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 separate Civil and Engineering Services Examinations (CSE and ESE) for induction of officers—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 newspapers, portals 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:

https://theprint.in/india/railway-board-proposes-major-tweak-in-eligibility-criteria-for-zonal-gms-a-minimum-tenure-rule/2764323/

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.

…