Former Union Home secretary and prolific writer Madhav Godbole passed away at his residence in Pune city Monday. He was 85.
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Mr. Godbole had taken voluntary retirement from the Indian Administrative Service in March 1993.
An outstanding civil servant, known and respected for his integrity, energy and phenomenal erudition, Mr. Godbole held several top administrative positions in both the Central and State governments through his career.
He worked as secretary in the Petroleum & Natural Gas and Urban Development Departments at the Centre and served as Chairman, Maharashtra State Electricity Board, as well as Principal Finance Secretary in the Maharashtra Government. He also worked in the Asian Development Bank in Manila for five years and chaired several government committees including those on the Enron power project and good governance.
Ringside view
His ringside perch — be it as private secretary to Union Home and Finance Minister Y.B. Chavan or secretary to Maharashtra Chief Minister S.B. Chavan during the Emergency — gave him unique insights into the corridors of power, which he detailed in more than 20 books and the hundreds of informed articles in English and Marathi.
In 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his speech to BJP MPs during demonetisation, had alluded to a particular incident in Mr. Godbole’s 1996 memoirs Unfinished Innings: Recollections and Reflections of a Civil Servant when Yashwantrao Chavan, the then Union Finance Minister had proposed demonetisation way back 1971 but the idea had been shot down by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Mr. Modi used the incident to criticise Ms. Gandhi’s failure to implement demonetization in 1971.
Mr. Godbole had served as Yashwantrao Chavan’s private secretary for four years at the Centre when the Wanchoo Committee, a taxation enquiry committee, had, in its interim report, recommended demonetisation of high-value notes.
“Since this was an important and sensitive issue, it was decided that Mr. Chavan ought to meet with Ms. Gandhi directly. After thinking, she had asked him only one question After this, are no more elections to be fought by the Congress’? Y.B. Chavan got the message and the recommendation was dropped,” Mr. Godbole had reminisced.
Ill-prepared
While Mr. Godbole had said that demonetization required strong political will and had praised Mr. Modi’s courage in carrying it through, he was sceptical that the move alone would check the flow black money and had been critical of the lack of prior preparedness on part of the Modi government that was needed to carry out such a momentous step.
Mr. Godbole’s keen interest in Indian politics and history saw him pen several trenchant works with a Thucydidean sweep — from an assessment of the leadership of India’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru in The God Who Failed (2014) to a monumental book analyzing the traumatic Partition titled Holocaust of the Indian Partition (2006).
The title of his book on Nehru — which critically examined the highs and lows of the late PM while comparing his leadership style with other towering figures of the age like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel — was a riff on the classic 1949 collection of essays The God That Failed which included pieces by Arthur Koestler, Stephen Spender and others detailing their disillusionment with Communism.
A passionate advocate of secularism, Mr. Godbole was always alert to the deterioration of parliamentary democracy and was an informed critic of the notion of a ‘Hindu Rashtra’, warning in his trenchant articles of the dangers of the polarisation of the Indian polity.
He is survived by his wife Sujata, son Rahul, daughter Meera, daughter-in-law Dakshina, son-in-law Mahesh, and grandchildren Aditi, Manan, Gaayatri and Taarini, said a statement issued by his family.
