‘Breaking Barriers: The Story of a Dalit Chief Secretary’

The book ‘Breaking Barriers: The Story of a Dalit Chief Secretary’ published by Emesco Books Private Limited in 2022, and edited by D. Chandrasekhar Reddy, is a powerful account of a journey from fear to fearlessness, from subjugation to assertion and from being no one to becoming a revered exemplary civil servant. Authored by the former IAS officer Kaki Madhava Rao, the book explores the inner mechanism of the civil service at the ground level and casts light on micro policies and governance. Rao was a 1962 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer who superannuated as Chief Secretary of Andhra Pradesh. He also served as a Director at the Reserve Bank of India and as a member of the Board for Financial Supervision. He was born in 1939, in Pedamaddali village in the Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh. This book is an inspiring account of an astonishing journey of the son of a Parelu,—a farmhand from a Dalit family who breaks the shackles of demeaning existence and challenges posed by the social systems and economic conditions, and emerges successfully to reach the highest echelons of bureaucracy.