We Have Been Here Before
The technology is different. The drama is identical. We lived through this story before — we called it the personal computer.
Jun 2026Read →
Senior Civil Servant · AI Practitioner · Policy Architect · Philosophy & Neuroscience Writer
Bridging Algorithmic
Intelligence with
Indian Governance
A civil servant’s notebook on AI, philosophy of mind, and the art of governing 1.4 billion people.
23+
Years in Service
5
Union Ministries Served
10M+
Citizens Served
1
State Being Served
What I write about
Four Intellectual Territories
Selected Essays
View all essays →Featured Insights
Live from GhostImpact in numbers
Two decades of public service, in figures
0+
children admitted under the Right to Education Act
NEP 2020
assisted in finalising the National Education Policy
₹150M+
transferred to farmer accounts via the MoU with ITBP
0+
beneficiary farmers — Goat Valley & Poultry Valley schemes
Kedarnath
Relief Commissioner during the 2013 Himalayan disaster
The arc
A career, briefly
- 2001Bachelor's in Veterinary Science completed
- 2002Cleared the Indian Postal Service (IPoS) examination
- 2003Joined the Indian Police Service (IPS)
- 2004Joined the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) — AIR 42
- 2007–14District Magistrate, Government of Uttarakhand
- 2014–21Senior roles, Government of India
- 2021–24Secretary-level roles, Government of Uttarakhand
Beyond the Blog
Other work
Book
Your Brain Is Running Old Software
Thirteen principles. Four parts.
Grounded in Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle, prediction processing, embodied cognition, and attention research. Written as a dialogue rather than a lecture — so the underlying neuroscience stays rigorous, the reading stays plain. Each principle is a small upgrade you can run on your own mind, starting today.
Charitable Foundation
Srilan Foundation
A Legacy of Love, Learning, Health and Dignity
Supports meritorious girls from below-poverty-line families with scholarships, learning materials, and mentoring through Classes 8–12. Organises medical camps for early detection of cancers, diabetes, and other chronic illness. Provides care for elderly persons without adequate family support, complementing existing government schemes.
Open-Source AI Research
AgriLM — Small Language Model for Agriculture
Domain-specific AI for farming & animal husbandry.
An open-source small language model trained on agriculture and animal husbandry knowledge — covering crop science, livestock management, veterinary practice, and rural policy. Built with a custom Q&A pipeline, domain-specific fine-tuning, and web-scraped corpora. Designed to be deployable at low compute for use in field-level governance.
In their words
Recommendations from eminent voices
Purushottam Basava is an upright career IAS officer, hardworking, honest, and follows processes with absolute due diligence, while at the same time kind, helpful, and humane in approach. He draws his strength from his deep-rooted spiritual moorings.
Shri Anil Sahasrabudhe
Former Chairman AICTE, Chairman of National Educational Technology Forum