International Women’s Day – A day of pensive introspection : Dr Anita Kaushal, Ph.D.

*Dr Anita Kaushal, Ph.D is Dean & Associate Professor in Post Graduate Government College for Girls, Sec 11, Chandigarh. A first class post graduate Gold Medalist in English, her doctoral research “Anticipations of Feminism – Exploration of the Feminine Psyche in the works of Fanny Burney, Jane Austen and George Eliot” lead to award of Doctorate of English Literature by Punjab University in 1995. She has published many research articles.

International Women’s Day – A day of pensive introspection

(Originally Published in Hindustan Times – Chandigarh)

International Women’s Day is a day of pensive introspection. Though women are progressively tearing past their ‘chattel’ status, a complete cure of the societal ailment will depend upon a threadbare comprehension of its genesis.

 ‘Chattel’ in its dictionary meaning “is an item of tangible movable or immovable property except real estate, freehold, and the things which are parcel of it; a piece of property; slave-bondsman”. The general historical trend through all the ages, though with a few honourable exceptions, has been to treat women as chattel.

The entity of women has in the past oscillated between that of domesticated cattle on the one side, and touching fringes of human dignity on the other. Like cow yielded milk, horse drove chariots; woman reared children and drove the household.

The male prescription of such a role chained women to the four walls of the household, engaged in a lifelong ordeal of producing dozens of children and encountering their mortality; and in addition being a chef and house-keeper for the joint household.

If bullocks and horses were the beasts of burden and a cow a useful source of milk and fuel, women were in the beasts of the household and biological machines for producing progeny.

However, while horses, bullocks and cows like other commodities had a value tag for their acquisition or barter, the status of the woman touched the lowest ebb because society did not attach an economic value tag to the household or child rearing services.

Women were neither a commodity of exchange nor an object of barter in a society where moving outside the household threshold was bad character and loose morals. Conversely, the system of purdah, forced widowhood and sati reduced a woman to one man’s chattel.

With fathers and brothers completely denied her the right to inherit the family property, woman was pushed to face the same treatment by the in- laws. Without any financial means at her command, woman was reduced to the status of a puppet dancing to the tunes of the men-folk who sponsored her very existence. In such a pitiable condition, woman had to seek her entry into her in-laws household through a negotiated dowry.

As woman was purely a recipient of male biological sexual aggression, rearing children with male surnames and managing a male dominated household, she suffered the male instinct of financial, moralistic and dogmatic aggression for overpowering her.

Men of the ancient ages had acquired great expertise in taming wild animals into productive assets. In their mindlessness, they went all out to tame the opposite human gender too. In the process, they not only weakened the social fabric, but also dealt a death blow to the pace of balanced intellectual and socio- economic growth of the mankind for ages.

 The process of converting women into chattel found its way through legislation into the laws of the land. There are disgusting examples of chattel like status of women in criminal, inheritance, property laws and democratic rights of women in various legal systems of the world.

 Feminism, progressive modernism and globalization has ushered a turn- around in the social values attached to womanhood. It may be a late beginning, and may have taken long to gain momentum, but the process of amelioration of women’s condition is now on strong foundation.

The laws of the land are now helping women to shed their chattel tag and assigning sanctity to women’s social, legal and economic entity which manifested in debilitating social customs like sati, forced widowhood. Denial of inheritance and discrimination in public appointments are now targeted as social evils.

In a turn- around, the new women related laws are pro-active in ensuring a level playfield to the women by punishing domestic violence, dowry seekers, rapists and the discriminators in an exemplary manner. There is a direct attack on femicide, child marriage and other evils. The implementation of laws may still be lackluster, but a strong foundation has been laid.

The main area of concern is a relative lack of economic self dependence of women. The State still has a very low ratio of women in employment at all levels, despite girls outshining boys in higher, technical and medical education. Police remains one of the most gender-insensitive brute force. Women joining the army are still struggling to find a legitimate place within their organization. Private sector seems better, but there are instances of exploitation of women at workplace and also of sexual attacks on women working at odd hours at BPOs and other establishments. State and its enforcement agencies need to be gender sensitized.

The crux of the problem still remains unattended. There is a dire need to provide economic stimulus to women. It is essential to highlight the women per capita incomes and male per capita incomes separately for proper indexing of women’s economic growth leading to their economic self reliance. Financial independence leads to social dignity. State policies should go beyond the cosmetic ‘special components’ and ‘gender- budgets’ aimed at women’s economic growth. Women do not need help or charity. They just need a ladder to get past the high wall of deprivation, discrimination and denial of means of economic growth and decision-making. That ladder is nothing but a systemic correction of kinks in the operation of economic forces to make women self reliant.

                                                ———————

Should the manifesto be made justiciable?

 

 

 Manifestoes have increasingly been used in the recent past for seeking votes by promising moon to the electors. It is perhaps the tyranny of the electorate that compels the political parties indulge in abrasive display of one-upmanship in offering sop after sop with no holds barred.

 There is no provision in our laws to ensure that a manifesto is not only a promise bank, but a responsible document having the required degree of sincerity, accountability and commitment as its foundation.

A manifesto has two facets; in one way it deprecates the ruling party for the flaws that they have not been able to redress and thus remain a cause of anguish of the electors. In its second facet, it is a gateway to a dream-world like a mother’s lullaby to a tiny tot promising it the moon, the twinkling star and so on.

 Neither the value judgment of the past in a manifesto is essentially accurate, reliable, logical or based on statistics; nor is most of the future that it seeks to usher is feasible, practical or even desirable. As the analysis of the past is divorced from reason and influenced by slander instinct, the promises of the future are stone blind to the reality posed by the financial constraints, intra-sector economic pulls and repercussions, long term commitments of the State, which is legally a juridical body with perpetual succession.

The political parties draft their manifestoes to suit their electoral interests, which may not be in the interest of the State or its people. It’s not the professional economists or the socialists or the environmentalists or the academicians, who draft these manifestoes. They are essentially drafted by the paid ghost-writers employed by masters of political chess boards for manipulating the facts for their personal political gains and the electoral gains of their political party. Even if a semblance of professionalism and credibility is accorded to the exercise of drafting a manifesto, it is only through a farcical involvement of committed mercenaries in the name of professionals.

The electoral interest of a political party is not essentially the long term interest of a State or its people. The political myopia of most of the political parties these days is confined mainly to focus upon the next elections and five years subsequent to that, and no thought is spared for long term sustainable development, systemic reforms and statesmanship. Therefore, when the ruling party forms the Government on the basis of promises and the Council of Ministers adopts the manifesto as agenda map of the Government, it is highly unethical, if not unconstitutional and illegal to shove it down the throats for its mindless implementation by the civil servants.

The civil servants, at least theoretically, represent the State’s name and its basic fibre which grants it the permanence of a continuous juridical entity, irrespective of the political parties in power making their entries and exits periodically in a cyclical manner. The standard scenario in which the civil service is perceived by a political party as standing in the way of the wishes of the people is in fact the scenario of the civil servants standing in the way of a mindless implementation of the whims of a political party or one of its opinionated leaders.

Those who have interest in American constitutional history would know the amount of serious deliberation and thinking that led to layers of structural insulation of the government from the direct tyranny of the electorate. An element of indirectness in the process of electing those who govern saves the executive from undesirable arm-twisting by the pressure groups amongst the electorates to shape the policies of the State in the moulds of their liking. The federalist papers amply establish that American Government is a Government of the people, by the people and for the people; but at the same time the executive of day is sufficiently insulated from the curse of direct intervention of pressure groups on a day to day basis.

Therefore, such maladies as the private transporters browbeating the political executive and framing the transport policy of a State as per their requirements, the liquor mafia influencing the excise policy formation, the builder mafia making a pulp of the master plans and the environmental regulations; the colonizers throwing to winds all norms of land use; and the students agitating for grace marks to get through their final examinations are certainly the bane of our democracy as we run it at present.

Coming back to the manifestoes, what remedy is left to the electors in case a political party makes somersault and forgets about the promises it extended in its manifesto? Practically nothing except waiting for five years till they get a chance to boot it out.

Little does it matter now to our insensitive polity now that most of the political parties, particularly the regional fiefdoms, become dream merchants while penning down their manifestos because they make hay in alternate spells of five years while the electorates are continuously befooled.

There is no provision for a recall after a mid-term evaluation. Strikes, protests, bandhs and the like of these eruptions are caused by the lack of an institutionalised safety valve to reject and recall a government midway through its betrayal course.

Should the manifestos be made justiciable? It is a very casual question to evoke a very complicated answer. When manifestos are used as a mirage to lure the gullible electorates, it is definitely a corrupt practice in an ethical, if not legal, sense.

Manifestos can be made justiciable only if law of the land is made to term its non-implementation as a corrupt electoral malpractice. But who will judge whether sweet dreams that have turned sour are because of an inherent malafide intention of a political party to dupe the electorate without having any serious intention to keep the promises bundled into a manifesto, or for a genuine bankruptcy of knowledge of the fundamental financial and physical fallout of their manifesto promises. It is a tough call, as tough as deciding an election petition resting on flimsy, concocted and make-belief evidence adduced by intensely interested parties.

Manifestos can at best be adduced as an additional evidence to allege electoral malpractice swaying the votes during an election, but it is a fact which can be raked up only after a manifesto is put to the touchstone test of time. The proof of a malpractice will emerge after two or three years. A dishonest manifesto causes an instant electoral damage but has a post facto proof. Co-relating the quantum, nature and extent of the damage with the intensity of malafide in drafting a manifesto is quite a logical riddle. The trick will go unabated untill the electorate emerges fully enlightened, analytical and a bit cynical after a series of political betrayals.

“Jago Sarvesh Jago”

Mr Sarvesh Kaushal & Dr Anita Kaushal

“Jago Sarvesh Jago”

That’s what my politically confused wife said while holding a cup of bed tea precariously close to my snoring nose. I was taken aback as it was she who had over the years encouraged my morning stupor for the tranquility she looked for.

“Jago Sarvesh Jago” she said, “We have stepped into the Jago Era”. I thought for a while that it was another irritating trade-mark concoction of a Shakespearian quote from an English professor. For once, in that context, I suddenly remembered having read that ‘Jago’ is the Cornish, a minority language in England, for the name ‘James’ and as an alternate spelling for ‘Lago’. I was also reminded of Richard Jago, a 17^th century English poet.

“Jago Sarvesh Jago” came the nudge again. I was painfully reminded of the scores of wake-up callers hooting like the air-raid warning sirens of the 1960s and 1970s. Jago, Jago, Jago….. The clarion callers have accessed divine wisdom, and are blessed to inflict it upon the blissfully sleeping ignorant.

From the utterly insipid official TV fillers like Jago Grahak Jago, Jago Yatri Jago, Jago Investor Jago etc. of the past, the Jago slogan is all around in full blast with Jago India Jago, Jago Bangla Jago, Jago Mumbai Jago, Jago Punjab Jago and so on.

“Jago Sarvesh Jago”, she raised her voice.

I reluctantly clutched the bed-tea cup while taking pity at her for wasting a slogan meant to be a turning point in the fate of the sleeping humanity. These literature doctors simply don’t understand the potency of a slogan for fuelling politics, just as a virus is needed to spread the epidemic.

“Jago Sarvesh Jago and go for a yatra, which is the usual corollary of awakenings”, she goaded. “But not a yatra of the ‘blessed ones’ sipping cappuccino coffee on an auto-transmission state-of-art SUV.  You need to shed lots of weight. Therefore, a foot-march for you, the Gandhian Padyatra”

Gandhiji, I grumbled, has set too high yatra standards for us to follow. An unachievable standard is in itself a de-motivating and self-defeating target. How can one go for a Jago Yatra wearing anything but Khadi, no branded shoes and goggles, no luxury SUVs to ride, no chartered fixed wings and choppers, no helicopters showering rose-petals, no five star meals in star hotels and marriage palaces, no fast food fillers, no cappuccino coffee, no diet coke, and not even mineral water?

I belong to a generation which has been taught to move the goal-posts for scoring its goals. That’s it.

For a while I was reminded of the ‘sarkari’ pilgrimage. Of meetings day in and day out, of holidays or no holidays, of all hours of day or night as our elected masters wish. As the herds attend meetings after meetings, culminating in the periodic sky-high level bash-’n'-bang review meetings, it gives me a feeling of jogging on a treadmill without having moved an inch ahead.

And, why should I go for a Jago yatra?  I am not blessed with divine enlightenment. I have no virus to spread around my State.  I have no axe to grind. I have no distance to cover.

I thought for a while on this icy dawn, kept the empty cup at bed-side table, and pulled the quilt up my face for another spell of sleep. No Jago for Sarvesh !

Administrative Reforms – The reality byte

*(Sarvesh Kaushal is the President of Punjab State IAS Officers’ Association) 

 

Friends, if we do not deliver, we shall perish.

For saving us as a class from virtual redundancy and eventual extinction from the overall scheme of governance, we need to focus upon quantum and quality of citizen service delivery. The day has come when instead of looking at the peripherals in the name of administrative reform, we focus upon the fundamental structural issues affecting the citizen services adversely.

We need to remedy the virtual collapse of the state civil and allied services due to the failure to carry out regular yearly recruitments has crippled and paralysed civil administration and service delivery to the citizens. The backbone of the civil administration stands broken. 

We have one state civil service officer manning upto even half a dozen posts with additional charges. We also have the key functionaries, performing executive and quasi-judicial functions, employed on temporary contracts, because we have not been able to carry out the recruitment process as a regular annual function.

The same is true of the Secretariat Administration, where administrative branches have large number of crippling vacancies, branch officers are being forced to handle multiple charges.

We also need to rationalise the deployment of our personnel. Even amongst the existing cadre officers, the distribution of assignments is so lop-sided that some of them have two or three departments to run at the same time, while a large number of eligible officers are made to idle.

We need to ensure fresh induction in the second and third tier of civil administration. At present, our aging manpower is without the essential blend of youth.

We need to focus upon Education, may it be school or higher education, or medical or technical education, where large number of key posts are vacant, there are no regular heads of many institutions, there are no timely promotions, and there are kinked wage structures with personnel engaged in the same or identical tasks have totally different wage structure and job security. The same could also be true of other social sector departments.

We need to respond to the call of our conscience rather than conveniently turning a Nelson’s eye to blatant manipulation of transfers of our junior personnel by pressure groups on extraneous considerations.

While we insist upon performance reports, we should’nt forget that performance has a direct correlation with opportunity, platform, and congenial atmosphere to work. We should rather insist upon having a potential appraisal rather than a performance appraisal when the basic pre-requisites to perform are missing most of the times.

The Standing Orders which prescribe delegation at various levels of hierarchy, are now issued at the level of every Minister for his own department, with little or no delegation of decision-making worth the name in favour of Administrative Secretaries. The Administrative Secretaries are left to defend the court cases and reply to the audit paras or face flak elsewhere. We need to insist upon a conscious and institutionalised rationalisation of the delegation process.

The Administrative Secretaries, when over-ruled, have an option to dissent and refer a case to the Chief Minister for final decision, but hardly any one takes recourse to that of late for a sure retribution and humiliation. This process needs to be institutionalized and encouraged to check the harmful tendency of pre-orchestrated decision-making.

The civil servants should not be held accountable for something which they neither decide nor implement, and where their feeble voice of propriety is not even heard, much less their opinions being heeded to.

We need to rationalise our transfer policy at all levels. The average tenure of an Administrative Secretary in a department hinges around just 12 months. This brings in ad-hocism and uncertainty which is counter-productive to the cause of efficient service delivery.

In the present era of political party’s manifesto-driven governance, it should be remembered that the civil servants neither author the manifestos nor can say a word before the manifestos are adopted by the council of ministers or otherwise by the strength of a committed political will strong enough to bulldoze any suggestion to the contrary.

It is not for the civil servants who propose sops and make gaping holes in the revenue stream of the state. There are two ways to go bankrupt. One is that you fritter away more than you earn. But a surer way is that you stop earning. The civil servants should not propose either of the two, much less the second one, and for God’s sake, not the both of them. The state should be as rich or poor as its people. We should not have a pauper state inhabited by rich people. The state finances should be guarded more vigourously and diligently than one’s own personal finances. A state must have sufficient resources for ensuring sustained developmental potential of the state.

We as civil servants should not become silent spectators and facilitators of regional as well as inter-sectoral imbalances in state developmental funding through discretionary releases. It should be remembered that discretion is an exception to the planning process. We should also not become a silent spectator to non-implementation of grass-root level planning process in its proper form and instead hijacking of the devolution mandate to a superfluous nullity.

We should also not become a silent spectator of ominous rigging of municipal and panchayat elections by keeping quiet even when we are posted as independent observers by our state government / state election commission. I have spoken to some of the observers and one of them quipped : “The so called ‘independent’ observers from within the state government can do very little because they are, as the famous poet Pash wrote in a different context, ‘ilh de panje wich ud de azaad chuhe’- (as independent as a mouse in the claws of a flying kite).

We need to build in-house departmental vigilance teams for fair and objective vigilance under the Administrative Secretary for taking fair, impartial and just vigilance measures to ensure corruption free service delivery.

Instead of being rubber stamps just for issuing formal orders of appointments, we need to keep in mind while dealing with such files, that the credibility, impartiality and profound respect of the Constitutional bodies like the PPSC, or various statutory Commissions, or other institutions has a direct co-relation with the integrity, impartiality and suitability of the persons who are nominated to man them.

Putting an end to this seemingly endless thought process, I wish to conclude on a lighter note. I was having a cup of tea with an esteemed senior and asked for his message for my young colleagues. Pat came the poetic message :-

                                “Apni to jaise taise,

                                Thori aage ya peeche,

                                Kat jayegee,

                                Aap ka kya hoga,

                                Janaab-i- aali ?

———————————————————————————————————-

 

 

‘Eating the flesh of your dead brother’?

           Backbiting is one of the negative personality traits which almost all the humans suffer from. It has of late assumed the proportions of a social epidemic affecting the core of our materialistic minds. It is rape of fame through wicked tongue lashing. Why blame the tongue, it is the sick mind that drives it to pollute the serenity of human existence. It is a weapon of the weak and the low, enjoying a transient phase of make belief credibility.        

             Backbiting in our service has been the traditional play field of  a few high-fly socialite tattlers. It  has also been the prerogative of egotist seniors notifying themselves, through comparisons with their predecessors and contemporaries, as the only privileged repository of  ultimate wisdom, expertise and integrity. For a few upstarts, it has been a crude megaphone to blow their own trumpet deafeningly into the ears of  their likes, in an ideal meeting of shallow minds .

            Backbiting, which is a demolition drive aimed at bulldozing the target,  ends up in self-demolition. The snake devours its own tail. Some of our colleagues unleash backbiting as a weapon of mass destruction of the service through character assassination, with detestable mental fascism to emerge the sole surviving victors in the arid wilderness that they may ultimately cause.

            Backbiting against service colleagues to outsiders, such as journalists, politicians, businessmen etc., who may solicit and entertain some of us for their own vested interests, is still more harmful to the service. Backbiting the service colleagues amongst themselves is undoubtedly obnoxious, but not fatal to the service, because the listener, howsoever supportive he may be, knows about the backbiter and the motives behind his utterances. He also knows that one day, he himself could be his target. However, most of the journalists, fed by backbiters, do not hesitate to publish unverified trash or to sensationalize trivialities, because like ‘a man biting a dog’, a man biting a man is also a news.

Allah has said: “And spy not, neither backbite against one another. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother?..”

Journalists contemptuously dub the service as ‘Babudom’ and address a service officer as ‘Babu’ in print, and yet, most of them seek a privileged personal audience for all they wish to have. Suddenly the ‘Babu’ becomes a ‘Sir’ and ‘Sahib’ and what not. We have lent them so much strength through internal bickering and backbiting that even a kid (introduced as cub) reporter considers his birthright to intrude into anyone’s official schedule at will without a decent notice or may as well  intrude the privacy of even personal lives and get away unethically with such legal alibis as ‘ it is alleged’ or ‘it is heard’ or ‘it is widely known’, or ‘it is widely believed’ or ‘it is learnt’, or ‘according to reliable sources’ and so on. For no verification, the explanation is really amusing – i.e ; ‘could not be contacted despite a number of attempts’. Such attempts are either not made, or they are made a number of times in quick succession in a span of half an hour even though one is out of station or attending  a cremation or marriage of a member of the family ! It may be an innocuous call to test your memory at 9 pm, regarding some facts quoted by a backbiter pertaining to one of the hundreds of files you might have dealt with a few years back. If you cannot answer, you are accused of having ‘refused to comment’ or ‘being evasive’ or ‘having fumbled for words’ ! (As if a journalist would instantly remember and respond to what his paper carried in column 11 of Page 18 on March 11, 2001 or whether it was a holiday for the newspaper !)

            A politician may have a terrible compulsion to project himself to every voter down the street through the media, and let the media men exploit his compulsion to the hilt. Is’nt it sufficient for us to focus on the human values and humanity as a whole and not respond to the urge to play to the gallery through the media , much less to supply  it ammunition out of  backbiters’ arsenal to fire at our own colleagues in particular and the service in general? Is’nt it better to make the benefits of good governance flow naturally and systematically to the neglected man down the street, rather than to bamboozle him through ‘carpet-bombing’ of media mis-information, disinformation and false information?

            Some of our own colleagues stoop exceptionally low to backbite and whisper carefully woven webs of falsehood into the ears of the politicians, or their gullible wives or sons; spreading canards to the wrongful detriment of service colleagues, even hiring the services of  such specimen of humanity who do’nt deserve a candid mention for considerations of public morals and decency. The cat’s whiskers amongst us happily couch themselves between a crocodile’s jaws, without realizing that it has a taste for their blood too !

            I have highlighted the  relevance of the subject of backbiting to the present service scenario because I ought not lose sight of the fact that I am writing for the Association Newsletter. Needless to emphasize, it is universal in its application to those who have an urge to develop themselves into better human beings. Allah has said: “And spy not, neither backbite against one another. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother?..”. Islam further exhorts us :’Do you have no human tenderness, no sense of kinship, that you sink your teeth into some innocent person to whom you are tied by numerous links of brotherhood? Do you have no intelligence that you bite into your own limbs with your teeth, in such a senseless fashion?’

            Bahai’s  swear by the same gospel. “… Backbiting quencheth the light of the heart, and extinguisheth the life of the soul.” (Bahá’u'lláh: The Kitáb-i-Íqán) “For the tongue is a smoldering fire, and excess of speech a deadly poison.  Material fire consumeth the body, whereas the fire of the tongue devoureth both heart and soul.  The force of the former lasteth but for a time, whilst the effects of the latter endureth a century.”

            Guru Nanak Dev said : “Day and night we talk ill of others, we are full of malice and sins. Do not slander anyone, and thereby pick up a quarrel” The Fourth Master reiterated : “He, who slanders is known as such, his actions will go in vain. He, who backbites loses his own credit; the slanderer only exposes himself. He, who slanders others, cannot face anybody without shame. All hail to the great God, who listens not to the backbiter. He, who talks sweetly in one’s presence, and talks ill at one’s back, Is evil of heart and has been separated from God”. The Fifth Master observed : “The slanderer is cured not of his affliction, try as well as we may”.

            One of the greatest Hindu spiritual laws is saucha kriya, doing good. Backbiters produce mean vibrations. It requires discipline to control the mind. Hence the need for unflinching intellectual honesty. Honesty, arjava, one of the most important Vedic restraints, gives stability and strength to be just and fair.  

                               So does the Christianity call upon the believers : “ And should a Christian make his tongue the instrument of the accuser of the brethren, to do his work against each other? Backbiting teaches others to backbite. Your example invites them to do the like: and sins which are common, are easily swallowed, and hardly repented of. Men think that the commonness justifies or extenuates the fault’.

            Shoe away the backbiters, and do not encourage them by lending your ears to what they blurb. Remember the proverb : “The north wind drives away rain, so does an angry countenance a backbiting tongue.”

            Let us sincerely promise to each other not to slander a man at his back, while smiling to his face.

*Sarvesh Kaushal is an Indian Administrative Service Officer

Harvard University IIM-A Certificate Received

THE INCONSEQUENTIAL ANGELS

 

 

 

Sarvesh Kaushal

(*Authored in 2001)

 

 

            A stage comes in a bureaucrat’s life when creativity gets buried under the dunes of monotonous official and domestic chores. The tragedy of being’ in­consequential angels’ is writ large on the faces of those who once solemnly resolved to act as the catalysts of change. The idealistic individual gets haplessly sucked into the gutter of the system; a whirlpool that takes him to the brink of abyss. About the politicization of the services, I find it an inevitable consequence of the strings of power firmly woven around the deft fingers of the political know-alls, who have the final word in all matters, ranging between irritating trivialities to infinite significance. In the post independence era of Indianized democracy, we have also learnt to face lethal shots from bunkers of extra – legal authority. I proceed to write a few words about the alleged lack of commitment of the bureaucracy. Often accused of systematically reducing their involvement of ‘head and the heart’ in discharging duties, it appears the bureaucracy has purposely shrugged off its accountability in the absence of any real responsible decision making authority allowed to remain with them. Inducements or veiled threats of backlash tend to pre­empt the expression of honest opinion. Whatever a bureaucrat opines can be effortlessly brushed aside by recording a custom made jugglery of words conveying a make belief justification of something which must not happen, Is it not indeed a solemn virtue to calculatedly drift away from the toxic affluents of the systemic opportunism ?Why not, then, a policy of ‘masterly inactivity’? Political governance, without an exception, swears by its conviction to acquire transparency, but goes all out to frame such Conduct Rules for the Civil Servants that render it as opaque as possible. Where is the necessity to prevent the civil servants from commenting in the media about policy matters which are substantially significant in public interest? The bureaucrats, publically blamed in the media for ‘inefficiency, corruption and non­cooperation’, are gagged by the conduct rules and end up as mute victims of schematic character assassination leading to social disgrace. Where do we stand today?

Pavlov showed that if he rang a bell each time a dog was fed, it would start salivating at the sound, even without the presence of food. These reflexes which constitute the basis of animal behaviour, now form the basics of our cadre management. With the bureaucrats intermittently hearing the transfer bells all through the year, Pavlovian response has by and large become the’ reflex response’ of our service. This is due to the fact that the work distribution and duty assignment between the one bureaucrat and the other have been cleverly tampered to generate artificial imbalances and inequalities which are systematically exploited. As the inequalities are so prominently accentuated, an apparently’ routine’ transfer can now be clearly defined either as a ‘punishment’ or a ‘reward’. On the threshold of the new millennium and faced with the obvious level of redundance of our service, a bureaucrat can ill-afford to have a “wishful dream” at this juncture. The following few lines I wrote in 1980s sum up what I may not have been able to convey today: ­

                 “Thoughts Shudder my Body               
The heaven of my heart;
Caught in a whirlpool
Rendering me a spool
Churning my mind
Sucking in into black depths
While body staggers
Whirls with the wind
Laughing at my plight
To a devil’s delight
A scared moon
Staring in gloom
At its own shadow
On marshy muck
Once a lush meadow
My Heart attempts a convulsion
Victim of fortune’s cruel revolution
Buried under fathoms of water
That has mooted as cruel lides
Reflecting merciless strides
Of vanquisher of peace
Of a broken heart
Shattered will
And wishful dreams”

Let’s preserve the flickering flame …

Sarvesh Kaushal

(* Editorial – The Occasional File, the newsletter of Punjab State IAS Officers’ Association.)

                              ^^^^^^^

Civil Service is exposed to whimsical experimentation and retribution like no other institution in our country. The famous gag enforced by its conduct rules will never allow its toothless members to put across its point of view without fear of inviting a backlash.

Metamorphic attitudinal convulsions inevitably caused in the service fraternity by frequent transfers, false insinuations, motivated propaganda, character assassination and malicious hounding have been continuously addressed one after the other.

Challenges before our Association are unending. The brotherhood flame flickers when solo efforts of climbing the greasy pole start increasingly substituting the team ethos. Little do most of us realise that being a part of the herd reduces manifold the probability of a deer’s falling prey to a predator as compared to the cent percent probability of the stray one venturing out alone in search of greener pastures.

It does’nt take very long to identify predators and to skirt the danger. But intrigue within the herd may spring a surprise. As systems crumble and officers with even 20 years seniority gap are shuffled as predecessors and successors on the same assignment; and seniors at the pinnacle of their careers may even have to report to their juniors and, with only a few honourable exceptions, stoop only to bag post retirement assignments, cut-throat intrigue is induced surreptitiously in our fraternity to play the role that water plays in turning the pastures green.

Fancy for imported objects in Punjab is not confined to scotch and cars alone. Hand-picked IAS officers from other state cadres have over the years been requisitioned to handle key administrative assignments for making up the oft touted ‘inadequacies’ of Punjab cadre.

Performance of civil servants in Punjab is casually commented upon by the naïve in isolation of the working parameters set by other key instrumentalities and institutions contributing to policy formulation, planning and prioritisation. In an age of populism and appeasement, political manifestos catering to electoral gallery determine the thrust and quality of governance.

Let us all unite in our resolve to preserve the flickering flame of brotherhood while providing a fair, just, impartial and transparent public service.

The cock crows on ….

Sarvesh Kaushal

 

 

 

  I had named it ‘Good Morning’. A Gurkha family living in the servant quarters of my neighbour’s house had reared it. Meticulously punctual in waking me up at the first sign of twilight, it crowed deafeningly to throw me out of bed.

 The early morning alarm was at times very irritating, particularly after the late week-end evenings. At times I cursed the nuisance, and at times I thought its nature’s nudge to work out and shed a few pounds. As the summer passed and autumn set in, the groaning air conditioners went off and windows opened to fresh breeze, the crowing alarm became still louder and shrill. It threatened to force a lifestyle change. Giving up two hours of normal sleep every morning, I was all set to follow an early morning walk routine.

 As I was still procrastinating, I researched about the catalyst. I was shocked at the occidental perversity of using the word ‘cock’ unabashedly as a sexual slang, almost wiping out the identity of the poor bird. Out of sheer decency and to escape embarrassment, a cock is now increasingly referred to as a ‘cockerel’ or a ‘rooster’. Some refer to it as a ‘male chicken’.

Nature has timed cock’s crowing to the first rays of the sun at dawn. At times, it is befooled by bright moon-lit night too. Researchers distinguish different tones and pitches communicating its different moods.

It took me another few weeks of research to realise that cock is quite a global cultural entity. It is a part of multi-lingual literary writings, folk lore, historical conversations, popular sayings, proverbs, idioms, entertainment sports and so on. It’s even a symbol of national pride for some, as in the case of France, where it has been declared the National Bird.

One of these early mornings, still snoozing while struggling against the cock’s crow, I had a flashback of my first physical experience of becoming a ‘murga’ (cock) in my school, which a common sight during the olden era of corporal punishments inflicted by teachers. I also remembered a science project in the school lab where I learnt to design a weather-cock.

‘Good Morning’ gradually became a part of my life. I accepted it. Far from inducing cribbing, it turned pleasant and welcome. Perhaps it had a divine message of tuning my disoriented lifestyle with nature’s rhythm, and to shun the drudgery of a mechanical life. It made me wake up to a rare symphony of the chirping birds and watch the sky changing innumerable hues.

On the evening of the seventh of the nine sacred ‘navratras’, while trying to detect a fault in television cable line coming from my neighbour’s courtyard, my domestic help ventured into the neighbour’s courtyard and walked through his servant quarters. After repairing the cable joint, the fellow returned and announced that he saw the neighbourhood Gurkha devour the cock that crowed in the morning!

I suffered a stunning shock and sunk into my couch. My wife and the domestic help were concerned. I have overbearing disposition, and my initial helpless cribbing about the morning disturbance must have given them sadistic pleasure of at least someone teaching me a lesson. I had not confessed to them that I had of late developed affinity with the voice of nature. If I had known of what would suddenly happen, I would have paid the Gurkha the price of ten such cocks to save the ‘Good Morning’.

It requires even more than a butcher’s insensitivity to cut one’s own pet into pieces and gulp it down. A pet clamps a deep imprint on human mind of its colour, gait, traits, dietary habits, and varied physical and mental responses. One realises how the pet values the family it rears, and is highly protective of its progeny. A pet’s life has an affectionate co-existence with that of one’s own. A pet starts enjoying a sense of protection and fearlessness in human company. It becomes an extended family. Devouring one’s pet is inhuman betrayal.

‘Good Morning’ has left me at a cross-road of emotions. I often handled dead bodies of blast or bullet victims in militancy ridden Punjab without any hesitation because I never visualised myself devouring their flesh. I can not muster courage to stand the sight of a bird or an animal killed before my eyes and served to me on a platter.

When I enjoy tasty non-vegetarian dishes, I dishonestly shut my mind off the ghastly images of the birds, animals and fish dying with excruciating pain. I succumb to the momentary sensual pleasure of the taste and variety of non-vegetarian food. I also shun vegetarianism for the social vanity of warding off a tradition-ridden conservative image in the City Beautiful’s elitist milieu.

‘Good Morning’ has left me quite sad and facing delicate emotive conflicts. The cock may not be there, but I can hear it crow on.

                                                ————————————————

Freedom of the Press and Freedom from the Press

 

 

 

(Authored by Sarvesh Kaushal as General Secretary of The Punjab State IAS Officers’ Association)

With the much valued media freedom having reached its  acme and even extended itself to crude intrusions into private grief, ailment, distress and such  personal matters which are ordinarily of no interest to the public, many questions agitate a thinking mind despite inherent respect for the institution.             Basking under very weak defamation laws and their kinked implementation, coupled with a toothless Press Council, with a few honorable exceptions, the press is emerging as a highly opinionated conscience keeper of the society. Buckling under competitive one man up ship, it’s ridiculous hurry to break news takes a heavy toll of professional balance, truth and authenticity. Sensationalizing is the order of the day. Press churns out spice, sensation and scandal infinitum, which people have to swallow with tons of salt. Professional approach is largely lacking while individual, political and corporate agendas are unabashedly pursued.                            An opinionated press does not report, rather it insinuates. It does not subscribe to reason, it imposes its own views on the people. It has instant verdicts, some delivered after a sham media trial, and others even without that. It liberally offers half baked solutions to intricate issues, with a cocksure tone and tenor. A cub reporter would dismiss the other point of view, howsoever cogent it may be, because it does not fit into what his child ego state dictates. Some anchors in the electronic media behave like morons and keep on howling at the person they interview for as much as 20 minutes out of 30 minutes of the interview. Most of TV reporters, without any qualms, ask leading questions from laymen on the street with a view to solicit the desired answers as they wish.            Tehlakas and Cobras have done a commendable job, so do the others who film politicians and public servants accepting bribes. There is however, again with a few honorable exceptions, a vast multitude of members of the Press and electronic media who hobnob with these very elements which a section of them strives to expose. There are large number of reporters who are self proclaimed advisers and well known lobbyists of political leaders and business concerns as well as of the crooks, while a few others act as brokers and conduits of all sorts of powers that be. Many press reporters have side-kick sham publications, advertising and other agencies, and they arm-twist people to dole out bounties for them. Many of them are news vendors. They are not public servants in terms of the law of the land, and therefore their disproportionate assets and gravest professional misconduct attracts a Nelson’s eye from enforcement agencies.             Press is selective in its exposures. Hardly has any newspaper and media channel ever exposed their own reporters and editors. All is well for them on their own front. The newspaper or media channel establishments are highly protective of their own delinquents for the fear of inviting an aspersion on the overall professionalism of the newspaper itself. Even when the reality stares at their face, they do not publish the expose with a mug shot front page banner, but discreetly allow the delinquent a safe passage to some other publication or channel.             The newspapers and channels do not have the courage to publish or air the rejoinders verbatim. They allow the contradicted reporter to be a judge in his own cause to pooh pooh the reaction and thus add an insult to the injury he had calculatedly inflicted. There is no newspaper or channel which exhibits the moral courage of leaving half a page of its space every day or a specific air-time to publish or telecast word by word and line by line the response it receives from its readers or viewers. The Press enjoys freedom of expression, but not the people it addresses, because they are denied an equal platform of expression.             Freedom of the Press is certainly vital to the sound health of our democracy; so is the freedom of the people  from  tyranny of a ‘Free Press’ ******