested through the king in Henry VIII that, “Things
done well, And with a care, exempt themselves from fear; Things done without
example, in their issue Are to be fear'd...”, but IRMS has become
such a thoughtless bingo that we are now far beyond fear; we are in the realm
of farce.
I’ve
written enough on this subject to qualify for a frequent-flyer card—across this
book, newspapers, and my blog—so the curious may browse those chronicles for
every riveting twist, turn, and barrel roll. My interest was rekindled when, as
part of the continuing circus, new rules for promotion to Levels 16 and 17 were
unveiled in November 2025. This news item connects:
These
rules, with impeccable comic timing, managed to resurrect the pre-IRMS regime, albeit
with a few moronish flourishes added for seasoning. In this latest masterpiece
of bureaucratic whimsy, eligibility for the post of General Manager—the most
muscular managerial post on IR—did not require having served as
a Divisional Railway Manager. But eligibility for Additional Member, a
Board-level post so non-executive it could practically be done from a hammock, did.
IRMS, of course, is now well and truly deceased after being chopped, changed,
spun, sautéed, and generally overcooked while the ocean was pompously boiled.
What remains are a few such quirky amusements to keep us all entertained, like
toys bobbing cheerfully in the wreckage.
But for now, let us
abandon the beaten track and tiptoe into a terrain where reason waltzes with
absurdity. For despite my best efforts to stay soberly analytical, a jungle
story, utterly unrelated yet strangely apt, keeps clawing its way back into my
thoughts. So indulge me while I share it.
In a jungle not unlike
our bustling human societies, there thrived a lively parliament of eight
arboreal species—monkeys with their incessant chatter, officious parrots fond
of reciting decrees, chameleons who mastered the subtle art of blending in, and
snails who measured progress in millimetres. Lizards basked lazily, claiming
credit for catching flies they had never pursued; sheep huddled nervously,
following the loudest bleat; squirrels scampered about hoarding nuts of dubious
worth; and cats lounged in smug splendour, convinced they were the true
sovereigns despite never lifting a paw. Each creature boasted a nominal
backbone—a unique strength, or so they claimed. Yet as they aspired to higher
branches, those backbones mysteriously shrivelled, replaced by a fashionable
flexibility that served their ambitions rather nicely. One could almost imagine
the nubile Anne from the Bard’s The
Merry Wives of Windsor looking upon them and sighing, “…O,
what a world of vile, ill-favour’d faults looks handsome as a railway babu, er,
officer.”
The jungle’s overseer,
desperate to impose order upon this tree-top tamasha, decided that unity lay
not in embracing differences but in erasing them altogether. And so, with a
flourish worthy of a ruler addicted to whimsy—and invoking the Bard’s notion that
“all the world’s a stage”—he proclaimed that a jungle must be all
things to all beasts, and therefore no beast at all. Thus the animals were
rechristened crabs
and divested of their backbones entirely, to excise the malaise at the root and
usher in a new era of camaraderie. A camaraderie defined by the renowned crab
principle of collective descent. From now on, no animal would beget its own
kind; everyone would simply produce more crabs.
It was
proclaimed that all crabs were equal, though in classic crab logic, some
instantly became more equal than others. These privileged crustaceans, gleaming
with an extra coat of favouritism, were duly handpicked—never mind that the
selection ritual was buried under the smoke and mirrors of a 360-degree survey
conducted among the newly crabified masses of ex-nominal-vertebrates. The exercise was
about as meaningful as a crab attempting synchronised swimming. Bystanders were
left scratching their heads, wondering whether the real criteria were the
sharpness of one’s pinch or the flair displayed at the annual crab dance-off.
Nevertheless,
the crabs adjusted with suspicious ease—proof, perhaps, that adaptability
increases when one loses a spine. The chameleons immediately became star
performers, blending into any crab they were standing next to, sometimes
confusing even themselves. The parrots, delighted with the new arrangement,
launched into daily press briefings that were, à la Macbeth, “…full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing”—and yet somehow lasted many hours.
The
monkeys retained their trademark mischief but cleverly rebranded it as
"crab-like strategic innovation," crafting elaborate heists to
liberate snacks from the unsuspecting. The lizards, of course, continued
basking in the sun, convinced they had invented the entire exercise and were
merely letting everyone else catch up. The sheep huddled in anxious clusters,
bleating motivational slogans like “Teamwork makes the dream work!”, though
none dared step outside their emotional cul-de-sac. The squirrels, eternal
hoarders, held emergency meetings to debate which tree holes met the new crab
compliance guidelines. And the cats? They lounged with majestic indifference,
pausing only to issue the occasional withering glance at the surrounding
pandemonium, fully confident that leadership would eventually come to them by
default.
Yet despite their shiny
shells, these make-believe crabs longed for distinction, and true unification
into the ‘perfect crab’ never materialised. The overseer soon discovered that a
crab’s shell was more ornamental than protective: it gleamed impressively from
afar but cracked under the slightest pressure. Meanwhile, recruitment of fresh
crabs faltered, and wise, cynical owls, observing from their impartial perch
while leafing through the Bard’s A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, smiled and muttered in nocturnal disapproval,
“…Lord, what fools these crabs (and crab drivers) be!”
With crabs floundering
and new crab talent scarce, the overseer hatched a fresh plan. Playing a
theatrically overwrought Juliet, the jungle management declared that all
animals, despite their crabby coatings, would revert to their original identity
in parenthesis: monkey-crabs became crab (monkey), parrot-crabs changed to crab
(parrot), chameleon-crabs turned up as crab (chameleon), and so on. After all, “What’s
in a name? That which we call a crab by any other name would scuttle as sly…”
Now the
owls wait with bated breath, for uneasy lies the owl that merely observes. Will
these imitation crabs—haunted by the shadows of the vertebrates they once were,
though equipped with only flexible spines that have since graduated to the
fully collapsible variety—claw their way toward meaningful ascent, or simply
drag one another back into the leafy depths from which they originally
wriggled?
As the
crabs gaze nervously at the jungle canopy, wondering whether the next storm
will break them or forge them, the old owls watch with knowing eyes and,
recalling the Fool from the Bard’s King Learl, murmur softly, “And
their wheel is come full circle; they are back”. And the jungle
itself pauses, realising that whatever the title, whatever the spin, a crab
will always find a way to march sideways with great confidence and even greater
uncertainty about where they're headed.
My
Shakespearean guardian has abandoned me at this critical juncture, so I invoke
a craftsman of the absurd, P. G. Wodehouse, half-expecting him to have one of
his amiably woolly-headed characters peer
at this crab circus and exclaim something like, “Good lord, old bean! If they scuttle
any more sideways, they’ll end up back where they started, shaking hands with
themselves in duplicate and filing a memo congratulating everyone on the
forward progress.” Which
could well be the most coherent thing in this saga.
…
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