What's IAS? Is it a big deal?
Satya has two advanced degrees from US Institutions and has worked at Microsoft for over 27 years. I think his father has had very little to do with his current stature.
As an aside, salary is just about the worst way to evaluate power and privilege of government officials. By that metric, an AVP at Google is more privileged than the President of the United States.
Heck bribes itself can set your 7 generations for a life time of nobility.
There is a reason why people waste years behind cracking these exams.
The gov of India has a cadre or trained bureaucrats, who are selected after passing a rigorous exam. Its a check on your real world thinking skills in many ways.
The exam is hard, and people spend years to ensure they get through.
The people who pass are sent to the foreign services, admin services, and police services.
IAS officers have over the years earned a rep for being capable bureaucrats (modulo the level of noise coming from a massive developing World population dealing with issues ranging from poverty to corruption).
These are the people who run municipalities for what would be high populations cities in the west, secretaries to ministers and so on.
They don’t have money, but they are the nerves and ligaments of state machinery.
If you're not, you are still a big deal, on a different scale.