CAREER & PROFESSIONAL PROGRESSION
He entered the IAS in 1956 with the firm determination to contribute to the advancement and empowerment of the deprived classes and leveraging the crucial position of the IAS for promoting legislations, schemes and programmes designed to serve and achieve that end.
Right from the beginning, he sought to mould governance and public administration into a pro-active instrument of reaching out to the deprived communities. The hallmark of his entire career has been the defense and promotion of Human, Civil, Constitutional and Developmental Rights of the deprived. In this quest he has often faced antagonism, hostility and persecution but his passionate devotion to the Cause made him persist in the path mandated by the Constitution and Human values.
Even as an IAS trainee in 1956-57, he made it a point to visit and spend time in SC bastis. In 1956, he was allotted to the Hyderabad State and on the trifurcation of that State, he became part of the Andhra Pradesh cadre. As a young officer, from his first posting as Assistant Collector in Telengana’s Medak district, then as Assistant Collector in Anantapur district, and thereafter as Sub-Collector, Ongole, he pioneered, as early as in 1957-59, the practice of officially camping in SC bastis, tribal villages, and hamlets of laboring Backward Classes, thereby infusing confidence and self-esteem in them, breaching the barriers of “Untouchability” and giving a cue to the different echelons of governance and public administration. The massive drives, undertaken by him, for the distribution of agricultural lands and house-sites to the SC agricultural laborers and other landless and homeless is still remembered as a hallmark in the governance and public administration of Andhra Pradesh (now the States of Telengana and Andhra Pradesh).
In 1959 to 1961, as Assistant Settlement Officer, a post to which he was relegated as punishment for orienting public administration and governance to the deprived classes and creating in them awareness of their rights, he used the opportunity to develop new methodologies by which the entire population of each village was effectively mobilized in identifying occupation and ownership of agricultural lands and getting them correctly recorded which benefited large numbers of SCs, STs, BCs including BCs of Minorities who would otherwise have been thrown to the tender mercies of the dominant gentry and traditional village revenue officials.
As Collector of Districts of Khammam and then East Godavari, both having sizable tribal population, in 1964-1969, he initiated drives for implementing the existing laws for the protection of tribal lands and restoration of lands illegally grabbed by the rich and powerful non-tribals. His well-reasoned judgments, in his capacity as Agent to the Governor in respect of the Scheduled Areas (i.e., Tribal areas) are classics of tribal land rights jurisprudence. Simultaneously, he took initiatives for the amendment of the existing Scheduled Areas Land Transfer Regulations to tighten them.
As head of the Department of Cooperation and later of Industries and Commerce, from 1969 to 1976, he promoted cooperatives of different occupational groups for common purposes and common developmental projects and promotion of small industrial and business entrepreneurship among SCs, STs, BCs and Minorities as well as other educated non-propertied youth including women. In the case of occupational groups which contained people of different religions, particularly Hindus and Muslims, like taxi drivers and auto-rickshaw drivers, he encouraged them to come together and form common cooperatives to resolve common problems and fulfill common aspirations, and helped hired drivers to become owners.
He was also instrumental, as part of a State-organized Dalit Conference (then under the then prevalent name of “Harijan Conference”), in preparing an important blue-print in 1976 for the future course of development of SCs which became the basis and reference point for subsequent legislative and executive actions in Andhra Pradesh, and was utilized by him as a template for a wider all-India blueprint during his period of posting from 1978 to 1982 in the newly created post of Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, in charge of the development and welfare of SCs and BCs (to which post, he volunteered from his previous post under the Ministry of Industries and Commerce — a rare, if not only, instance of voluntary movement from the industrial and commercial sector to the Dalit and Social Justice sector). This all-India template includes in particular the Report of the Working Group for the Development of SCs in the VI Plan, 1980, under his Chairmanship, the first such systematic and comprehensive developmental document for SCs.
After his retirement in 1990 as Secretary, Ministry of Welfare, Shri Krishnan’s services continue to be utilized, in various capacities and positions relating to the deprived social classes categories such as
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Member, National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (1991-1992)
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Member, Expert Committee on Backward Classes (1993);
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Member-Secretary, National Commission for Backward Classes (1993-2000)
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Chairman of the Ambedkar Research Cell of the Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar Foundation (1997 to 2002)
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Chairman of the Ambedkar Study Circle of the Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar Foundation (1991-1993)
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Chairman of Planning Commission’s Working Groups and Steering Committees for the Development, Welfare and Empowerment of Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes during different Plan periods.
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Honorary Advisor on Reservation, Ministry of Human Resources Development, Government of India (2006 – 2009)
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Advisor [as desired by him, without remuneration] to Government of Andhra Pradesh, on Identification of and Reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes among Muslims and guiding defence of State legislation in the High Court and in the Supreme Court.