On the last count there are two and a half people reading the senseless drivel appearing on this blog. I can afford to be candid and forthright about things without fear of being downsized, reengineered, redeployed or just given the pink slip. The two people reading it regularly are not bureaucrats, but I suspect are strongly inclined to self-torture. (Why would they subject themselves to this?) The half person is not exactly a growth stunted midget but someone who can be called an infrequent reader who takes a fleeting look at the blog and goes back to watching Karan Johar shows which reek artificiality and makes one believe that the India is full of handsome guys who buss cheeks of beautiful women. I am more likely to be assaulted by friends than being pink slipped.
News is that the Babus are given a pay hike by our kind and generous nation. I have been flooded with calls from old friends congratulating our good fortune. My views on the subject are extremely unpopular. If known to other Babus, they would wish me death by a slow fire hanging upside down.- Or by slow mutilation of various body parts and leaving the rest to the increasing population of stray dogs in Delhi. At grave risk to my life let me set this to my blog- now competing for honours as the least read one this side of Suez.
Yeah…the Indian civil service is a strange thing. A few marks here and there in a strangely devised examination can turn you into a glamorous diplomat or a non-entity for the rest of your life. The Missus, also a public servant always had better privileges. She always had Govt transportation at her disposal. And me, with just a few marks less in the same examination had to always fend for myself with self driven Bike/ car and several trips in the Chennai local trains along with flower sellers, milkmen, chicken and goats. I always felt that it gave me better insight into Indian reality and also a severe slide down the greasy self- respect pole while exchanging notes with other Babus.
I advised my nephew to learn Persian and Chinese Literature seriously if he wanted to become a hot shot Indian bureaucrat- Subjects which will not fetch you a living in China and ahem… Iraq. But you could do that in India and these subjects are, I am told, easier to score in the Civil Service examination. So you have this civil service where economists are diplomats, historians are accountants, civil engineers are health specialists and Chinese language experts are in Water supply. Once they enter service, at the Centre, they are fitted into the most divergent kinds of assignments in a scheme known as Central Staffing Scheme- a scheme under which yours truly is working at the centre. So you have professionals with multidimensional skills handling specialist tasks like Defence, Science & Technology, Steel, Chemicals, and Telecom. Imagine sanitation experts in Defence, you could have someone who believes that the enemies can be just flushed away by pulling the chain. (An exaggeration, of course. I am sure Defence can learn a lot from sanitation: Sure a lot of scope for flushing here….). And on top of that there is a strange hierarchy at work in Delhi. One mentions one’s year of recruitment and service one belongs to. A few microchips start whirring, lights blink and you are fitted into a slot in the bureaucratic caste system. The hierarchy being dependent on the number of marks scored in an exam twenty years ago, number of years taken in our service to become a joint Secretary and such other factors presently not under your control. Yours truly being slotted somewhere at the bottom of the rigid compartmentalized steel frame. One has a surreal feeling that a different caste system is back in India with a vengeance…
The Indian bureaucracy doesn’t believe in grooming officers to take on specific roles. Except for the Foreign service and a couple of other services, the top most post, also known as the Secretary to the Govt of India is occupied by a person whose eclectic experience would put Lord Krishna to shame in terms of number of avatars. So basically, we have a bunch of generalists (under the politicians, who in any case are generalists) running the country. After 61 years no one seems to be in a hurry to change things.
Politicians, I believe, are incidentally a better breed. Look at Nehru’s first cabinet. He insisted on Ministers from various political hues and walks of life to occupy important positions, TT Krishnamachari, John Mathai etc who were not politicians. Nehru thought them good enough to become Ministers, just as Narasimha Rao thought it fit to make Manmohan Singh as FM. In Kerala when the first Communist Ministry came to power in 1957, it had even a Doctor (Dr A R Nair) as Health Minster- an erstwhile Congressman who was supposedly lured with promises of ideological neutrality in Health matters. It also had luminaries like Prof Joseph Mundassery and VR Krishna Iyer in charge of Education and Law Affairs respectively. EMS, the Chief Minister is said to have written to the centre, seeking massive reforms of bureaucracy, inter alia stating that the bureaucracy in India is fit to govern a colonial state. Also that in the light of modern realities of independent India, massive changes to the bureaucratic structure is called for. I don’t know what changes he had in mind- I hope it wasn’t the appointment of party apparatchiks to public posts.
One could even go along with elected offices to important development activities at the local level, as they happen in some other developed countries. Today we have Panchayat Members, MLAs and MPs twiddling their thumbs, while bureaucrats don’t show up for work. They have stood many hours in the sun, given fiery speeches and won elections. Why can’t they be trusted with local administration? I am sure it will surely evolve into a major managerial reform in local governance. My friend, a Doctor in Palghat was telling me that the recently introduced oversight by Panchayats in public health centers is irritating. It burdens educated doctors with control in the hands of uneducated Panchayat Members. I tried to explain to her that probably it is the best development model. With passage of time, it would evolve into an effective mechanism to at least ensure attendance of Govt doctors in PHCs and teachers in Government schools. Who knows, we might get Doctors and Educationists as Panchayat members one day. They might transform these institutions at grass roots level.
There are many fine professionals among Babus. But as a class, it is slowly losing its’ relevance. It is primarily due to a general lack of accountability, lack of domain knowledge / specialization and absence of grooming for designated roles. I can’t think of solutions. The experience with Central Govt bureaucracy suggests that we need a lot of lateral entrants with specialized skills for policy making with a few generalists who have an all round perspective. The specialists should then be groomed by rotating them in the same or related fields until they are ready for the top posts. Today the Central Govt imposes an upper limit on the number of years one can serve at the Centre. Most senior Officials are picked from the states where governance is a different, more challenging ball game. Centre needs some skills and domain knowledge. (Check out the bureaucracies of France, US and UK) So the system itself is designed not to develop specialized skills in anyone- rather it exposes a few guys to various departments and add value to them. They learn their job in each assignment for short intervals at grave cost to the nation.
We have hordes of well-paid drivers, peons, and clerks- Persons with skills that come cheaply in this country. And you have ill paid generalist officers as decision makers who are not equipped for these onerous responsibilities. We are happy with the pay hike- it is still less than what a newly appointed BPO employee with marginal skills take home- But then he/ she is groomed for that role and his efforts. And a company would not pay that person so much if it were not worth it….
In Delhi, Babus amble towards their work place more than an hour late for work. Why can’t we at least ensure discipline? Why can’t we have biometric cards that clocks in time of entry and exit? In Malaysia and Singapore, the Prime Minister punches his ID card when he reports for work. There are several senior Babus who come late and sit late. It would be an abomination in Delhi’s feudal society to even suggest that senior babus to punch their cards. It would not jell with the general body language of a senior Babu to carry his bag or lunchbox to office. So here we are, an extremely short sighted and self-centred class of people. Give all the pay hike you want.
News is that the Babus are given a pay hike by our kind and generous nation. I have been flooded with calls from old friends congratulating our good fortune. My views on the subject are extremely unpopular. If known to other Babus, they would wish me death by a slow fire hanging upside down.- Or by slow mutilation of various body parts and leaving the rest to the increasing population of stray dogs in Delhi. At grave risk to my life let me set this to my blog- now competing for honours as the least read one this side of Suez.
Yeah…the Indian civil service is a strange thing. A few marks here and there in a strangely devised examination can turn you into a glamorous diplomat or a non-entity for the rest of your life. The Missus, also a public servant always had better privileges. She always had Govt transportation at her disposal. And me, with just a few marks less in the same examination had to always fend for myself with self driven Bike/ car and several trips in the Chennai local trains along with flower sellers, milkmen, chicken and goats. I always felt that it gave me better insight into Indian reality and also a severe slide down the greasy self- respect pole while exchanging notes with other Babus.
I advised my nephew to learn Persian and Chinese Literature seriously if he wanted to become a hot shot Indian bureaucrat- Subjects which will not fetch you a living in China and ahem… Iraq. But you could do that in India and these subjects are, I am told, easier to score in the Civil Service examination. So you have this civil service where economists are diplomats, historians are accountants, civil engineers are health specialists and Chinese language experts are in Water supply. Once they enter service, at the Centre, they are fitted into the most divergent kinds of assignments in a scheme known as Central Staffing Scheme- a scheme under which yours truly is working at the centre. So you have professionals with multidimensional skills handling specialist tasks like Defence, Science & Technology, Steel, Chemicals, and Telecom. Imagine sanitation experts in Defence, you could have someone who believes that the enemies can be just flushed away by pulling the chain. (An exaggeration, of course. I am sure Defence can learn a lot from sanitation: Sure a lot of scope for flushing here….). And on top of that there is a strange hierarchy at work in Delhi. One mentions one’s year of recruitment and service one belongs to. A few microchips start whirring, lights blink and you are fitted into a slot in the bureaucratic caste system. The hierarchy being dependent on the number of marks scored in an exam twenty years ago, number of years taken in our service to become a joint Secretary and such other factors presently not under your control. Yours truly being slotted somewhere at the bottom of the rigid compartmentalized steel frame. One has a surreal feeling that a different caste system is back in India with a vengeance…
The Indian bureaucracy doesn’t believe in grooming officers to take on specific roles. Except for the Foreign service and a couple of other services, the top most post, also known as the Secretary to the Govt of India is occupied by a person whose eclectic experience would put Lord Krishna to shame in terms of number of avatars. So basically, we have a bunch of generalists (under the politicians, who in any case are generalists) running the country. After 61 years no one seems to be in a hurry to change things.
Politicians, I believe, are incidentally a better breed. Look at Nehru’s first cabinet. He insisted on Ministers from various political hues and walks of life to occupy important positions, TT Krishnamachari, John Mathai etc who were not politicians. Nehru thought them good enough to become Ministers, just as Narasimha Rao thought it fit to make Manmohan Singh as FM. In Kerala when the first Communist Ministry came to power in 1957, it had even a Doctor (Dr A R Nair) as Health Minster- an erstwhile Congressman who was supposedly lured with promises of ideological neutrality in Health matters. It also had luminaries like Prof Joseph Mundassery and VR Krishna Iyer in charge of Education and Law Affairs respectively. EMS, the Chief Minister is said to have written to the centre, seeking massive reforms of bureaucracy, inter alia stating that the bureaucracy in India is fit to govern a colonial state. Also that in the light of modern realities of independent India, massive changes to the bureaucratic structure is called for. I don’t know what changes he had in mind- I hope it wasn’t the appointment of party apparatchiks to public posts.
One could even go along with elected offices to important development activities at the local level, as they happen in some other developed countries. Today we have Panchayat Members, MLAs and MPs twiddling their thumbs, while bureaucrats don’t show up for work. They have stood many hours in the sun, given fiery speeches and won elections. Why can’t they be trusted with local administration? I am sure it will surely evolve into a major managerial reform in local governance. My friend, a Doctor in Palghat was telling me that the recently introduced oversight by Panchayats in public health centers is irritating. It burdens educated doctors with control in the hands of uneducated Panchayat Members. I tried to explain to her that probably it is the best development model. With passage of time, it would evolve into an effective mechanism to at least ensure attendance of Govt doctors in PHCs and teachers in Government schools. Who knows, we might get Doctors and Educationists as Panchayat members one day. They might transform these institutions at grass roots level.
There are many fine professionals among Babus. But as a class, it is slowly losing its’ relevance. It is primarily due to a general lack of accountability, lack of domain knowledge / specialization and absence of grooming for designated roles. I can’t think of solutions. The experience with Central Govt bureaucracy suggests that we need a lot of lateral entrants with specialized skills for policy making with a few generalists who have an all round perspective. The specialists should then be groomed by rotating them in the same or related fields until they are ready for the top posts. Today the Central Govt imposes an upper limit on the number of years one can serve at the Centre. Most senior Officials are picked from the states where governance is a different, more challenging ball game. Centre needs some skills and domain knowledge. (Check out the bureaucracies of France, US and UK) So the system itself is designed not to develop specialized skills in anyone- rather it exposes a few guys to various departments and add value to them. They learn their job in each assignment for short intervals at grave cost to the nation.
We have hordes of well-paid drivers, peons, and clerks- Persons with skills that come cheaply in this country. And you have ill paid generalist officers as decision makers who are not equipped for these onerous responsibilities. We are happy with the pay hike- it is still less than what a newly appointed BPO employee with marginal skills take home- But then he/ she is groomed for that role and his efforts. And a company would not pay that person so much if it were not worth it….
In Delhi, Babus amble towards their work place more than an hour late for work. Why can’t we at least ensure discipline? Why can’t we have biometric cards that clocks in time of entry and exit? In Malaysia and Singapore, the Prime Minister punches his ID card when he reports for work. There are several senior Babus who come late and sit late. It would be an abomination in Delhi’s feudal society to even suggest that senior babus to punch their cards. It would not jell with the general body language of a senior Babu to carry his bag or lunchbox to office. So here we are, an extremely short sighted and self-centred class of people. Give all the pay hike you want.
I have said my piece…Now throw all the chappals you want…
********************
I read an interesting article on gated communities in the “Outlook” magazine. It was full of descriptions of how urban oases are being created across the country. Giving a lifestyle comparable to the best in the west- Swimming pools, Gyms, club with steam bath, Health centre, Mini Golf course and the works. Gives a great feel good factor and makes retired life look like a breeze.
I confess to having been for a moment enticed by one of these ads. The flats being advertised were about 35 Kms from Delhi. It had pictures of an elderly guy in T- shirt playing golf, an attractive woman in the Gym and a young handsome couple strolling in the park with a kid in a pram. Looked like a nice idyllic life style. I rang up the phone number given in the ad. Some one picked up. I told him about my interest and asked him the cost of the apartments. When I heard the amount, I had to clutch on to something for support. Three successive generation will not be able to pay off the debt to buy such a house. I quickly said thanks and hung up. I hadn’t since been brave enough to make calls for membership to gated communities.
I did try, on behalf of my sis-in law, to buy a flat in Dwarka in the outskirts of Delhi, now a booming metropolis by itself. Anita, a diplomat has a reasonably better lifestyle, since she earns allowances in Dollars. I gave a call to some Wing Commander (Retd) who was now a property broker after having toiled for the Defence of the country. Haanji, he said, how can I help you? I specified my requirement. Yeah, my sis in law needs a flat in Dwarka, preferably with three bedrooms. (Anita, a spinster needs two bedrooms to fill her books in and one in which to read, eat, sleep, drink, smoke and live)He cited several obscenely high figures. Also added that some proportion will have to be paid in Black and some in white. What white? What black? I asked. He said Black Money sirrrr. I said we have only white money and that too not enough of it.
When I related this experience to someone, he told me that the last honest Babu bought his flat in Delhi 15-17 years back. If at all an honest Babu buys a flat now, he has either got a fat inheritance or he has won a lottery. So forget about living in gated communities in cities. Either go back to your village or lease a Jhuggi in Delhi’s slums from the land mafia, pay hafta to the cops and stand in line for drinking water. Not a very pleasant thought… *******************
********************
I read an interesting article on gated communities in the “Outlook” magazine. It was full of descriptions of how urban oases are being created across the country. Giving a lifestyle comparable to the best in the west- Swimming pools, Gyms, club with steam bath, Health centre, Mini Golf course and the works. Gives a great feel good factor and makes retired life look like a breeze.
I confess to having been for a moment enticed by one of these ads. The flats being advertised were about 35 Kms from Delhi. It had pictures of an elderly guy in T- shirt playing golf, an attractive woman in the Gym and a young handsome couple strolling in the park with a kid in a pram. Looked like a nice idyllic life style. I rang up the phone number given in the ad. Some one picked up. I told him about my interest and asked him the cost of the apartments. When I heard the amount, I had to clutch on to something for support. Three successive generation will not be able to pay off the debt to buy such a house. I quickly said thanks and hung up. I hadn’t since been brave enough to make calls for membership to gated communities.
I did try, on behalf of my sis-in law, to buy a flat in Dwarka in the outskirts of Delhi, now a booming metropolis by itself. Anita, a diplomat has a reasonably better lifestyle, since she earns allowances in Dollars. I gave a call to some Wing Commander (Retd) who was now a property broker after having toiled for the Defence of the country. Haanji, he said, how can I help you? I specified my requirement. Yeah, my sis in law needs a flat in Dwarka, preferably with three bedrooms. (Anita, a spinster needs two bedrooms to fill her books in and one in which to read, eat, sleep, drink, smoke and live)He cited several obscenely high figures. Also added that some proportion will have to be paid in Black and some in white. What white? What black? I asked. He said Black Money sirrrr. I said we have only white money and that too not enough of it.
When I related this experience to someone, he told me that the last honest Babu bought his flat in Delhi 15-17 years back. If at all an honest Babu buys a flat now, he has either got a fat inheritance or he has won a lottery. So forget about living in gated communities in cities. Either go back to your village or lease a Jhuggi in Delhi’s slums from the land mafia, pay hafta to the cops and stand in line for drinking water. Not a very pleasant thought… *******************
1 comment:
The count is 3 and a half persons who have read your blog. As usual i was meandering through the net, when i came across another ''hopeless romantic''. I liked the stuff about the Naxalite. I dont know why i like to read crime stories. I am not a criminal nor do i harbour such violent hatred.
I dont remember the first time i heard Pink Floyd, but i always harboured dreams of watching them live and i did see them in 2007- Feb 21st to be precise. I love the poetry and music associated with that band. Learning to Fly makes me think deep as i continue with a burning desire to fly an aircraft some day. Locomotive Breath is my favourite from Jetro Tull. The first song from Simon & Garfunkels was Sound of Silence. I wonder if there are guys who still love to listen to Crosby Stills & Nash. And Dire Straits will always be an indelible hymn. Did you forget to add U2? Well.. Mettalica & Guns N Roses too..
Hey, Sanghi Polyester is not a rare one. I have traded lots on that scrip. And recently i read Polyester Prince - i think you referred to a ''not so ethical'' company.
I keep wandering aimlessly through the net trying to gulp down information and reminisice on old tales. I do read the Dawn:-), not a great paper, but its worth knowing what they write on the other side.
I disagree with you on the Dark Knight. Yes; its a dark film not meant for kids. But Heath Ledger was incredible.
I made a search on your name and came with a link on Techtree..
I have a Pioneer music system VS500D bought in Singapore. It is not working. Any service personnel in Delhi?
Surendran Pandarathil ,
New Delhi
Did you manage to get it repaired?
I guess i have commented a tad too much. Well.. i too have this ''written diaorehhea''; just cant keep keying.
Take care and keep writing
murli
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