Atul Karwal: A Tactician Every Force Must Have

Atul Karwal, an IPS officer of the 1988 batch Gujarat cadre with a tall and sagacious personality, a role model for many undertraining IPS officers at SVPNA and an officer who always stood like a wall whenever disaster struck. But an officer like Karwal, who has the rare distinction of successfully climbing Mt. Everest, must have taken some lessons from his Everest experience. As a result, we can say that Karwal seems to always think about maintaining strategic silence for making conscious and purposeful decisions. This art of making strategic silence and his lessons from Everest gave him the strength of foresight and patience. Apart from his brilliance, Karwal also knows about institutional operations, which, perhaps, according to him, adds value to collective effort(Comprehensive National Power) at the time of disaster by making NDRF a strong disaster response force. In the past, Karwal-led NDRF has done a marvellous job in sharpening India's HADR operations by raising the force's competence, skilling them, and linking them with a strong institutional base of NDMA. NDRF's extensive response(Operation Dost) in carrying out rescue operations in the massive earthquake that hit Turkey early this year evidences NDRF's growing capabilities. Top sources say, "Karwal is a bureaucrat with fine wisdom who knows how to work and balance in peacetime and wartime." The fresh incident of Uttarakhand tunnel rescue is another example of NDRF's brilliance, but as Atul Karwal puts it in his recently published article in Indian Express, "NDRF received steady steam of suggestions from citizen across the country; it was as if the entire nation was putting its might behind us! He further said "the whole operation reminds us of humility and respect we need to have for every interaction we have with nature. "It also reminds us that once we get together with a determined mindset, we can accomplish seemingly impossible." There is little doubt that there are officers like Karwal who know both the arts of strategic silence and a tactician. Therefore, every force deserves to have him as their leader.