During last couple of years, I was lucky to visit the length the breadth of India, visited many cities, districts, blocks, tehsils, panchayats and villages in more than half a dozen states in India. I got the opportunity to spend time with people, participate in panchayats, meeting with DMs, secretaries, ministers, NGOs, donors and gathered a lot of humorous, innocent, sometimes callous and sometimes very insightful thoughts. Following are some of the chosen ones and my reflections on them.
- Once I was sitting in the office of a district level officers in a district in UP and I didn’t find the usual ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ picture in his office. I was not able to resist enquiring about the same. He simple replied, even I have a conscious and I feel very guilty to do, what I do in this office under Gandhiji’s picture. So I have removed the picture. (Later in the talks he revealed that he is planning to do an MBA for one of the premier institutes in India/Abroad and leave this murky govt. administration job
- I got the chance to understand the business model of an old aged entrepreneur of a medium size enterprise, working in the rural economy of Madhya Pradesh. On the question of ‘who will lead the enterprise after him?’, he candidly replied – “Now my sons are trained enough in the business model and the business dealings, so much so that they go alone and bribe District magistrates (DMs). (It was quite interesting to see the standard set by the father to measure his sons’ readiness to handle his business
- While working in AP on an education project, one of the corporate partner’s senior staff members asked me for some of our children’s workbooks for reference to start their new program in Tamilnadu. I expressed my apprehension that I only have material in ‘Telugu’ and not in Tamil, to which she replied “arrre, Telugu, Tamil all same only na !!!.
- In a block level meeting in a district in UP, a local NGO raised the issue that 4 children of age below five years died in the block in the last month. On this the block level medical officer coolly replied, “that’s well with in the average child death rate of under five children of the district, so this is a non-issue”. (In the routine of daily official chores, data, figures and averages rule over human lives)
- While talking to a big gathering of primary government school teaches and inspecting officers of a district in AP, on the issue of lack of quality education in government schools, the district collector asked – “how many of you send your children to government schools?”. To my surprise, there was no hand raised. (Government service providers are so sure about the poor quality of service that their system is providing that they don’t want to jeopardize the lives of their family members, by consuming the same service)
- Very late in the day, I caught the DM of one of the poorest district in UP in bad mood. He just finished a long meeting, with a group of villagers who came full in a tractor trolley and were demanding money for the toilets under “Total Sanitation Campaign” and pensions under “Vidhva pension Yojana”. I caught him murmuring,” did I get through this prestigious IAS profession to make latrines and to be an agent to settle pension claims?
- Over months, I had developed quite a good rapport with the steno (very useful people to work with the government machinery) of a district level development officer. He told me an anecdote that how some his previous bosses used their creativity to fleece taxpayer’s money. One officer got rural wells sanctioned, constructed nothing and ate all the money. His successor has shown that the well (which was not at all there), is on the road, dangerous for the domestic animals and small children and should be closed and so he got money sanctioned and ate all the money. (Nothing was built or removed but human creativity on paper, made money flow to their accounts)
- While addressing a group of people on the theme of “small family, happy family”, the chief development officer of a district in UP was telling the villagers that girls are as good as boys and parents should not endlessly plan for children, in the hope of a boy. On the question of “Without a boy, who will extend our dynasty?” by a villager, the CDO angrily replied - “Which maurya or mugal dynasty are you from, which has to be preserved. Even those dynasties are no more, inspite of many boys in their family. Indira Gandhi, inspite being a girl in the family, made her dynasty still survive. Dynasties survive on ability and merit, whether it’s girl or boy, doesn’t matter”.
- When we were living in a small town in UP, my wife taught our maid to say, “welcome”, whenever she or someone else says her ‘Thank You’. Our maid further taught our milkman that say “bel come” (in her lingo), whenever the madamji says “Thank You”. On this the milkman innocently replied, “why should I say “bell come” (sounds like less bulls in hindi) when I have 3 bulls (bell), 2 buffaloes and 2 cows. (I always thought such phonetic comedies of errors are scripted only for movies. First time experienced a real one first hand
- I believed very much in the involvement of parents and community in the management and monitoring of government schools and worked heard with my team to institutionalize the same in govt. schools in Hyderabad. While talking to the parents in the old city of Hyderabad, I asked them what more you want the school authorities and our organization to do on the academic front. One of the burkha clad mother said, “till now our kids have learnt only ‘choti angrezi’ (small English) and now teachers should tech them ‘badi angrezi’ (big English)”. (Later in the discussion I realized that she wanted to say, till now they were taught only alphabets and small words and now she wants her kids to speak in English like the kids from good private schools. It was quite interesting to observe that how ‘speaking in English’ is one of the important parameter of quality education in parent’s perception)
- While taking a tonga ride (horse cart) in a small town in UP, I asked the horse-cart-man Mr. Imran Hasan about the economics of his business and compare it with the auto rickshaws. He said, I earn Rs 250 a day and my horse daily needs diet worth Rs 100 a day and unlike auto fellows even on a day when I am not on road, my auto (he meant his horse), needs fuel (he meant food) worth Rs100. So compared to auto rickshaws, his economic compulsion to be on work daily is far more high.
- Over my repeated visits on four wheeler vehicles to the different villages in India, I have noticed a very interesting pattern. Even in the narrowest looking road, people around will look at you vehicle and let it pass. That’s a tacit signal that your vehicle can go through. If the vehicle can’t go inside, even a small kid on the road will stop your vehicle and prohibit you from moving ahead.
