Minimising misery of the common man

One afternoon, when Sharda Mukherjee was due to leave for a function, she received a call from a friend, saying that she (the friend) would like to drop in to say hello to her. She wished to come at once as she was catching a flight. The Governor turned to me and asked whether it would be alright for her to delay her departure by 15 minutes. I firmly advised her that it would be most undesirable. Hundreds of police constables would have been lined up on either side of the route, to provide security to her convoy, and an extra 15 minutes in the blistering sun be a punishment we could well do without inflicting upon them, I told her.

The wife of the first Indian Air Chief of Staff, Mrs. Mukherjee was, a highly polished and well brought up person, apart from being an experienced grassroots political leader. She quickly grasped the point and declined her friend's request. Such empathy, and ability to appreciate the consequences of a decision, so common among the leaders of those days unfortunately seems to be a thing of the past nowadays.

Another aspect of the security arrangements associated with the movement of the VIP convoys is the inevitable but, acute, inconvenience caused to the general public, on account of traffic hold-ups occasioned by the need to enable smooth passage of the convoy. The 'aam admi' is subjected to no end of harassment in the name of security, doing little to enhance the image of the government of the day.

In one gory incident recently in Kanpur, an ailing woman, needing urgent medical assistance, and on her way to the hospital, died, allegedly on account of being stuck in traffic in a hold up caused by the passage of the convoy of the President of India. Though, the Police Commissioner did apologise for the incident, it can hardly be denied that there are lessons to be drawn from the tragic occurrence.

Little wonder, then, that a road block caused by the convoy of the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu compelled the Madras High Court to direct the police to ensure that such movements caused no inconvenience to the public in the future. The Court, in fact, wondered whether such a high degree of security was, in fact, called for. While conceding that the Chief Minister should have the right of way, keeping in view the demands of his office, the Court also directed that the police officers concerned should minimize the discomfort caused to the common man in the process.

In a decision that is bound considerably to redound to the credit of Prime Minister Modi, no roads were blocked as he made his way to and from the AIIMS last week. It is also to be noted with regret that while (as clarified the Ministry of Home Affairs to a query under the RTI act recently), stoppage of traffic on roads is strictly to be restricted to the movements of the President of India, the Vice President and the Prime Minister, it has become a common thing to impose them for the convoys of all manner of political leaders and high officials, in utter disregard of the instructions in force.

Another point to be noted with concern in this context is the fact that police constables, and those supervising such arrangements at the higher levels, all have other important duties to attend to. Those include important areas such as maintenance of law and order, detection and investigation of crime, gathering of intelligence, communications etc., on important matters apart from keeping an eye on possible terrorist activities.

Quite apart from the fact that police officials, particularly those at the level of constable are diverted away from such important duties, to attend to security related matters, there is also the practice (widely prevalent also in many other departments) of the lowest rung people being used for menial domestic purposes, and running personal errands by senior officials.

No doubt, to a large extent, such practice is understandable, especially when an officer is posted in the field, (whether civil, police or technical professionals such as doctors and engineers), where the need arises to maintain a camp office which often attracts visitors at all sorts of odd hours. Therefore the help at home becomes necessary for the due discharge of official duties. Entrusting to domestic help tasks involving purchase of things is fraught with complications.

In several departments involving dealings with the merchant community it is not unknown for help to misuse the name of the master of the house, and his official position, to engage in extortion. It is therefore best personally to handle such errands. As an Assistant Collector under training in Krishna district, I still recall, with great pleasure, and satisfaction, how R Prabhakara Rao the Superintendent of Police of the district, and his wife, would walk to the market to buy vegetables.

I also recollect, in my first posting at Ongole how, inexperienced as I was, I toyed with the idea of engaging a personal servant as a daily wage employee paid by the government. The Collector at that time, Doraiswamy, made me realise that it would not be fair to transfer my financial burden to the government, and I desisted.

The best thing would, of course, be for the government to recognise this need, and deal with it appropriately. In the army, for instance, you have a system of a 'batman' – a soldier assigned to a Commissioned Officer as a personal servant. A similar arrangement could very well be thought of on the civil side also, whether for the uniformed forces, or the others, including the judiciary. The government of Andhra Pradesh did, for some time, introduce a system of peon allowance as an incentive to officials not to resort to diversion of staff to domestic duties.

This discussion, obviously, precludes the use of government officials for duties other than primary ones such as being drafted for special duties connected with exercises such as the conduct of a population census or a general election.

Clearly there is a case for taking a holistic look the entire question of deployment of government officials for duties other than those that they are meant to discharge. Such an exercise, of revisiting the while issue, will need to take into account developments of recent times such as the advent information technology, and the increased use of social media platforms for communication, apart from the easy availability of state-of-the-art services, such as home delivery of goods and services through agencies such as Flipkart, Amazon apart from restaurants, medical shops etc.

The increased use of appliances such as vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens, mixes and cookers etc., has also reduced the need considerably for assistance in the kitchen. Therefore, the need for details to perform such chores has practically been eliminated.

(The writer is former Chief Secretary, Government of Andhra Pradesh)