AFVOA Newletter August 2020

Section 5 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 02 / 2020 Page 127 of 237 17 Who is Government of India?? Wg Cdr Unni Kartha Genre: Humour ll my life I have wondered, “Who is the Govt of India?” In 1978, I was interviewed by the President of India (Sanjeeva Reddy) for the post of an ADC. In my zealous enthusiasm, after a bit of chatting with the Supreme Commander, I asked him with sincere naivety whether he was GOI. He very absentmindedly said ‘No’. I was so disappointed that I immediately told him that I do not wish to be his ADC (Air Chief Moolgavkar skinned me for it). During my stint at Air HQ, towards the end of my service career, I once asked fellow Rimcolian Air Chief Suri, ‘Do you know GOI?’ Luckily he was in good mood and hence I got away with it. Whenever I got a chance to go to MOD I went around asking everyone there, ‘Are you GOI, do you know where I can find it?’ To the last man, every one of them denied being GOI or knows what it was. Once I even heard the Prime Minster Narasimha Rao on TV complaining, ‘the Govt is yet to formulate policy’. Poor chap; even he didn’t know who GOI is. Finally, the only man I discovered who knew GOI was ‘Yashpal’, the Desk Officer in the Air Wing of MOD. He often wrote letters to me which began, “I am directed by GOI’, but when asked who is GOI, he refused to confide or confess. My last act in uniform in 1993, as a lowly member secretary (clerical work) of a high profile ‘Empowered Modernisation Committee’ was to bring about radical changes to the IAF that would see it through the next 20 yrs. There were literally thousands of things to be done to modernise the AF. One by one all the watertight cases that I meticulously compiled and put up to MOD were returned by Yash Pal saying, ‘Turned down by GOI’. So it became a single handed battle of wits between an unseen and unknown demon called GOI and I. A