It's an eerie feeling, sensing your perspectives reversing within minutes. Issues you felt strongly about, opinions you passionately held as your own, change inconspicuously without any one's intervention. I have been experiencing this quite often since i have joined the field-rung of the government. What came across as perfectly rational and obvious while reading newspapers and scholarly articles during UPSC preparation, seems fraught with absurdities now. The simple, straight forward solutions offered by "experts" that invoked anger on the highhandedness of the "government", now often appear as practical impossibilities.
This is not happening because my cognitive capacity has been swallowed by the venomous monster called bureaucracy or because I have fallen prey to the incorrigibly corrupt government's ways (as some of u will immediately be tempted to comment). This is happening because with each passing working day, I am grasping the meaning of the notion of "government" better (and this is a long drawn process that has just begun).
Understanding Government: God & Religions
The concept of "government" is in some ways similar to concept of "god"; There are hundreds of ways to fathom it. At the extreme is the notion that God (or Government, as the case may be) is in everything/everyone (with devolution through local self governments and expansion of government's ambit this may not seem very far from truth).The other extreme is that of Buddha like denial - "it's not this, it's not this", used in the context of government to pass the buck and evade responsibility ever so often.
Unlike the concept of god, which can be grasped through all the extremes and even the "middle paths", the concept of government lies somewhere in between the two extremes and is highly specific to the time, space and function continuum. In short - there's no easy answer to what government is. It's your vantage point that will decide what the term "government" will mean to you.
Complexities and the Xenophobia
For those located outside the govt. setup, the means to learn about the system's inside are limited. A large part of the govt remains unexpressed due to the legacy of the official secrets act. We see it in movies (mostly mindless and occasionally meaningful) and media publications (mostly event centric and occasionally process centric). We experience it in the nasty encounters with the cops and clerks, yet we never really "feel" it as a whole. So there will always be this divide of "Us, the citizens" and "they, the corrupt cops, clerks and politicians of the govt". This divide fans preconceived notion and hinders constructive collaboration between the "citizens" and the "government", the "us" and the "them".
This divide also allows for messiah driven politics that demonizes each and everything - be it violent "Naxalites" or the non violent Jantar Mantar Gandhians; Absolute dissection of society as "us" and "them" is bound to leave negative sociological impressions.
Alas! Truth is that even within the govt things are not all that simple to grasp. There are hundreds of xenophobic tendencies cutting the length and breadth of the government setup itself. Some of which I have been experiencing myself.
Even when the "Citizen" sees the entire "Government" as a whole, there exist real psychological and functional divides between civil servants and politicians, "money- driven" and "rule-driven" civil servants, staff of various departments, etc. This list goes on and on, till you begin to see that each man/woman indeed feels(both personally and professionally) alone in this huge "system" that he/she refers to "government". But what is this "government" ?
Revisiting the Slipping Perspectives
So given the neoteric face-off with "reality", my perspectives on the RTI Act, environmental activists and print media have slipped considerably.
While reading about the RTI Act, it was apparent to me that proactive disclosure (section 4 of the Act) should be the way out and all the "concerns" that the critics (vested interests) throw should be addressed via it. But when I am planning for such proactive disclosure under RTI Act for my organisation - I am facing the fear of "nuisance creators" among the clerical staff. Although I will be analyzing the RTI applications data in detail and may publish some notes in a separate blog post, on the face of it, it was clear that there were some selected "RTI activists" in the district who earn their livelihood solely through the extent of harm they can do to the babus through embarrassing information. I think it's a good first step, at least there now exists the means for a "common man" to access such public information and bring embarrassing facts to light, but what is disheartening is that this whole activity seems to be driven solely by blackmailing and "internal settings" - there is no real activism around RTI that seems to be happening in the interest of common public.
This brings me to another interesting perspective that I used to have about the print media. Sometimes there is a front page news on an IAS putting a logbook entry for his official vehicle wrongly, amounting to misappropriation of public money to the tune of 250 Rs. and much more often than that, one doesn't see the journalists covering events/ activities of corruption that are considered a part of "public knowledge". People more experienced than me routinely tend to shrug these things off knowing them to be the difference between "ill-managed" and "well-managed" media - I am yet to find this out myself.
Being posted in an industrial district with a majority of tribal population, I routinely look for competent/willing civil society organisations that can supplement and monitor government efforts and act as catalysts for development. I am becoming habituated to my queries on such NGOs/Activist Fronts being answered by contempt. It's considered common knowledge that they are on the pay roll of the industries, who in turn "manage" them in order to avoid any nuisance causing activity. Needless to say, CSR funds, that I have written about before, help the companies in this respect.
I strongly believe in not stereotyping individuals and organisations. I believe in looking for the silver lining when the sky is gloomy. I am sure that there are some activists, civil society organisations and media personnel in the district who defy these stereotypes and follow their conscience - I have found a few already, am not stopping till I find the rest ...
PS: All views expressed here are purely personal and have no connection with those of the Government. This post has been carefully modified to fit into the ambit of freedom of speech permitted to officers under the Rule 6 and Rule 7 of All India Service (Conduct) Rules, 1968.
