Why Post-Retirement Writing Matters: Chasing CAG Accountability
A representative image of post-retirement writing by government officials! (Image TRH)
Retirement frees officers from systemic shackles, enabling fearless truth-telling. A new book on the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) highlights why transparency and accountability in governance cannot wait for political scandals to surface.
By P SESH KUMAR
NEW DELHI, August 25, 2025 — It is easy to dismiss post-retirement writing as hindsight activism. But such cynicism misses the deeper point: retirement removes the shackles of service and allows one to write fearlessly, based on lived facts.
The tragedy is that few outside the system even know what the CAG is, how it functions, what powers it wields, and how it impacts public accountability—until the media sensationalises one or two politically charged reports.
By then, the larger institutional rot has already set in. That is why a book like CAG – What It Ought to Be Auditing? is not an indulgence; it is an urgent intervention. The Reality While in Service Let us be honest.
In uniform or in civil services, everyone knows the cost of speaking truth to power while still serving—poor postings, hostile ACRs, transfers, or worse.
Officers, whether pilots or auditors, toe the line for survival. That is why no organisation, however powerful, truly stands up to the government of the day. This is not cowardice; it is structural compulsion.
So yes, retirement gives that one thing service life denies—freedom. It allows a person to put facts on record, connect dots, and draw conclusions without fear of reprisal.
Except of course when one deals with matters of national security. That does not make the exercise less valid. In fact, it makes it more necessary.
The Silence Inside and the Ignorance Outside
Sadly, most civil servants, professors, finance professionals, lawyers, students, even aspiring civil servants—and certainly the wider public—know very little about the CAG.
How is the CAG appointed? What does the CAG audit? What happens to its reports? What does its “constitutional independence” really mean? Unless the media sniffs a politically loaded scandal, nobody cares.
The institution is treated like an obscure office, when in fact it is central to public financial accountability. Worse still, when insubordination and integrity failures shook the IA&AD during one of the recent CAGs’ tenure, serving officers themselves could do little.
Thirteen senior Secretary/Special Secretary level officers could not contain the damage wreaked by a single junior officer. Many quietly reached out to retirees, pleading with them to intervene before the service collapsed. That speaks volumes about the limits of action possible within service.
It is a different matter that the retired officers themselves – as a group- could not decide how or what exactly they could do to help. Ultimately good sense prevailed, albeit too late, and at least the officer concerned was called back from a plush foreign assignment and face some semblance of disciplinary action.
Thanks to the anonymity of the institution, the matter did not reach front pages of mainline media.
A Performance Audit Holiday – The irony is stark.
At one stage there was virtually an “all-India performance audit holiday.” Draft reports piled up without approval which suited everyone. Opposition-ruled states were pursued with special zeal while reports at the Union level dwindled.
The credibility of the institution was under attack, but serving officers lacked unity and freedom to speak. If those inside could not bell the cat, then someone outside had to.
Why a Retired Officer Writes
That “someone” could only be a retired officer. To explain to the public—the CAG’s ultimate stakeholder according to its own mission statement—the gaps in performance, the risks of decline, and the expectations from this institution.
If not, public ignorance would continue, and accountability would wither away. It is not easy: it takes time, money, and courage for a retired person to put pen to paper. But it must be done. After all, even a famous Solicitor General once admitted he had never heard of the CAG’s DPC Act until it was mentioned at an AGs’ Conference!
That is the depth of anonymity we are dealing with.
So, to those who ask “why after retirement?”, the answer is simple: because no one else will. Because someone must. Because the health of a constitutional watchdog like the CAG cannot be left to chance, indifference, or political winds. Silence is complicity.
Speaking up—even belatedly—is service of a different kind. And if a retired officer spends his twilight years, his savings, and his energy to keep the institution in public consciousness, that is not indulgence—it is duty, stripped of fear.
(This is an opinion piece, and views expressed are those of the author only)
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