P.S. Appu (1929 – 28 March 2012) was an Indian civil servant who retired as the director of the

Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) is a civil service training institute on public policy and public administration in India. The academy's main purpose is to train civil servants of the IAS cadre and also con ...

(LBSNAA).IAS legend who put values before protocol
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Career

Appu started his career as a member of the

Bihar Bihar (; ) is a state in eastern India. It is the 2nd largest state by population in 2019, 12th largest by area of , and 14th largest by GDP in 2021. Bihar borders Uttar Pradesh to its west, Nepal to the north, the northern part of West ...

cadre of

Indian Administrative Service The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is the administrative arm of the All India Services of Government of India. Considered the premier civil service of India, the IAS is one of the three arms of the All India Services along with the Indian ...

in 1951. In this state he served the Collector of Darbhanga,

Saharsa Saharsa is a city and Municipal corporation in the Saharsa District in the eastern part of the state of Bihar, India. It is situated near the eastern banks of the Kosi River. It serves as the administrative headquarters for Saharsa District a ...

, Finance Secretary and Chief Secretary. While on deputation from the state to the federal government, he served as the Land Reforms Commissioner in the Ministry of Agriculture and the Planning Commission from 1970 to 1975. He opted for voluntarily retirement from service in 1982 while holding the post of Director of LBSNAA. As Chairman of the Committee on

Land Reforms Land reform is a form of agrarian reform involving the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution, generally of agricultural ...

set up by the Planning Commission, he created a sensation by stating bluntly in 1972 that lack of political will was the reason for failure of land reforms in India. He became Chief Secretary of Bihar but left for a lower paid job in the Government of India when he found that the conditions he had stipulated for functioning effectively were not being observed by the political executive. As Director of Government of India's National Academy of Administration he took voluntary retirement on finding that the government would not punish a trainee guilty of reprehensible conduct. That led to such an uproar in Parliament that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had to overrule Home Minister

Giani Zail Singh Giani Zail Singh (, born Jarnail Singh; 5 May 1916 – 25 December 1994) was an Indian politician from Punjab who served as the seventh president of India from 1982 to 1987. He was the first Sikh and the first person from a backward caste to bec ...

and announced dismissal of the guilty trainee officer from the IAS.5.

Award

P.S. Appu was awarded the

Padma Bhushan The Padma Bhushan is the third-highest civilian award in the Republic of India, preceded by the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Vibhushan and followed by the Padma Shri. Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is given for "distinguished service ...

by the

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

, in 2006.

References

External links

Agnihotri, Anita (2008): Rare Values, Rarest Insight – Revisiting Our Time with Shri P.S. Appu (BoloJi)

Mander, Harsh (2012): He Recognised the Value of Dissent, The Hindu 2 April 2012

Alagh, YK (2012): A Civil Servant's Role Model, Obituary in the Indian Express, 10 March 2012)

The Appu Papers (Compilation)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Appu, P. S. Appu, PS Appu, PS Bihar cadre civil servants Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in civil service Indian Administrative Service officers