Requiem for a Stint

I

Am sitting in the brimming train beside my backpack

The misfitted blue backpack with camera and Ipad...

It's raining outside, painting the window panes with fog

As the locomotive begins, an image flickers beyond the fog...

I blink and squint and through the haze, seem to understand

An outline at the platform, of a shaky attempt of a man 

Shaky attempt of a man,

Dressed uptight so as to justify the three letters tag 

Moving consciously, Careful not to displease or to lag...

Greeting and taking salutes on the heel

Covert nervousness, well concealed...

His first government office, he used to patrol

The office that's in the business of exerting control...

He harboured the desire to touch the setup's very life,

Not knowing how, corporeally aware of little time that lies...

He follows his mentor, shadows his life's enduring

Overzealous to learn from his doings and undoings..

Keeps beside him through the day's toiling

Sharply watchful, cautious and smiling... 

II

Ah! the train stops with another backbreaking jerk

It's K, a trading town of migrants midst people of tribal birth...

It was here that our bud had sprouted to learn the world's ways

Calculative people and corrupt staff tried to make his lofty ideas sway...

It was here they happened,

Events when he shunned politeness and sought collars to grab

Times when he smiled overtly while wanting to stab...

Times when injustices made his heart bleed

Nights when he cried himself to sleep...

He slogged himself, seeking to make things good

Like a drowning man, clutching and clasping everything he could...

He met all the targets given to self,

Still felt a deep urge to stay and do something else...

III

With a jerk it began and caught speed again...

This rugged piece of metal, moving like a disjointed tube

Like a reluctant horse, struggling under a noob...

But soon I slept, thinking of the same man who had now turned sanguine; 

Having felt his capacity to effect transitions

He humbly peeped in his heart for divine revelations...

The role of messiah he had played too well

Wherever he had been, he could feel the love swell...

Yet, he knew his challenge was to keep his feet on the ground;

To feel the humanly pulse despite all the ego boost around...

The train moved like a serpentine goddess, 

Cutting across fields of potential fodders...

Far away one can see the smoke chambers,

Beside meandering queues of monstrous earth diggers...

I had closed my eyes from the mines, 

That's when the elections came to one's mind...

When he saw how government achieves the works most grand

Read, planned and coordinated with more time and space in hand...

Went to depths of processes and wrote his mind on the files

The days with unceasing hours of peering through the piles...

An exercise involving thousands of people and the things they say

Numerous stories enacted throughout the day, 

Yet no time to visit those memories and stay...

IV

I must have slept again, for when the brakes screeched 

A forested tribal hinterland's peace was breached...

It's D, a town 50 miles from where the collector functions,

With their mines and the mafia, 

Catching the tribals unawares at the malicious junctions...

It was here that our budding man had spent his month,

Toured the remotest villages, 

Met with people of all ages...

It was here he saw the naked demented child
Unattended, tied to a tree like something wild...

With a steel plate held firmly by his teeth

Compulsively scratching the ground beneath...

It was here he met people unbelievably bereaved

The people who feared everything concrete...

Our protagonist got surer in days to come

He metamorphosed gradually as he felt overcome...

There were days when he questioned everything in sight

Days when he captured hearts and minds...

Days when he felt let down,

When his face carried a perpetual frown

But then, there were days when he reached his place

In a tired body with a smiling face.. 

Harbouring no desire or will to seek

The sight of grateful eyes was for him to keep...

How abrupt, the ending befitted the stint

He packed his bags while fire-fighting for peace...

While people were dancing, he slipped away from the city

Gently and Quietly, never to return in the same capacity..

Took nothing more than what he originally had, 

His misfit backpack with the camera and Ipad...

V

And so it stopped, our train with a blast,

We had reached the capital at last...

I shrugged myself out of the daydream...

Man? metamorphosis? What feelings?

There's nothing to gain from  pointless musings...

I picked up my bags and stepped down at platform four,

While the window, still hazy, was shining through the glass door...



.......................
.......................

PS: As a fresh entrant into the Indian Administrative Service, one has to undergo an year long "field training" under the mentor-ship of a District Collector. During this time, one is exposed to the area and the people first hand and is given temporary assignments in various parts of the jurisdiction. This period is the "larvae" stage of development for these officers, when they can learn as a participant observer. 
They will in a few months, be left to fend for themselves and be given important responsibilities in the government. 

 

Disputed Industries and Discontented land losers

While shuffling for some serious topics to write on, an obituary to the Raigarh stint seemed like a perfect choice; but then I felt apt to share my perspective on a theme that has excited me even before I joined IAS.

The theme wherein the richest are pitted against the poorest and the way the government (or the officers concerned) orients itself makes the difference between a violent conflict and a win win situation...It's the theme that Raigarh district offered lots of insights into.. .The theme of Industrial Disputes^*1…

Raigarh: an Industrial (Dispute?) district 

When the people, as a collective, have grudges and misgivings against an industry that’s setup in their backyard they often resort to a confrontationist mode wherein obstruction to the industry’s operations is the usual first step.

This is also a pre-conceived methodology to involve the district administration, as any such obstruction is bound to be illegal and is usually accompanied with acts of violence against persons and properties.

In my one year's Raigarh stint, I handled 1 such long drawn dispute as the concerned Tehsildar, 3 more as the concerned SDM and a few others  I witnessed as Assistant Collector. Two of them were against public sector companies, the rest against large private firms. Almost every dispute had land losers in the forefront and in all the disputes employment to the locals was one of the key demands. The cries of "company management" being irresponsive to justify the coercive step were also common to all. 

Every industrial dispute has a core of either a genuine grudge or a deep reaching misconception; this usually forms the bulk of the demands that are projected to the people (and most importantly, the media).

Outside the core, the bulk of a dispute is created and governed by commercial-political interests. The triggering factor for a dispute is usually an astonishingly small action by the company (eg. Firing a few local contractors for Non-performance or not yielding to demands of villagers for a special bathing tank)

The usual way to deal with such situations is to first address the triggering factors. Since these are the easiest for the company to commit to, with little administrative pressure the protestors' genuine immediate demands can be acceded to.

The second step is to focus on the other persistent set of demands and separate the genuine grudges from the artificial ones; the leaders of such protests are usually seeking to push in one of their personal agenda in the garb of public demand, it becomes important to separate these threads.

The next step is to analyse what kind of commitment can be legally extracted from the company regarding the genuine concerns and meeting common ground on the same.

The final step is to tell the free riders and nuisance creators, who have by now hijacked the negotiation and the protests, to back off and let the company do its work as it won’t be able to share its profits till it makes it. Needless to say, all these steps are to be kept completely transparent and at no point should the fairness of the governmental authority be made questionable.

This algorithm has stood the test of time (only a year, and still evolving) for me and has created a win-win situation for the aggrieved villagers/land losers and the company. Yet each such dispute throws its own idiosyncrasy that makes for a nice story ... It is these unique experiences that compelled me to write this post.

*1 – “Industrial Disputes”, for the purpose of this blog post, refers to any law and order situation centring an industrial unit

Cartelisation using Government Mediation

A unique industrial dispute started in the supply chain of a prominent mining public sector company in Raigarh. The transporters of raw material went on protests against entry of "outsiders" in the transporting business. Things took a nasty turn when they started obstructing supplies (through voluntary and coerced support from fellow transporters) and sought administrative intervention/ mediation to pressurise the concerned company to not give business to those "outsiders".

Despite the precedents that mildly supported their demand for administrative intervention, such issues were left up to the company to decide.

The administration has no mandate to decide who is "outsider", given the fact that those protesting were all first generation Chhattisgarh migrants. Notwithstanding the protestors ' efforts to involve some "Professional Agitators"^*2, common sense prevailed and it died its natural death. After all, commercial vested interests alone cannot carry out an agitation if the administration and police are fair and non- partisan.

*2 - “Professional Agitators” refers to people who earn their living out of protests and demonstrations. Raigarh, being an industrial district, has dozens of them. They can be found in every drama involving any industry, their noise volumes being inversely proportional to how well they are "managed" by the concerned entity)

The Land Scam and the Clean Up

 Another idiosyncrasy was shown by a Maha-Ratna public sector company wherein the hundreds of hectares of land that it acquired were done in a way to cost the company a few hundred crore rupees extra. It was done through what we later found out to be a major land scam that involved company officials as well as lower levels of revenue administration.

The land losers who actively participated in the scam were rewarded many folds and so were the brokers.  When the district administration took cognizance of the misdeeds and worked overtime to reverse the damage done by conducting a thorough investigation, the commercial interests of many were hit. 

The resulting protests were started in the garb of developmental issues yet the root cause (which they were foolish enough to mention in writing) was the investigation into the land scam. They wanted immediate call back of the same. Normally protests like these, with no moral authority whatsoever, don’t deter companies.

However the fact that arguably every employee of the concerned company itself took active/passive part in the scam, made the company management's own moral position dicey. 

Political Hijacking Eventual Fizzling

The dispute that touched me the most was built around the most genuine concern of all- employment of one family member of a land loser to be given by the company which acquired its land within 2 years of taking possession.

As discussed before, its triggering factor was alleged firing of 25 land loser employees by the company management without giving due reason.

However the company had nearly 190 such land losers and it had given employment to only 45. I found the dispute to be a meaningful opportunity for the administration to make the company commit to employing all the 190 odd people. 

To cut a long story short, the issue soon saw involvement of the "professional agitators", active honourable political post holders and even wannabe youth leaders. With the effect that genuine and artificial issues got mixed up to an extent that was irreparable (who would teach the difference between legal mandate and a moral mandate to an emotive crowd of 300 odd people stuffed in a meeting hall?).

I felt let down because just when the company was made to came forward to give everything that it could, the "public mood" shifted to the more short term and impossible demands, leading to an entire change of focus and an amorphous end of the agitations.

Dramas and Disputes

Agreed, a lot of it is drama. 

Agreed, the front actors are usually crooks. 

Agreed, the commercial vested interest dominates the negotiations.

Yet, when I visited the villages that were affected by the concerned companies, there was a genuine grievance that I could sense in the quietest individuals. Who would usually be standing on the side lines with a perplexed  look  while the "leaders" demanded and approach me at the end with folded hands and a withered piece of paper, asking for a perfectly legal claim which should have been theirs months ago.

It always made one ask, yes we can solve these dramatic problems but why give a chance for the genuine grudge to arise?

In today's date, land matters the most. Hence our policies pertaining to its acquisition and rehabilitation matter. What matters more is their implementation - land scams during acquisition and percolation of land brokers that rob the real owners off their rehabilitation rights needs to be stopped.

District administration in Raigarh has taken suo motu cognizance of illegal land transfers and passed orders of revenue recovery in the tune of tens of crores. All the SDMs are being instructed to conduct gram sabhas in areas where land is going to be acquired in near future so as to make people aware of the rehabilitation benefits and in turn deter the land mafia that acts on the information asymmetry. I hope this trend continues here and elsewhere.

I have learnt from my mentor over the last year that a rich man in India will get its work done through the government through one way or another, it's the poor that we (in the IAS) need to proactively work for. In these Industrial disputes where the rich were pitted against the poorest, the side the Government (or I) was on was never in question. Instead of treating the protestors as criminal breachers of peace, we treated them like aware citizenry whose lawful demands we will ensure to meet.

These disputes provided an opportunity for me to negotiate on the behalf of those who would otherwise just hope to be heard and let go. I, like all the other anonymous bureaucrats, will soon be forgotten forever, yet the warmth/appreciation I felt from the genuine protestors and the memory of their contentment on being heard and addressed to, are going to stay with me..

PS: A Demi- Official obituary to Raigarh stint might still follow ;-) 

PPS: 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.

Hello Chhattisgarh!

Time ticks away. It's been one year since i first landed in Chhattisgarh as an IAS probationer and now i find myself going back to where i came from (#lbsnaa). 

Exactly one year back, i had funny notions about the state and its people, there were doubts whether i will fit in. Doubts whether i will survive, both professionally and existentially. Like any other newspaper reading member of the middle class citizenry, i also thought of "Chhattisgarh" as a term synonymous to "Naxalism". (Having read and reviewed a lot of Leftist literature obviously didn't help feel better). 

I remember being pleasantly surprised finding that there is flight connectivity to its capital, the fact that the airport was normal and there was no armed ambush till half an hour after the flight's landing also brought relief. 

The drive from the airport to my district took 6 odd hours and i spent the whole time looking out of the window, searching for People carrying weapons and red flags. What i found instead, were wide roads that led to the highway that cut through a beautiful, serene countryside, dotted with kuchcha houses and ponds..

Over the next few weeks, my preconceived notions about the state went for a complete toss! Instead they were replaced by even funnier notions... 

For one, I was astonished by people's capacity to consume paan... When there are more than 4 people clustered at a place, the place is bound to smell of beetle nut! ... When the "Honorable" High Court decided to confer on us, probationers, temporary powers of a judicial magistrate, i found myself sitting on a high chair listening to the pan chewing lawyers. The height of the chair was enough to make me seem imposing and give wings to my already inflated ego but not enough to prevent the pan filled saliva that splashed from the lawyers' mouths, from reaching me!

The scenes at the courts and govt offices were filled with obnoxious red teethed smiles of middlemen, spread across faces that were made rotund by intense oral activity (i.e. chewing :P)...  I soon learnt the subtle differences between people's choices - the gudaku, the paan, the gutkha and the hundred other products that they subject their teeth to. 

The second pattern that emerged clearly was that of pond bathing! Initially i saw it as an escape from the heat, but then, when my travels increased, i realized its omnipresence. Wherever there is a water body - a river, a pond, a tank, or even a temporary rainwater nallah... There are bound to be people of all age groups and genders bathing, be it early in the morning or late into the evening... ( somehow the nights were given to the poor water bodies to soak in all the human touch). One had had dreams in which the river flowing next to the circuit house would be flowing with soap water and there would be bubbles all around.

Away from the dusty towns, in the tribal villages, i sensed satisfaction in the air; A sort of a unhurried ease that comes with lack of expectations. Children greet me with broad noses and beautiful white smiles (for their teeth are still not subjected to the torture reserved for adults). Barefooted people could be seen carrying tendu patta on their lean, sun-burnt bodies.  The forest that surrounds is cut by roads that are plight-fully checkered with tar. Roads that are used by trucks and lorries carrying produce from the dug-up earth.

In the days that followed, chhattisgarh slowly began to reveal itself. Its a cadre wherein the IAS is still looked up to, a state where administration has shown promise, a state where political intervention is not vile or crippling. A state where problems are huge and complicated and the people are submissive and enduring.

Chhattisgarh has the land from which the richest business tycoons earned their money, made the middlemen rich and left the indigenous people wondering what just came and took away their home. It's a rich state with poor people that challenges the government to deliver and distribute the benefits of industrialization better. 

One can go on writing, but its now time to go back to LBSNAA and somehow describe my dirt and sweat filled field level experience using big English jargon words that no one back in the district would either understand or care to...

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.

CASTE : A Formidable Exploitative Force in Tribal Regions

At the outset I must admit that I cannot claim to be an expert on a region's socio-economic dynamics through my few hours of its touring. Yet, the caste based divides and the exploitative character of this caste system in Shivpuri is so flagrant that any empathetic observer cannot help but notice it.

This district is infamous in the "global development circles" (meaning the UNICEF, UNDP and the other practitioners of top-down policy models) for its appalling malnutrition levels among children. Huge funds have been poured in from the very same agencies so as to uplift the "tribal masses". Yet the affect of such international intervention over the last decade is for all to see.

I would like to sum up a few observations that I came across in a few hours of my touring -

 

The region has been the "summer capital" of the Scindias who have used its jungles for hunting and building elaborate luxury castles. The same family holds all the representative seats in the parliament for this region; On the left side is a dalit landless agricultural worker who has never seen stable employment, and has never been "selected" for any MGNREGS based work (when it is their right to get 100 days of work per year) by the panchayat officials. I wonder how he can share the emphatic feeling of the seemingly omnipresent writing on the wall.  

 

 In the local political scene, the marginalised communities claim of political neglect by all the elected candidates of the last three decades. The First-Past-The-Post system has allowed some candidates to win even with less than 10% votes of the village. In such a case all the benefits are allegedly captured by those belonging to their political clan and the rest feel unrepresented.

 

In terms of administrative empowerment, the first major stumbling factor in policy administration process is that tribal communities are treated as passive beneficiaries, with no right to choose and no ability to decide. This kind of an approach favours development of nexuses that enrich a few while rendering all public intervention futile.

Almost all the tribals complained of the domination of the upper castes in the lower level bureaucracy. This "world class" medical facility opened at the heart of the remote tribal region of Charch using UNICEF funding seems to resonate the same trend. All the employees mentioned on the board are upper castes - the same as those of the anganwadi centres, panchayat secretaries and numerous other grass-root level public functionaries.

 

In terms of initial endowments, there seemed to be two groups within the SC population of the district - while some of the Jatavs (belonging to the SC community) were well-off (from rural Indian standards), most of the other Jatavs and other SC community were living in dilapidated conditions and held no land or stable employment.

 

 

For the adivasis (tribals), there was no land or labour opportunities to talk about. The businesses in the villages marked as "tribal" for the purpose of BRGF (Backward Region Grant Fund) always seemed to be owned by upper caste Hindus who employed the tribals as casual labourers. The tribal gentleman on the right laughed at the question when I asked him if he owned land or if any revenue land ("patta") was allocated to him. He explained how a tribal spends his entire life in a hand-to-mouth existence and the only jobs they aspire for are in the illegal mining quarries of the region.

I can't end the post without mentioning a grandeous statement made by the senior district official who was incharge of our visit.

 

"Arrey bhai (to his subordinate) inhein wahaan le jaana uss sansthan mein jahaan humne un adivasiyon ko nehla-dhula kar unka mundan karwaya tha. (to us) kuchch adivasiyon mein bimariyon ki badi samasya thi, maine dekha toh paaya ki inhe dawaiyon ki nahi hygiene ki jaroorat hai - unko badhiya nehle dhula kar shave banwa kar taiyar kiya aur ensure kiya ki voh nahaye - ab aap log jayenge toh dekhna - koi bimari nahi hai udhar ! (smiling to himself)"

[He asked his subordinate to take us to an organisation where he had made a set of tribals, complaining of health problems, to have a bath and shave daily - he claimed that itself cured the diseases in those tribals].

 

What struck me in this assertion was not the seemingly fuzzy connection between shaving one's stubble and falling ill (After all, hygiene is an important factor in health), but the way he said it. The air of superiority and wisdom he echoed could have been the same if he were to be talking of some non human species that are to be managed by him. Clearly, the idea of "participation of tribals in making of decisions that affect them", will be incomprehensibly bizarre for him in the near future.