New age bureaucrat

Hasmukh Haridas Adhia, as India's Revenue Secretary, is the unseen Goods and Services Tax (GST) super-hero. He is a bureaucrat with a PhD in yoga; he is happy juggling with numbers when he is not writing books on management; and he has also taken it upon himself to explain the intricacies of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) to the ordinary Indian. Meet Hasmukh Haridas Adhia, senior IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, India's Revenue Secretary and a battle-hardened mandarin who enjoys the confidence of both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his immediate boss, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. Adhia, who joined the IAS in 1981, came into prominence in Gujarat about a decade ago as an upright officer who could get things done. He gained the confidence of Modi, who is universally acknowledged as a fair but strict taskmaster, as Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister of Gujarat and also served as Principal Secretary Education and Additional Chief Secretary, Finance, in the Government of Gujarat, before following his then boss to New Delhi as Secretary, Department of Financial Services. Arguably the most difficult task of his career was the rollout of GST, the most ambitious tax reforms ever undertaken in India. As many as 17 central and state taxes and 23 cesses were being subsumed into one tax. While Jaitley very ably marshalled a political consensus on the new levy - no mean feat given India's fractious political discourse and opposition from various special interest groups - Adhia worked quietly behind the scenes, setting the stage for the seamless national rollout of the new tax from July 1. When the need arose to explain the new fine print of the new tax to various stakeholders, the government fielded Adhia, a gold medallist diploma holder in Public Policy and Management from the Indian Institure of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B), to hold “classes” for various segments of society. In the immediate aftermath of the GST rollout, with all kinds of misinformed rumours doing the rounds, Adhia, who, associates say, is blessed with a dry wit, came out with a series of tweets busting the myths about the new tax. These were carried extensively in the news media and went a long way in allaying the ordinary Indians' apprehensions about GST. Adhia is an unusual bureaucrat. He even gave out his personal email ID, adhia1981@gmail.com, to enable taxpayers and others to complain of cases of corruption and harassment within the department in full secrecy. In doing so, he delivered on his undertaking, made when he was appointed Revenue Secretary in September 2016, to clean up the tax department and simplify the complex rules and procedures that led to delays, harassment and corruption. Colleagues who have worked with him say Adhia, who graduated in B.Com and then completed a Masters in Commerce (M.Com), is a deeply intellectual individual with a questioning mind that naturally looks for solutions to the many intractable problems that arise in the course of governance. His book, 'My Notes to Myself', provides a pointer to this thinking. In the prologue of the book, Adhia writes that he penned these “notes”, which give simple tips on human resource management based on the Indian ethos, for his own development but realised that they could also prove helpful for others who wanted to improve their effectiveness as bureaucrats and managers. A personal tragedy some years ago drove him to search for greater meaning to life. This comes through in Adhia's Twitter handle, which says: “On the path of spirituality; convinced fully that real happiness comes only through spiritual wisdom.” That, in many ways, sums up the philosophy of the man.