“Is the IAS Bharat’s Deep State?”, vinaykumar56.substack, 12 Sep 2026.

“When I first read economist Surjit Bhalla describing India’s senior bureaucracy as its “deep state”, I was uncomfortable with the phrase. India is a democracy. Governments change. Ministers come and go. How could a permanent civil service be described as a deep state?

But the more I thought about it, the harder the question became to dismiss.

I have worked with government for several decades, from policy to institutions and programmes on the ground. I have seen how much political leaders depend on the bureaucracy to turn their ideas into reality. I have also seen how easily an ambitious idea can lose momentum once it enters the administrative machinery.

So what exactly is the source of the IAS’s power?

The power of the chair

It comes first from where the IAS sits in government. The service has traditionally occupied a disproportionate share of the key administrative positions at the Centre and in the states, sitting at the top of the machinery through which government functions………….”

Read the full article at vinaykumar56.substack.