After three decades in the Indian Revenue Service, Sangram Gaikwad could have retired with a record of administrative success. Instead, the former tax officer has turned his attention to a question that occupied him through his career: how to make governance more responsive to society?
Gaikwad, who cleared the Civil Services Examination in 1994, says the impulse to work beyond the confines of bureaucracy was shaped long before he joined government service.
His mother, Sushama Gaikwad, was associated with Rashtra Seva Dal and participated in Acharya Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan movement as a teenager. After graduating in civil engineering from the College of Engineering, Pune, Gaikwad spent a year in the voluntary sector.
Working with a nonprofit consultancy on villagelevel watershed development projects, he encountered grassroots realities that would later influence his understanding of governance. “It was during that period that I realised the civil services offered a much wider platform for bringing about meaningful change in society,” he said.
Over the next 30 years, Gaikwad served in various capacities in the Income Tax Department, largely in Maharashtra. His work spanned investigation and administration, alongside a longstanding interest in organisational restructuring and process reform.
His decision to seek premature retirement, he said, stemmed from growing unease with increasing centralisation and changes in the culture and structure of the department’s probe wing. A student of sociology and literature, Gaikwad has also spent years reflecting on what he sees as a deeper challenge within the Indian governance system.
“While our administrative frameworks are modelled on a rational-legal system introduced during British rule, our society continues to be shaped by community-based dynamics, deeply intertwined with familial, caste and kinship networks,” he said.
“This mismatch often results in tensions in the functioning of modern administrative systems.” Those reflections found expression in his Marathi novel Aatpat Deshatlya Goshti, which draws on his observations of life inside government institutions and the forces that shape individual choices. His concerns about public policy discourse eventually led him back to the voluntary sector.
Three years ago, Gaikwad and 12 long-time associates founded the Centre for Policy and Governance, Pune (CPGP), a non-profit organisation focused on policy research, governance solutions and public engagement. The founders share a common history.
They prepared for the civil services together in Mumbai before taking different paths into government, academia and the private sector. “What continues to unite us is a shared desire to contribute to positive change in governance and public policy,” Gaikwad said.
For Gaikwad, retirement has marked not a withdrawal from public life but a shift in the arena of engagement — from government offices to the broader conversation on how India governs itself.