Deglamorize the services!

The services need to be de-glamorized. After all the nation does not want its servants to join its services for glamour but to serve, yet the reality has remained otherwise since the day britishers walked out leaving us in the lurch.

The white man was immediately replaced by the brown, the Indian Civil Service by the Indian Administrative Service with the difference being that the brown guy surpassed the white by miles in his perception of and also handling of those he perceived he was the ruler of. What he failed to emulate was the sense of fairness and justice that the white skin possessed despite being the virtual rulers of the land. The rulers can indeed be pardoned for excesses, after all they were never one of us, but not the brown sahibs, who were till they cleared the exams, one of the impoverished humanity that this nation is composed of.

Cutting across services, one witnesses an almost total absence of the will or the desire to serve. It is indeed the penchant for self gratification, throwing their weight around and being regarded a few notches above the masses, albeit in a different league that fuel the desire to enter the elite group of those in the services. It is sad that merely clearing one examination confers the license to rule and exploit the nation for petty personal gains to all those who till they were on the other side of the fence, had like a commoner sufficient grouses against the establishment.

Very rarely does one come across a youngster who has made it and still has the fire and passion to really serve the nation and its masses. Most of the youngsters aspire for the services allured by the glamour associated, in the form of bungalows, white ambassador, retinue of servants, foreign jaunts, the servile attitude of those around and of-course immense opportunities of putting the hand in the till. It is indeed sad and the misfortune of the nation that these are what attract the youngsters into the inner folds of the government almost as flies are attracted to sweets. While all services offer sweet attractions, the premier service of the nation, the IAS stands out in its ability to offer its entrants what other services fail to offer, unbridled power and a stranglehold over the nation.

Service of the self needs to be replaced by service of the nation and its masses. That the tendency of self gratification that the bureaucrats display in plenty has absolutely no place in a poor developing nation like ours is a reality that needs to be appreciated and put in place for the nation to prosper.

The services need to be deglamorized and presented as what they really should be – in service of humanity.

Obsessive designations

Whether the designations in railways are obsessive or we are unusually obsessed by rank is a subjective matter but the fact remains that rank has a major role to play in the lives of senior railway officers. Else how does one explain railway wives being addressed even in formal functions as Mrs GM, Mrs DRM, Mrs CRB and so on and the gentleman carrying his rank on his sleeve, even during morning ablutions.

I always been under the impression that jobs, unlike human beings remain singular in nature, but my return to railways amazed me no end when I realized that each job or a designation also has a spouse attached. So while the gentleman sits on the official chair, the spouse occupies the spouse chair with pride and authority, that often exceeds that of the gentleman and gives others a simpler access route to the official.

My above impression is based on experience, for I never heard the wife of an army officer being addressed as Mrs Chief of Army Staff or the wife of an IAS officer as Mrs Chief Secretary or Mrs Cabinet Secretary or Mrs Tourism Secretary. Blasphemy it shall be, if ever a railway officer is placed on these pivotal positions for then the better half would demand creation of designations that never were.

And it is not untrue that being formally addressed as a Mrs CRB/GM/DRM confers authority that merely being addressed as a Mrs X fails to give. And therefore we regularly witness the shameful spectacle of senior railway wives blasting railway officers in full public view or placing undue demands on the system that she would have been unable to do as a mere Mrs X. Outside railways, I have witnessed the wives of senior officers being given the respect that they are due but without even a tinge of any sycophantic connotation, yet it is only in railways where in their eagerness to please the boss through the wife route, the wife of one rising star was even equated to Julius Caeser.

He came, He saw and He conquered and She came, She saw and She conquered.

Yes the eulogy was conducted in full public view to the accompaniment of atleast two pairs of beaming smiles. Hats off to  the winner of the sycophants trophy.

Perhaps the obsession with designations especially the general management ones, lies in the low esteem we have of ourselves. As an assistant officer we compare ourselves with our IAS & IPS counterparts and curse ourselves. As the difference in status widens, so does the levels of frustration. And therefore at the first available opportunity, when we occupy a general management chair, power goes to our head. Power to ridicule and demean, power to shout and abuse and the power to punish and obstruct, it is almost like the tandav of Shiva. With passage of time, the officer rises in rank and the tandav that is conducted in pairs also reaches its pinnacle. Ugly sight it is for all those who have even a bit of self respect left in them.

As one turns sixty, so do the tables. The man who never thought of himself as a human being and was always glorified by the seat he rested his backside on, is left high and dry. But by then it is too late to make amends, the lady however is luckier for she gets her true name back, though much to her discomfort.

Amusing it is!

  

In deep shit!

The news of a lady IAS topper getting arrested for graft is a true reflection of the staid state of affairs in the sarkari sector of our nation. While it is an accepted fact that almost the entire sarkari machinery is laced with graft, yet most of us found it hard to digest that a lady and that too a topper of the civil services would stoop so low. It is really disgusting that things have come to such a pass!

This news would undoubtedly affect the perception of the masses who so far laid a high premium on the fairer sex and also on the academically brilliant. Males were always considered wayward, but now the fairer sex too has joined the bandwagon and that too with a bang. Now only the almighty that too in person can help this nation as his blessings from afar have failed to cleanse this country of eighty four million gods and goddesses.

Despite the above, my mood this sunny morning is upbeat and the cause deter is two honest ticket examiners by the name of Bindra and Grover who displayed a high sense of personal integrity in discharging their official duties and therefore were given a well deserved recognition in my room. But what these two exemplary gentlemen told me and my commercial officers during the brief interaction that we had is nothing short of a horror story that again dampens the spirits. The unbecoming conduct and the unfair demands that most of the travelling members of parliament make, made my head hang in shame. After all these shameless members of parliament are the true representatives of the society that we all live in and therefore the deep sense of shame that I felt. What was even more horrifying were the stories of the demands and misuse of privileges displayed in abundance by the people who constitute the vigilance department of the railways, free meals and free upgrades being the least of the problems. A classic case of the fence eating the crop.

What has the nation come to?

What is so radically wrong that the moral fabric of the nation has gone for a six and almost everyone in the sarkari sector has accepted graft as an integral part of his job?

Is the job and what it entails, as promised at the beginning of the career not satisfying enough? Or is the compensation not adequate?

Perhaps the answer lies in the general lack of satisfaction in almost all jobs in the sarkari sector and also the perceived sense of injustice that the sarkari mulazims carry in the back of their minds. Job satisfaction is almost missing, except for those few who are strongly willed and the extreme complexity of the tantra ensures non transparency.

We already have a rapidly increasing number of srakari mulazims within the confines of the holy Tihar. The rulers of this nation have perhaps mistaken “amanat” for “milkiyat”. What is temporarily handed over to them in trust is not for self gain is a thought that needs to percolate throughout the tantra and the earlier it happens the better it would be for the nation.

I wonder where are we heading to? Only time shall tell!

What defines merit?

I often wonder whether merit still counts in the present age India and am unable to find an exact answer. Merit rarely counts, is the best answer that one can think of.
Yes there have been cases where govermnents have recognized brilliance and merit overriding considerations based on money and proximity. E.Sreedharan is one such example of a person whose merit has been openly recognized and appreciated by the federal as well as state government. Nandan Nilekani is perhaps another. But that is about all. No other example readily comes to mind.
And so rarely we come across cases of an outstanding deliverance in this nation of over a billion people primarily because meritocracy has been finally given the go-by in this nation.
The sarkari sector definitely supports and promotes what it regards as merit. Unfortunately however, merit has a different meaning in this sector. Being from the elite IAS is considered meritorious, being well connected to the high and mighty is perhaps over brilliance and being stinking rich is also a fit case for being regarded as meritorious. Again, that is about all. And so all the institutions that are supposed to recruit people for important positions, with perhaps UPSC being the only exception, do their job on the basis of their own perception of what is merit.
The selection for board level positions in the central public sector undertakings is a classic example of a distorted merit assessment system. Both the methods of induction normally give weightage to the "connected" aspect, with the right phone call at the right time almost always doing the trick.
And so what does the really meritorious guy, with no connections and no surplus cash to be doled out as bribes, do in this country? Bide his time, I must say, because ultimately at some point of time, maybe a hundred or more years later, our nation, if it has to be pulled out of the abyss it finds itself in, shall be forced to start believing in and respecting true meritocracy as practiced in the developed world at present and not the pseudo kind, that it presently worships.

Air India

The recent downturn in the fortunes of Air India makes interesting reading. Amazing, how the indian bureaucrats can screw a high performing public sector corporation in a short time frame. Well the present outcome is borne out of consistent efforts of mass loot of the corporation by the bureaucrats in command and also politicians. Else how can one justify the large scale purchase of aircrafts during the days when the aviation industry worldwide was reeling under recession. Large scale freebies to the top management as well as the privilaged classes of employees must also have contributed to the downturn. Rampant corruption that eats up an organization from inside must also have contributed. Having once headed a large hospitality sector CPSU in the past and now a state PSU successfully, I have acquired a fair amount of insight into successful running of PSU's.
But CPSU's have a lot of innner strength and resilience despite the looters and it would be real fun to turn this organization around and make it one of the finest airlines internationally. If given a chance ofcourse, one year is all it would take for a turnaround even for a mammoth organization like the Air India. I am totally confident of doing the turnaround, but not being from the elite IAS is a big disadvantage in this country where these three letters take overriding priority over meritocracy. As one rightly said, dreams ought to remain dreams.