Friday 11 March, 2011

Civil servants, unite..!

Babus have nothing to lose but their servility

by MG DEVASAHAYAM

A group of us, including former civil servants, lawyers and other professionals, have set up the Forum for Electoral Integrity in Chennai. The objective is to combat corruption and money power in elections which is the root cause of the degeneration of politics and the resultant decay in democratic governance.

We address public meetings and student gatherings. With the kind of scams that are rocking the country and with governance hitting rock-bottom, we repeatedly face one embarrassing but poignant question: Can there be such massive and widespread corruption and fall of governance except with the connivance of civil servants – IAS and IPS officers? The unfortunate answer is No.

Take the election scenario. Bribery for votes has now developed into a sophisticated cash-and-carry business model with advance bookings, IOU coupons and the like. Sale/purchase of votes is no longer a stealthy activity, but is done in the open and even boasted about. So much so, formulae have been evolved and publicly brandished for making the voters “shareholders” in the massive loot and scams during elections. Cash for this is stored in containers and carried in cars and vans with police escort.

The entire election supervising machinery, from the Election Commission down to the District Collector/Superintendent of Police, is manned by civil servants. During election time they have a clear Constitutional mandate and exercise vast powers. If corruption and crime have overtaken the electoral process, it is the civil servants who are to be largely held responsible. However, the present EC leadership is fighting a rearguard battle to combat the menace. Hopefully, civil servants will cooperate fully in this.

India has been consistently rated among the most corrupt countries in the world. A majority of the population pays bribes to access revenue services, municipal services, public distribution, healthcare, education, electricity, land records, registration, forest, housing and so on. The police force is the most corrupt among the services surveyed. All this to deliver low-quality services.

Millions of BPL families had to pay bribes to avail of the benefits of the government’s flagship NREGA scheme, directly administered by the District Collectors. Half of the BPL families had to cough up bribes even to get themselves registered for work. About 15% of the poor either paid bribes or used a “contact” to get the benefits of NREGA.

This, despite the much-trumpeted “social audits”. Corruption in the issue of community certificates, ration cards and pension is far worse. These services also come directly under the District Collectors.

On the police side, registration and investigation of FIRs is the most primary responsibility of the Superintendents of Police. But this has become a racket and a massive source of corruption, forcing citizens to go to District and High Courts to seek relief. The general public has to pay bribes and compromise its dignity in the process.

At higher levels, we have Secretaries to State governments and police chiefs who have totally surrendered to Ministers and prefer to share the spoils. How else could an IAS couple in Madhya Pradesh amass assets worth Rs 360 crore? Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu had Chief Secretaries doubling as real estate agents.

The Government of India’s Home Ministry had a Director who sold state secrets for cash and women. Many civil servants own acres of land, posh houses and apartments, luxury sedans and have several bank accounts. Each of the mega scams – 2G, ISRO-Devas, CWG, POSCO, Vedanta, Adarsh, Lavasa – has the imprint of senior IAS officers.

PJ Thomas has inadvertently opened up the “barber’s pit” in his affidavit in the Supreme Court. He reveals that all the nine IAS officers empanelled in 2008 and cleared by the CVC for the post of Secretary to the Government of India, including himself, were tainted by charges of corruption, misappropriation, embezzlement, land grab and possession of disproportionate assets. Their main qualification seems to be their success in soliciting postings from the Prime Minister’s Office or the respective Ministers. This is the kind of person who is occupying top administrative posts in the Government of India. No wonder decision-making is coloured and there is a disconnect between New Delhi and the rest of India!

A recent editorial in The Statesman is revealing: “Much of the woes the UPA government is facing could be traced to allowing a small coterie of civil servants with roots in Kerala cornering all key posts at the Centre from the President’s secretary to the Prime Minister’s principal secretary, the Congress president’s secretary, Cabinet secretary, home secretary, foreign secretary and the National Security Adviser….

It is not because of any rare confluence of talent in the small state of Kerala that most sensitive posts are filled by its citizens. Shameless subservience to their political masters and clannishness are the root cause of their rise and shine.”

At higher levels, we have Secretaries to State governments and police chiefs who have totally surrendered to Ministers and prefer to share the spoils.

The PMO, supposedly manned by the most competent civil servants in the country, is at the epicentre of this clannish coterie and is itself afflicted by major shams and scams, the latest being the secretive ISRO-Devas deal, which is being desperately concealed with the connivance of the media. The Thomas episode is further evidence of these in breeders stooping to any depth to make the country a “Republic of Scams” and destroying institutions in the process.

Be that as it may, let us hark back to 1922 and recall the prophetic words of India’s first Governor-General, CR Rajagopalachari, then a freedom-fighter: “Elections and corruption, injustice and the power and tyranny of wealth and inefficiency of administration will make hell of life as soon as freedom is given to us.”

PERHAPS this dire prediction was at the back of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s mind when he wrote to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in April 1948, advocating the formation of an independent civil service, in the functioning of which “political considerations, either in its recruitment or in its discipline and control, are reduced to the minimum, if not eliminated altogether”. This was strongly opposed by the Chief Ministers of the States and many members of the Constituent Assembly. In his speech to this Assembly in October 1949, the Sardar said: “The Indian Union will go. You will not have a united India if you do not have a good All India Services which has independence to speak out its advice – if you do not adopt this course, then do not follow the present system, substitute something else.”

Sardar Patel had his way and the AIS was established to “give a fair and just administration to the country and manage it on an even keel”. To ensure this and safeguard the civil servants from the “vicissitudes of political convulsions”, these services were covenanted in the Constitution.

Set up under such challenges, the civil services had the basic philosophy of delivering de-centralized, good and honest governance to all citizens and uplifting the poor and the downtrodden. Such governance would pursue an equitable, small-is-beautiful, need-based, human scale, balanced development while conserving nature and livelihoods. But most of today’s mandarins are pursuing the MNC agenda of turning the country into a 300-million-strong rich/middle-class market through FDI-funded, big-ticket projects by mortgaging the resources of the nation, leaving the 900 million “laggards” in the lurch.

A majority of the population pays bribes to access revenue services, municipal services, public distribution, healthcare, education, electricity, land records, registration, forest, housing and so on.

In the event, civil servants have been dragged into the very vicissitudes of convulsive politics, scams and scandals against which they were supposed to be a bulwark. They have become accessories to the colossal corruption that in the last five years alone has exceeded the British colonial loot of India of about a trillion dollars. Due to the collective failure of civil servants in living up to the covenant of the Constitution, India’s democracy has diminished, giving place to a “kleptocracy” – a government of the thieves, by the thieves, for the thieves!

India conscientiously adopted the permanent civil service system. But, over time, it has descended into a spoils system, imbibing the worst of both. In the event, despite Constitutional protection, civil servants have abdicated their independence and political neutrality and have become willing pawns in the hands of ruling politicians. Many of them have compromised and some have become their joint-venture partners to enjoy prized postings while in service, grab coveted post-retirement sinecures, acquire properties and set up benami outfits to run business and corner lucrative contracts. Serving corrupt carpetbaggers has become their mantra, the aam aadmi be damned. This is a crisis situation for the civil services.

Is there hope? Yes, if civil servants revert to the constitutional scheme of things from which they have drifted and reinvent themselves to become a fearless, independent, honest and efficient entity bound by an esprit de corps which is absent now. For this, a few colonial and neo-colonial hangovers such as “bureaucratic gagging”, “subservience to political masters”, “too much protection” as well as the jack-of-all-trades culture should be done away with. Also to be discarded are obnoxious practices like clannish inbreeding and servile sinecure-hunting.

The message is clear: Civil servants, unite and assert; you have nothing to lose but your servility. The choice is obvious – resurgence or swansong!

Front Door Is closed, Back Door Is Open

Huge irregularities in appointment of group D staff on Railways

Recently Ministry of Railways postponed all Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) exams indefinitely. This is a huge setback to all the unemployed persons who were hoping to get a job through fair means. While RRB exams have been postponed indefinitely, however it is learnt that everyday 20 to 25 people are getting appointed on Railways in Kolkata area at the behest of a coterie around the Minister For Railway. Sources said that The names are sent from the minister’s office after a sum of Rs 4 to 5 lacs is paid. Thereafter the names are processed & these are appointed in Group D on the railways after following a few formalities.

This is highly irregular on the following grounds:

1. When Railway Recruitment Cells (RRCs) are available on every zone for processing Group D staff then instead of processing candidates through the (RRCs) why should these people be processed surreptitiously.

2. It violates Articles 14, 15 & 16 of the Indian Constitution, as it does not give equality of opportunity to all eligible candidates. The whole thing is being done in a surreptitious procedure for a monetary consideration to a select few. Since the people appointed to railway jobs will be paid from the public exchequer, the whole thing should be done in a transparent process.

3. Huge money is exchanging hands for these govt jobs. Since at least 400 persons are being appointed every month @ of 5 lacs per person, 200 crores are being earned illegally every month by the coterie.

4. Only people belonging to one party are being favoured at the expense of other more deserving candidates.

5. 6th Pay commission had abolished group D category. It is not understood how railways are continuing to recruit this category through the powers of General Managers. Now we only have Group C category only. Hence all the people should be recruited through Railway Recruitment Boards & not through GM quotas in a surreptitious fashion.

6. 6th Pay commission had laid down the minimum qualification of Class 10 for all categories. However Railway Board has unilaterally reduced the qualification to class 8, so that people without proper qualification can be provided govt jobs.

7. This needs immediate investigation & guilty persons brought to book.

8. Fair play should be ensured for all unemployed youth.

Thursday 10 March, 2011

An Open Letter to Mamata Banerjee

the Hon’ble Minister for Railways

7C, Block D, Ideal Towers

57, DH Road, Kolkata-23.

Dated: 28th Feb, 2011



Dear Madam,

I thought you were a great leader. So you are. You fought for the helpless and the deprived. You fought successfully. You always showed great concern for the poor and the downtrodden. You seemed to have a lot of promise, at least to me.

Soon after taking over as Minister for Railways, you summarily replaced chairmen of all the 20 Railway Recruitment Boards handpicking the new incumbents. The worst ever recruitment scam in the history of Indian Railways followed. That was the first lesson for you – ‘a great political leader and a great administrator/executive are two totally different things.’ But unfortunately you chose not to learn. You stated in parliament that Railway procurement and scrap disposal were plagued with corruption. You reiterated your concern in GMs conference that followed. By these utterances you made one believe that it was your priority to cleanse these areas of Railway working. But when the departmental Head responsible for these areas of working (a man of impeccable integrity) initiated action in this regard through scathing inspection report of Belur Scrap Yard of Eastern Railway and taking a professionally correct stand in a tender case for procurement of wagons in Railway Board (against your wishes?), you overnight removed him from his post in an unprecedented action against all established norms, forcing him to take voluntary retirement. Result – rendering the department responsible for annual procurement worth about Rs. 30000 crores and scrap disposal worth above Rs. 3500 crores effectively headless and totally backbone-less, with great detriment to the organization whose charge you are holding through our votes.

You had won the elections with overwhelming votes in favour of your party. You had the power. Why to blame you if in that power-drunk state of mind, you, as other leaders of your time, also forgot that you owed your power to the poor, the downtrodden. They had reposed their faith in you to administer fairly and competently and to work for their betterment. Instead of acting as a trustee that you and your colleague ministers are, you also chose to act as an autocrat, much more whimsical than any of your colleagues. Largely dedicated workforce of Indian Railways is shattered with their morale at an all time low. Self-austerity could be virtue for an individual but doesn’t help an organization that could be benefited only through good governance and positive corrective actions to plug all-round daylight loot. ‘Railway Samachar’ has been bringing out how there is total chaos in the Railways under you. Thank God, still honest, true and bold journalism is alive in India though mostly we come across nothing but sycophancy in the name of journalism, even by the renowned journalists.

I was another fool who got misguided and misled by your public proclamations. I did some hard work to bring to your notice how avoidable leakage to the tune of Rs. 5000 crores per annum was taking place in Railway procurement and how through simple corrective steps it could be plugged effectively. You and top Railway bureaucracy under you assigned it to dustbin exactly as the report on oil mafia in Maharashtra was assigned to dustbin 15 years back and remained so assigned all these years. It required an officer to be brutally burnt and killed in broad daylight for everyone including officer preparing it and the media to wake up to it. But in this case, soon enough ‘The Statesman’ brought the issue out in four parts telling the nation about loss of Rs 50000 crores in last decade, followed by a perspective article ‘Will Didi slay the Railway demon?’ Now you had to bother, at least for public consumption. An enquiry/investigation had to be ordered. You did so. However the real message was not addressed and the messenger was shot. I was transferred to a farthest location unceremoniously. Politician in you was at its very best. Publicly you were praising the reports in ‘The Statesman’ while in private you were overseeing the victimization of the officer who knowingly/unknowingly had sowed the seed for these reports. The editor of ‘The Statesman’ urged you to act against this victimization through his editorial Mamata must act but you didn’t. Instead of slaying the demon, didi had fallen prey to it.

You had been presented with a great historical opportunity. You had only to desire and saving of thousands of crores of rupees per year in Indian Railways was there for the taking. (If your advisors couldn’t, I was always there to tell you how. But sitting at a very high pedestal, you didn’t consider it worthwhile even to meet me). That huge saving would have been just in one area of working. Madam, goodness is more contagious than evil. Your one corrective action would have inspired and activated the other well-meaning but dormant forces in the organization as well, resulting in further saving/earning of thousands of crores of rupees through stemming of the rot in the other departments. Then you wouldn’t have had to go to the Finance Minister with a begging bowl as has been necessitated now.

And who knows if as a chain-action, this goodness in due course would have encompassed the whole government that is today reeling under anarchy to the horror of the whole nation. But alas! When it mattered most, you also chose to be a part of and party to the rot (misguided by your advisers on Railways?), having promised so much the opposite.

The nation is disappointed in you but you are not bothered, feeling well entrenched through your knowledge that the poor voters of West Bengal, your political base, will never understand these things that how you had been leading a mammoth organization, the Indian Railways, to disaster. (Apart from Railway Samachar, India Today and CNN-IBN have also very recently reported that once profitable Railways are fast approaching bankruptcy during your short tenure). These poor voters having unflinching faith in you will probably be further befooled by the foundation laying and inaugurations by you and your lieutenants almost on daily basis in the state of West Bengal, and the populist proclamations being made by you as and when the opportunity is there. Or at least you and your cronies believe so.

You must be wondering who am I to dare to write to you in this way. I am simply invoking my power as a ‘citizen of India’ and Hon’ble Minister madam, you are answerable to citizens like me, more than to anyone else. So I believe. Please do note that I am apolitical lest you should attempt to dismiss this also as a conspiracy of the Left. Whatever Nira Radias, the media moguls, the corporate big-wigs, the top bureaucrats or the powerful ministers may think, the power of truth is the ultimate power. Unfortunately, in the land of Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi, we have forgotten it.

I know that basic problem lies with me for which none other than God is responsible. He designed my birth in this country but didn’t equip me with faculties to be able to understand the ways of this great country. He equipped me with commonsense but not commonsense enough for me to understand that commonsense was an evil and not a virtue for bureaucrats and bureaucracy in this country. He didn’t make me comprehend how leaders posing to be too concerned for the poor could knowingly allow continuous leakage of thousands and thousands of crores of public money and why they won’t take action to stop the loot and recover the looted amount that they could readily take. He didn’t make me understand how just being a Prime-Minister or a Minister could be a virtue.

My problem is that I have not yet been murdered, a distinct possibility for one exposing the powerful cartels perennially looting thousands of crores of public money. Had I been murdered, probably you would have publicly expressed condolence to my bereaved family, and ordered payment of my dues and family pension to them. You might have also awarded me posthumously. Had I been murdered, our alert media also would have taken note of the issue at least once to give them a news item for a day or two before forgetting the continuing loot as much more important issues like eating and sleeping habits of celebrities would always be beckoning them. Probably you and bureaucracy under you are just awaiting that? Since in the meantime they are carrying on the would-be murderers’ job themselves by making my life as troublesome as possible. Of course, public awards in the largest democracy of the world have to be reserved for those in proximity with the powerful ones.

What else is my problem? Continuing huge leakage of public money in Railway procurement? It is true that every Railway officer who is aware of the issue, including the Board members, knows that the facts brought out by me are that- facts – and that the amount of leakage estimated by me is an understatement rather than an overstatement. It is true that still everyone is continuing with the policies and actions that support the loot. It is also true that you, the Minister, one person ultimately responsible to plug the loot of public money, have chosen to do nothing to save thousands of crores of rupees year after year that could be utilized for the uplift of the poor for whom crocodile tears are shed day in and day out and whose votes give our leaders the power for them to use or abuse. Still the leakage is not my major concern today. If the Railway administration doesn’t feel concerned, if the people of India, their elected representatives, the known public activists and crusaders, and strangely the media at large – all have deemed avoidable and ever increasing annual loss of Rs five to ten thousand crores to be a matter of no consequence and importance, why should I lose my sleep over it? Or how my loosing sleep could help in a country of one billion plus hell bent on proving Winston Churchill a prophet for the scathing comments by him about our future leaders at the time of India gaining freedom? I do, however, feel bad as my heart does bleed for the poor and the deprived.

But madam, my victimization has to be my concern only. And so it is. That’s why this letter. You who gave slogan ‘Maa, Maati, Maanus’, decided not to pay any heed to my representations against my victimization. You forgot I was also a human-being as you were and had a family to look after. Yes, I have to pay the price for having been born in this country. But as the concerned Minister it is you who are personally responsible, more than anyone else, not only for continuing mammoth leakage and plunder of public money, but also for my victimization first through transfer and now through non payment of my outstanding dues including salary for months, my retirement dues, and monthly pension, maintaining absolute silence for above three months now since I retired voluntarily after having given due notice. Let us not forget the inevitable. Death awaits us all.

It is true that I could seek judicial redress and in all probability I shall have to do that, but has the governance deficit, now being publicly worried about by the stalwarts of the society, to reach such a level that public servants acting in public interest are starved by the government and even for basic and fundamental things one has to rush to already over-burdened courts?

Being a poet myself, I fail to understand how the artist in you could allow the torture being caused to one having acted in public interest by the boneless Railway administration. While the Prime Minister is publicly proclaiming resolve of his government to root out corruption, administration under you is openly working overtime to root out those who have been sacrificing themselves in fighting the far bigger menace of ‘institutional corruption’ from within - the real thing in contrast to mouthing of idle words. What a way to root out corruption! The joke in the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s claims stands out.

Still I hope the poet in you will start breathing again and good sense will soon prevail. You will be able to free yourself from the clutches of self-serving and rudderless bureaucracy and resurrect the true leader in you. I do hope that you for one will prove Churchill wrong. Soon, to our delight, we, the citizens of India, will see Didi overpowering and slaying the demon!

Wishing you all the best for the coming assembly elections,

Thanking You,

Yours Faithfully

Atul Kumar

(Ex-COS/Metro Railway,

Kolkata and A Citizen of India)