The IR Meeting Obsession: A Guided Tour of the Republic of Meetings
There is one arena where Indian Railways (IR) has attained absolute, hyper-velocity godhood, effortlessly bypassing the laws of space and time: the legendary railway meeting. It is a majestic, wood-panelled ecosystem where time lies frozen in a perpetual red-taped coma, yet every officer somehow arrives late, the delay increasing in perfect proportion to rank. Around a massive teak table that has comfortably outlived governments, policies and certainly the issues under discussion, assemble the bigwigs. Standing in attendance is a battalion of peons, bearing endless trays of syrupy Sarkari chai, soggy Britannia biscuits and meticulously counted roasted almonds, except for the senior-most officers who, through administrative evolution, enjoy unlimited grazing rights.
Together they debate why a train that left Dibrugarh sometime during the previous geological era has mysteriously vanished from the Control Chart and is yet to arrive anywhere, though two committees remain cautiously optimistic. The holy trinity of Safety, Punctuality and Throughput is invoked with near-religious devotion before proceedings are gloriously derailed by a spirited discussion on whether the inauguration plaque should be brass or marble, or whether the pantry-car cutlet possesses the requisite structural integrity. The crowning achievement of such gatherings is the birth of a Joint Committee, a magnificent administrative organism dedicated to passing responsibility for one defective signal between the Operating, Civil and Signalling departments until the signal is declared heritage.
To survive this locomotive purgatory, an officer must master the ancient art of the Sarkari Nod, a rhythmic movement of the head conveying profound technical agreement while the brain quietly retires for the afternoon. The air grows dense with acronyms such as CCRS, ORS, FOIS, IoW, C&W, ACP and ART, flung about like bureaucratic confetti to disguise the alarming possibility that nobody actually knows why the brand-new platform shelter resembles a stepped-on drinks can. Whenever a bright young engineer proposes a modern technological solution, it is gently extinguished by a veteran officer adjusting his spectacles and observing that the proposal regrettably violates a Railway Board circular issued on a rainy Tuesday in August 1994. Such meetings are the transport sector's equivalent of a cosmic black hole where Hyperloop and Bullet train ambitions are quietly shunted into a loop line, buried beneath mountains of files and preserved for posterity.
As if this accumulated wisdom were insufficient, the Cabinet Secretariat recently decided that meetings themselves deserve scientific treatment (see References, issuing a ten-page advisory, Conducting Effective Meetings. One must admire the ambition. Newton gave us the laws of motion in fewer pages but we now have the laws of stationary motion.
It has discoveries of such startling originality that one wonders how civilisation survived without them. Important meetings should preferably not be held immediately before or after holidays. Difficult agenda items should be avoided after lunch. Meetings should last twenty or fifty minutes. One is even encouraged to ask whether a meeting is essential, a question likely to send shock waves through conference rooms across the babudom.
There is more. Beware of herd mentality. Do not ignore the elephant in the room. Prevent one person from monopolising the discussion. Prefer one-to-one conversations where appropriate. Finally, classify meetings as good or bad, depending upon whether they achieved anything. Future generations will surely place these revelations alongside the discovery of fire, the wheel and, perhaps, the meeting agenda itself.
While these directives from the top office may be good for other central ministries, it’s akin to sending jalebis to IR, whose officers have already achieved perfection in making them. IR is the acknowledged world leader in Meeting Studies. Months before the Cabinet Secretariat ventured into these dangerous intellectual waters, IR had already solved the truly existential question that had troubled administrators for centuries: what precisely should be served at meetings. (my blog referenced in the end.)
I can reproduce the minutes of innumerable POMs (Principal Officers' Meetings of the GM and HoDs) and BOMs (Branch Officers' Meetings, where I occasionally occupied a chair as a lowly Assistant Mechanical Engineer) from the early 1980s, change the date, replace every 'XXR' and 'Fax' with the occasional 'digital', 'AI' or 'dashboard', and they would pass unchallenged as the minutes of a meeting held on IR yesterday.
IR has divided meetings into two great philosophical schools, namely 'scheduled' and 'short-notice/short-duration'. The sheer intellectual elegance of this taxonomy deserves the Golden Almond Award for Administrative Classification. This, however, was merely the public version. The original draft, now safely locked away under the file marked "Too Honest to Issue", is believed to contain three more practical categories: "Boss speaks, others nod like dashboard bobbleheads", "Meeting at the boss's divine beck and call, preferably when everyone is midway through tea", and "Summon all buggers with immediate effect for a quick and well-marinated dressing down."
The culinary prescriptions were still more inspiring. The circular specified refreshments with a precision that would have embarrassed NASA mission planners. Forget Chandrayaan. This was Chai-drayaan, equipped with one structurally fragile samosa, two morale-neutral biscuits and that mysterious entity known only as 'light refreshment', whose principal function appeared to be the simultaneous destruction of morale and digestion, strictly in accordance with the Standard Operating Procedure.
The pièce de résistance lay elsewhere. The exact number of almonds per participant stood officially codified. At long last, humanity had conquered the ancient menace of almond inflation, dry-fruit corruption and unauthorised over-snacking. This was not administration. This was a Renaissance.
Naturally, cynical retired railwaymen like myself entirely failed to appreciate the grandeur of these reforms. We kept wasting our time on trivia. Freight growth crawling despite unprecedented investment. Station development that often remains permanently under redevelopment. Vande Bharat upgrades existing more convincingly in promotional videos than on actual rails. Kavach locomotives galloping about without any ground equipment, like loose bulls searching for a china shop. We completely missed the larger vision.
Now, with the Cabinet Secretariat joining the bandwagon, one realises that the nation has reached a decisive stage in administrative evolution. The railway may still have problems, but the meeting about the railway is rapidly approaching perfection.
Such administrative philosophy deserves neither criticism nor analysis, only interpretation. And whenever bureaucracy scales such dizzy heights, there are only two authorities fit to interpret it: Mr Bertie Wooster and his incomparable valet, Jeeves.
Bertie: Jeeves, have governments always held meetings?
Jeeves:
Since the invention of government, yes, sir.
Bertie:
Dashed unfortunate, what? One had always hoped civilisation progressed by means
of the occasional bright idea.
Jeeves:
Experience suggests, sir, that the bright idea is generally invited to attend a
meeting before any further action is contemplated.
Bertie:
Quite. I have before me a document explaining how meetings should be conducted.
Ten pages, Jeeves.
Jeeves:
Admirably concise by official standards, sir.
Bertie:
It says one must avoid important meetings immediately before or after holidays.
Jeeves:
An enlightened recommendation, sir, because officials have frequently been
known to be mentally absent for some time after holidays.
Bertie:
Then they advise against discussing difficult subjects after lunch.
Jeeves:
Precisely. It is established, sir, that a well-fed bureaucrat is more inclined
to embrace digestion than decision-making.
Bertie:
By Jove! I wonder if they'll next issue a circular advising people not to
sneeze into the soup.
Jeeves:
Only after constituting an expert committee to distinguish between ordinary
sneezes and strategic sneezes, I imagine, sir.
Bertie:
They have also determined that meetings should last either twenty or fifty
minutes. I spent the better part of breakfast trying to decipher the arithmetic.
Jeeves:
A remarkable precision, sir. Twenty minutes for incompetence. Fifty for senior
incompetence.
Bertie:
They further advise asking whether the meeting is essential. What do you detect
in this?
Jeeves:
I detect optimism, sir. Answers are immaterial, merely asking it represents
considerable administrative progress.
Bertie:
Splendid heavens! I suppose the next edition will ask whether the circular
itself is essential.
Jeeves:
That would introduce an unfortunate element of self-examination, sir, which
governments avoid conscientiously as bachelors avoid Aunt Agatha, sir.
Bertie:
Oh! Aunt Agatha once organised a family conference to decide whether I ought to
become useful.
Jeeves:
And the outcome?
Bertie:
Three family subcommittees, a working group and luncheon.
Jeeves:
Was usefulness achieved?
Bertie:
Mercifully not.
Jeeves:
Then the meeting may safely be classified as successful, sir.
Bertie:
Talking of classification, they've divided meetings into good and bad. A good
meeting achieves something. A bad meeting achieves nothing. Rather awkward as the attendees should be able to categorize a
meeting before the meeting, not after, as all meetings are meant to achieve
practically nothing.
Jeeves:
Understandable, sir. Awkward, for sure. In this advanced age of AI, meetings
should be like weather forecasts, which everyone wishes to log into. Whether it
was accurate or not is inconsequential.
Bertie:
They also warn against herd mentality.
Jeeves:
A noble aspiration.
Bertie:
But surely a committee is herd mentality with attendance sheets.
Jeeves:
I fear there is some force in the observation, sir.
Bertie:
Then they caution against ignoring the elephant in the room. Extraordinary
creatures, elephants. I should have thought one would notice them almost
immediately.
Jeeves:
The elephant is metaphorical, sir.
Bertie:
Dash it. There goes the only participant likely to say something memorable. And
they recommend one-to-one discussions instead of meetings when appropriate. England
gave the world Shakespeare. India has now given it dialogue and conversation.
Jeeves:
Every civilisation must contribute according to its gifts, sir.
Bertie:
But here's the bit that really shook me to my foundations. Indian Railways had
already issued detailed instructions on refreshments.
Jeeves:
They were ahead of their time, sir.
Bertie:
Ahead? They're practically in another galaxy. Meetings were classified. Snacks
were classified. Almonds were counted.
Jeeves:
A holistic philosophy, sir.
Bertie:
Jeeves, I've seen military operations planned with less attention to logistics.
Jeeves:
Armies generally concern themselves with victory, sir. Administrations enjoy
the luxury of concerning themselves with refreshments.
Bertie:
Samosas. Bertie: Biscuits. But why almonds? And countable too.
Jeeves:
They are widely believed to improve memory.
Bertie:
Then why issue minutes?
Jeeves:
An interesting philosophical question, sir. As for the count, precision is the
foundation of civilisation.
Bertie:
I should have thought trains were.
Jeeves:
That was once the prevailing unfashionable opinion, sir, in the belief that
their principal duty was to move trains. But modern administrative thought has
emancipated them from so burdensome a doctrine.
Bertie:
And replaced it with?
Jeeves:
Perfecting the environment in which the movement of trains may be discussed.
Bertie:
It reminds me of Bingo Little. His roof once blew away during a storm. He spent
the afternoon choosing curtains. Nobody criticised him.
Jeeves:
A similar order of priorities. Curtains, unlike roofs, seldom leak.
Bertie:
That's dashed profound.
Jeeves:
Thank you, sir.
Bertie:
You know, Jeeves, I've always imagined vision meant seeing farther.
Jeeves:
That definition has undergone refinement, sir. It now means seeing smaller.
Bertie:
Smaller?
Jeeves:
Very much so, sir. Once one ceases worrying about freight, passengers,
punctuality, finances, projects and safety, one discovers a wealth of
opportunities among the almonds.
Bertie:
Good heavens! What happens if someone actually solves the railway's problems?
Jeeves:
It would create a regrettable vacuum. There would be considerably fewer
meetings, sir.
Bertie:
I hadn't considered that.
Jeeves:
Administrations must think of their ecosystems.
Bertie:
Then perhaps it's all rather brilliant. One final question. Suppose one day
they perfect meetings completely. Every participant arrives on time. Nobody
dominates. No herd mentality. No elephant. Exactly twenty minutes. Perfect
refreshments. Faultless almonds. What happens next?
Jeeves:
A most agreeable prospect, sir. They will undoubtedly appoint a committee to
preserve so perfect a system.
Bertie:
And the railway?
Jeeves:
I imagine it will continue waiting patiently outside the conference room, sir,
until someone remembers to invite it in.
...
References:
https://anindecisiveindian.blogspot.com/2025/11/penny-foolish-pound-wise-no-more-almond.html
...
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