There was a special moment for me last week during a fleeting visit to my hometown, Badaun in West UP. I had called on the Senior Superintendent of Police, a dynamic young officer named Prakash. He invited his charming wife to join us for a cup of tea and picked up a magazine lying on his desk, showed it to her, and smiled at me. It was gfiles.
It is satisfying that we are six months old and growing. But what is even more gratifying is that we are making inroads into districts and mofussil towns where the governed interact most directly with the governors. gfiles is all about good governance. Through our pages we try and focus on issues and events that inspire the spread of best governance practices for the benefit of India’s common man.
To the district officer and policeman, New Delhi appears eons away, far removed from workaday ground realities. Our editorial vision is that of bringing the babus of Delhi closer to the foot soldiers of the IAS, IPS and related services who slog in the districts, and to bridge the administrative communications gap.
It is, therefore, heartening to observe a district police officer relishing gfiles. It is for this reason that one of the most illustrious of India’s former police chiefs – Prakash Singh – has chosen this issue of gfiles as the most effective platform from which to write an open letter to the nation’s police force advocating his powerful vision of reforms that will make our men and women in khaki the true standard bearers of safety, security, integrity and human rights.
Similarly, Justice BN Srikrishna – chief of the Sixth Pay Commission – speaks from this issue’s cover page about the need to build rewards and punishment yardsticks into the civil service system to ensure superior, result-oriented performance that takes the country more rapidly towards the goal of continuing to progress while eliminating poverty, disease and illiteracy. And there’s a lot more.I am confident that, as Prakash turns the pages of our latest issue, he will have some more illuminating reading to share with his wife.
Inderjit Badhwar
Inderjit Badhwaris a veteran journalist, novelist and the former editor of India Today. He has written for various Indian and American newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times and Outlook. Now based in New Delhi, Badhwar heads gfiles, India's first magazine on the Civil Services of India.
