Why India's Civil Servants Become Heroes for Simply Doing Their Jobs

Tukaram Mundhe, 51, took over as commissioner of Maharashtra's Food and Drug Administration in May and began doing what the job description says he should do: sending inspection teams into restaurants and food businesses, documenting pest infestations and expired stock, measuring the gap between what hospitals pay for supplies and what patients are charged. The work was routine. The response was not. Videos of his inspections spread across social media. Hundreds of people commented that they wished someone like Mundhe could be sent to their state. He became a public figure for enforcing rules that already existed.

In Gurugram, a suburb of Delhi, district town planner RS Batth won similar praise for acting against illegal construction and encroachments. Both men have been treated as exceptions in a system where exceptions are what people have learned to expect. The question their sudden fame raises is not really about them at all—it is about what their celebrity reveals about the machinery they work within.

India's civil service is responsible for the basic functions that citizens depend on: issuing documents, policing, food safety, healthcare. But the reputation of that service has been built on delays, bribes, and the exhausting experience of being sent from one office to another without resolution. When an official appears to cut through that tangle, the public response can be surprisingly intense. Kamal Kant Jaswal, a retired civil servant, puts it plainly: what should have been normal has become exceptional. For many citizens, efficient governance now stands out as an exception because delays and bureaucratic hurdles have become so familiar that they feel like the rule.

This is not a new pattern. In the 1990s, TN Seshan became a household name as India's chief election commissioner for fearlessly enforcing electoral rules. Kiran Bedi, the first woman to join the Indian Police Service, was nicknamed "Crane Bedi" in the early 1980s after reports that she had an illegally parked car belonging to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi towed away. Ashok Khemka gained national recognition in 2012 for intervening in a controversial land transaction. Police officer Neeraj Jadaun was praised for confronting a mob during religious violence in Delhi in 2020. Each time, the pattern repeats: an official does the job, the public notices, and that official becomes a minor celebrity. Jaswal notes that thousands of officials in India do their jobs without attracting attention, often because their work involves little direct contact with citizens or is simply less visible.

But the attention Mundhe and Batth have received also exposes a tension that runs through their work. Mundhe has been criticized by sections of the food and hospitality industry for his enforcement drives. Batth has faced criticism for acting against illegal encroachments, with some alleging his enforcement is selective and disproportionately affects vulnerable people. Both have rejected these allegations, saying their actions are evidence-driven and lawful. Yet the criticism points to something real: a street vendor's stall may be an unauthorized structure in the eyes of the law, but it could be a family's only source of income. In a country where millions migrate to cities in search of work, unsanctioned living spaces may be the only way to find shelter. The same enforcement action can be viewed as both lawful and harsh.

Civil servants who choose to enforce rules consistently also face pressures that are rarely discussed. Pushpa Sundar, who briefly served as a civil servant and has written on development issues, says officers can face political pressure and transfers when they refuse to comply with improper demands. They have families, careers, and financial responsibilities, and it takes extraordinary courage to risk those things in order to act independently. Jaswal remembers this from his own career. In 1974, when he was district magistrate of Uttarkashi in what was then undivided Uttar Pradesh, a senior minister contesting a state election made demands of him that violated the rules. Jaswal refused. The minister won the election and Jaswal received his transfer orders soon after. But when he left for his next assignment, people stood in the summer heat for several kilometers along his route to say goodbye.

Social media has accelerated how quickly an official can become a national talking point. An action once confined to a district can now be filmed, shared, and viewed by millions within hours. That is partly what happened with Mundhe, whose inspection videos turned routine enforcement into a widely watched spectacle. Mundhe himself sees the attention as beside the point. Speaking to the BBC, he said his actions were driven by public-health concerns and that businesses complying with rules had nothing to fear. For him, the rules already exist. His job is simply to enforce them.

But the public fascination with officials like Mundhe and Batth is about more than individual competence. It is a measure of how far the system has drifted from what it is supposed to do. When basic government functions are carried out visibly and consistently, they can seem extraordinary—particularly because so many people have come to expect otherwise. The celebrity of the honest bureaucrat is a symptom of a deeper problem: that doing the job properly has become rare enough to be remarkable.