PART VB: Training in West Bengal The training in the Academy prepares you physically and equips you with theoretical knowledge of Law, Public Administration, Economic Planning, Development, Management etc. But, the training in the State of allotment is more important as it helps you to familiarise with the people, their language and culture, their problems and how in reality administration works. The Academy training also infuses a sense of camaraderie and competition. There are medals to be won for different subjects and activities. Most subjects being new to me, there was no question of my winning any medal though I reckon my scores were in the top 10 to 25% in each subject and activity. It is not possible to compete with, say in Economics with someone who has done Masters degree in Economics from Delhi or London School of Economics. There was considerable socialising, gambling and drinking too. Most colleagues who drank and/or gambled together were very close to each other during their entire career and are so after retirement too. Families which dine together stick together and colleagues who drink or gamble together maintain their relationship for several decades! I was a floater not belonging to any specific group and unfortunately neither gambled nor drank and it is not surprising that I do not have anyone who can be called a friend in any of the services- they were just colleagues and acquaintances After spending a few days in Tamilnadu I left for West Bengal in the last week of April 1976 with my wife and our ten months old son, carrying all our worldly belongings. It was a mistake to vacate the flat in Chennai as we did not know what was in store for us in West Bengal. However, it appeared to be a good move at that time as the rent of Rs 150 was almost one third of my wife’s take home pay. Mr John Koshy, IAS, the State Information Commissioner, West Bengal also travelled by the same train. Air- conditioned compartments were introduced in India a few years later only and we travelled by First Class. Catering was from intermediate stations and it was difficult to obtain clean hot water for our son. We were received in Howrah Station by my friend Mr Kumaraguru who had by then joined the GSI as a Geologist and was in the GSI Headquarters. We were allotted a suite in the MLAs’ Hostel, Kyd Street which we had to share with Mr Koshy. It was dirty, our first introduction to Government Guest Houses in West Bengal. Unfortunately huge buildings are constructed by the Government in Kolkata for various purposes, maintained for a few years as show-pieces but get dirty and filthy after that mainly due to the poor work culture. Bengalis, like most Indians, maintain their houses very well but pay scant regard to their environment. The situation in the Districts is far better as the DM, ADM, SDM and other Executive Magistrates take active interest in maintaining the buildings under their control. I had an opportunity to contribute to developing the facilities in the Circuit Houses in the Districts during my tenure as the Secretary, Board of Revenue and finding the required funds was never difficult. Because of my experience during training I have always been aggressive in developing facilities in the offices I served in my career and the guest houses under my control. The State Government was not used to the IAS Probationers, called Assistant Magistrates and Assistant Collectors, joining the State with families and it was a struggle to move around in Kolkata and nearby places for training with the family in tow. But it was enjoyable nevertheless. Hoogly water would be used in the night by the Corporation officials to clean the streets and this practice was discontinued within a few years of my joining the State. We liked visiting South Kolkata, especially Rash Behari Avenue, for good South Indian food in Hotel Balaji, which closed down a few years later due to labour trouble. Mr Kumaraguru was a pillar of strength as he found time to accompany us in the evenings and holidays. We were invited for dinner in the house of Mr Jawhar Sircar, IAS, now CEO, Prashar Bharati and had our first taste of Bengali food. His girl friend, whom he married after some time, was also present during the dinner. My wife did not carry any tamarind (imli) from Chennai and a colleague advised her to carry adequate quantity from Kolkata as it would not be available in the district. She followeed his advice and bought a few kilos. When we reached Suri (pronounced Seuri), the district headquarter of Birbhum, we found stacks of tamarind in the market during our first day of shopping! After a fortnight in Kolkata we left for the districts assigned to us for our training. I was allotted to Birbhum, primarily an agriculturist district- Bakreshwar Thermal Power Plant came later. I had booked us by a train which took us to Andul Junction and we were advised that we had to change the train at Andul for Suri. The train left Howrah late in the evening and we were in a first class compartment with my wife wearing gold jewellery, about 250 gms, and we carried all our utensils too! Someone in a loose fitting khaki dress with a gun entered the compartment and my wife became nervous. We changed trains in Andul and the man in the khaki dress was watching us closely from a distance. He got into our compartment when the train left for Suri and my wife became even more nervous. Mr Naresh Chaturvedi, IAS who was then ADM, Birbhum had kindly sent his vehicle to pick us up. When the train reached Suri, the man in the khaki dress helped us to unload our belongings, gave me a smart salute and said that he was a policeman and he felt it his duty to accompany us during our journey as we were not locals and were also carrying jewellery and other goods! We wished he had told us this at Howrah itself. It is customary in West Bengal that the IAS and IPS Probationers stay in the Circuit House during the entire duration of the District training and we were accommodated in the Circuit House which had only four rooms and was well maintained. There were no air conditioners in the Circuit Houses and we had our first taste of the North Indian Summer, daylight breaking at 4 am and the heat becoming intense by 7 am. We found it peculiar that the rooms were kept closed during the day while in Chennai during summer the rooms would be kept wide open for ventilation. The working hours during summer were 6.30 am to 12 noon to avoid the intense afternoon heat. I reported for duty in the Collectorate at 10 am and was told that I was expected to report at 6.30 am henceforth. The District Magistrate (Collector) was Mr P K Banerjee who much later retired as the Coal Secretary, Government of India. I had to maintain a daily diary detailing the training undergone during the day and submit it to the DM on the first working day of every month. Those were days when all officers would carry change for ordering tea for themselves and their visitors. Eating and drinking tea at the cost of the public exchequer was unknown for almost two decades after I joined the state. The Collector and ADM would hand over necessary change to their orderly while ordering tea. I followed this practice till 2007 and found to my amazement that the Central Secretariat officers were entitled to allowance for tea and snacks subject to certain limits! West Bengal till today has a well structured training programme for the Probationers belonging to different services and the training began in right earnest from the second day onwards. After the customary calling on the ADM, District Judge and SP at their office and later at their residence, the training modules were followed rigorously. Mr Naresh Chaturvedi, who is close to us even today, took care of us and as his house was just across the Circuit House he would invite us to his bungalow frequently or visit us in the Circuit House. I was given a Hindi-knowing Orderly from Bihar and for the first few weeks he was my official interpreter. The Head Master of a local High School agreed to teach me Bengali for about an hour everyday. It was initially very difficult for my wife as she knew neither Hindi nor Bengali. I bought her a Tamil-Hindi dictionary and initially she would refer to it and advise the orderly about vegetables to be purchased from the market. The wrong vegetables would arrive. Then she bought a box of colour pencils for drawing and colouring the vegetables. It did not work. One day we went to the market and ascertained the names of all vegetables; there was no problem thereafter. She learnt spoken Bengali faster than me as she constantly listened to the staff speaking among themselves and also with her. It was mandatory that we had to submit case studies of six Sessions and other Criminal cases to the Government as a part of the training. By 1976 the judiciary and executive had been separated and, therefore, the IAS officers were not required to exercise powers of Judicial Magistrates. In the process of preparing the case studies we were required to liaise with the District Judge and the Chief Judicial Magistrate. Both of them were very nice and allowed me to sit in the court by their side during the hearing of the cases. During training I enjoyed the powers of a 2nd Class Judicial Magistrate and the District Judge and the CJM had so much faith in me that they allowed me to handle summary trial cases on my own. It was a great experience and helped me to learn about the Criminal Procedure Code in depth and laid the foundation for the exercise of Executive magistrate’s functions during my SDM and ADM days and also the considerable legal knowledge I acquired over a period of time. Looking back, the comfort with which I handled 1000s of court cases during my career, almost all of them in our favour, would not have been possible but for my association with them. In mid 2012 a Bench of Delhi High Court ordered that I should appear before them in a case. Normally Secretaries to the Government do not attend the court during hearing of cases and it was a somewhat strange order. A new Additional Solicitor General had joined and I had informed him in writing that I would appear before the Bench and that he should represent me. I went to his chamber just before the Bench sat for the day and he assured me that he would in the court by the time our case came up for hearing. Iit was a writ petition challenging award of zero mark for not writing and shading details in the OMR answer sheet. When the case came up for hearing he was nowhere to be seen! The Government Counsel was all at sea and I sought the permission of the Bench for making submissions on my own. The Bench graciously said that it had invited me to the court to express their concerns on a few issues which I had anticipated and prepared. For the next half an hour I explained the procedures followed by the SSC and their logic to the Bench which heard my submissions with rapt attention and agreed with me on all issues. It was a landmark judgement which upheld the action taken by the SSC in award of such cases quoting my submissions verbatim and agreeing with the logic of such action. The other issues of acceptance of only online applications in a few examinations, need for a cut off date for OBC certificates and inability of the invigilators to verify the Test Form Numbers, which could be erased and changed after his verification, were also adequately explained to the Bench with extracts from the Advertisement, Instructions on the Question papers and Answer Sheets, DoPT instructions on OBC reservation etc. I did not study law formally except in the Academy for a few months but the ease, with which legal matters were handled by me, developed during my training in the Courts of Suri. Training in the District Headquarters was followed by the Sub Divisional Training in Rampurhat, the only outlying Sub Division in Birbhum; Bolpur became a full-fledged Sub Division later. Mr S B Barma, IAS, was the Sub Divisional Officer and I had excellent training from him not only on official matters but also in public relations and in treatment of the junior colleagues. He was known as the ‘Singing SDO’ because of his versatility in Rabindra Sangeet and Baul music in which he became extremely popular later. He and Mrs Barma were dignity and grace personified and loved our son whom they called Krishna because of his dark complexion. Almost every evening would be a musical evening in the SDO’s bungalow and sometimes I would also try singing Tamil songs. My son, by then one year old, had never heard me singing and thought that I was crying whenever I would attempt a song. He would cry till I stopped singing! For the first time I realized how music was the heart and soul of Bengalis almost all of whom can play the Tabla and Harmonium, besides singing. Rabindra Sangeet is their lifeline. I remember that when I visited Charleston, South Carolina, USA in 2005, we were taken around the port in a boat (there is a photo of that trip posted on FB) and I was surprised to hear Rabindra Sangeet from a group of visitors in another boat. No other linguistic group is so fiercely loyal to their language, music and culture as the Bengalis are and wherever they are Bengali is the only language in which they would like to communicate with each other. On 12th Novemeber 2013, I took my grand children to school in a taxi and the driver, a Bengali from Syalkot, Bangladesh, chose to converse with me only in Bengali once he came to know that I know the language. On the contrary, whenever two Tamils meet, they would test their proficiency in English and lapse into Tamil only when they cannot find an English equivalent for any word. Alternatively, they would use Tamil to ascertain the community of each other as Brahminical Tamil is something very distinct. At least that is better than patting on the back to see whether the other person is wearing a sacred thread, a practice even senior civil servants indulge! As a part of the sub divisional training I spent a fortnight in a Santhals’ village off Rampurhat which was even more useful than the sub divisional training. I learnt about Bengali customs and also learnt that the tribal way of life is totally different than life in an ordinary village, that the feudal structure in villages had been totally eroded in West Bengal because of Naxalite movement and that there was respect for law only as long as the officials obeyed law. We were invited by the Gram Panchayat Pradhan (Chairman) for fishing in what we thought was his family pond (all houses or at least most of them have a pond though of varying sizes providing water for washing of utensils and rearing fish). Within a few minutes of our arrival, I found at least a hundred villagers with fishing gear gathering around the pond. On enquiry, I learnt that it was a vested (government) pond and that auction would be held shortly for fishing rights for the year. There were a few lessons learnt in the process- inquire about the individual who invites you; do not accept invitations from the rich and the powerful lest you identify yourself with them and not the common man; there is vertical division in Bengal between the haves and have-nots; and you should not learn to earn respect but, more importantly, also learn how to retain it. West Bengal is one of the handful of states where the IAS Probationers are allowed to hold independent charge of a Block and a Block level Land Reforms (Revenue in other states) office. In September 1976 it was time for my posting as the Block development Officer. Mr K M Mandal, IAS, had taken over as the District Magistrate by then and he had his own ideas about how the probationers were to be trained. I was with him on the day he took over charge of the District and in the afternoon he took charge of the treasury. He followed a novel method of verification of the stock- he asked for a steel box ,placed a few bundles randomly picked from different racks in the box, locked it and asked me to identify the missing bundles. It took us more than three hours of strenuous 100% verification of the stocks to identify the missing bundles! There were two lessons learnt from it- there are different and perhaps more efficient way of doing the same thing and even when something is your personal responsibility you can get the work done by others with the same level of efficiency if you develop checks and balances to ensure that the outcome is the one you desire. Of course, I was there to do the donkey’s work! Mr Mandal decided that I would be posted to a remote Block which had no facilities at all- he felt that I would be pampered by Mr Barma and not learn much if I was posted to a Block in Rampurhat Sub Division- and decided on Illambazar Block. He advised everyone that I should fend for myself. The utensils we carried from Chennai came in handy for the first time and the ADM made an exception in providing two single cots from the surplus store of the Circuit House. Illambazar is a village on the border with Burdwan District and was affected badly during the Naxalite movement and there were rumours that a few of them were in the hiding in the sal forests between illambazar and Bolpur, abetting Shantiniketan which itself was a stronghold of naxalites for a few years. There was no rented house in the village. I identified a building of Irrigation Department, which was occupied till the late 1960s by an Assistant Engineer and had been abandoned thereafter, obtained permission from the Executive Engineer to use it as my residence, got it cleaned by our maid hired from the village and made it inhabitable, all in two days. We received a number of guests in the house including Mr Mandal himself, the ADM, the Additional SDO, Bolpur, two of my batchmates, Mr S Ravindranath, a close friend who retired as Deputy General Mnager, Bank of India and countless others. We spent about 10 weeks of utterly blissful life there, totally isolated from the rest of the village, two kms , and with no security at all. On the day of taking over I found that the Block Cash Book had not been updated for over two years. I took over the cash available without verification of the cash book and informed the DM about the sorry state of affairs which indicated total lack of financial propriety in the ofice, absence of any meaningful supervision from the Additional SDO despite his periodical visits to the Block office and the utterly useless and meaningless audits. There were chairs and tables exactly half the number of clerical and other superior staff. I thought that perhaps not all staff were expected to attend office together and if they did so they had to play musical chairs! These are the realities of field offices in the country even today. It took me a week to buy new chairs and arrange the tables in such a way that one table could be shared by at least two staff. Illambazar and Bolpur Blocks shared one jeep. I bought a cycle for office use and whenever the jeep was not available, would ride the bicycle to the office. If you set an example in punctuality, the others under you will follow after some initial hesitation. I had always attached considerable importance to attendance which I would randomly check personally in all my assignments. Getting the staff attend office is half of the responsibility and the other half is to make them work, teaching them work when it is new to them. West Bengal was(is?) notorious for late attendance in the government offices but I had no problem in ensuring near 100% timely attendance wherever I worked. Even in the Board of revenue which had strong trade unions, the attendance registers would reach my table at 10.15 am sharp and the principle of deducting half a day’s leave for late attendance was strictly followed during the 41 months I was Secretary. During emergency Government of India had introduced a 20 Points Programme for development of rural areas. I concentrated on its implementation, especially focussing on provision of houses to the landless and homeless and acquisition of land and grant of pattas to landless agricultural labourers and artisans. Personal life was equally enjoyable and my son used to love to ride with me on the bicycle and often the three of us- my wife, our son and I- could be seen on outings on the cycle. Weekly movie in the temporary theatre(Touring Talkies) was a regular feature and while we watched the movie our son slept on stringed cot provided by the theatre owner. I had never watched a movie in my career without buying a ticket though inspection of movie halls and their amenities was an official responsibility in the field assignments. Law enforcers cannot effectively enforce the legal provisions if they accept favours from people they are to oversee. When I was ADM, Jalpaiguri there were peculiar situations of the SDO watching the movies free with his family when I would pay for our tickets. One of the most memorable events in Illambazar was the construction of a village road of about one km length through Shramdan on 2nd October 1976. We started with about 50 volunteers from a school and in no time at all the number went up to hundreds. Villagers willingly came forward to offer snacks to the volunteers and my effort to introduce shramdan in the Block was successful. I called off the work at 1 pm as no arrangements were made for lunch. It is not a new concept as voluntary and unpaid labour for erection and cleaning of temples and desilting village tanks and lakes is common in rural areas all over the country even now. It is only in the urban areas that shramdan is a novelty. We were asked to report to Susunia in Bankura District for a month’s settlement camp, a regular feature even now, in December 1976. There are time honoured traditions in the settlement camp such as staying in tents in the harsh winter, the trainees cooking their own food with the help of one or two orderlies, cycling to the site of field work at 7 am etc. Unfortunately for me , not allowing families of trainees was one such tradition . I wrote to Shri B K Sarkar, IAS, then Director of Land Records and Survey, explaining my position and seeking special permission to stay with my family. Shri Sarkar replied that it was not possible. My wife and son had nowhere else to go as she had taken long leave from her job and her post had already been filled up; we had also vacated our house in April 1976 itself. It was a difficult moment for me as she was also carrying our second child. It was a painful decision to send them to Chennai and we decided that she would stay in the house of Mr Vijayakumar, my close friend in Chennai, for a few days and seek a posting from the Director of Collegiate Education. She carried only her clothes and jewellery with her. We travelled to Kolkata by bus from Illambazar. A suit case containing her silk saris and most of the jewellery kept on the rooftop of the bus was found missing when I checked up near Burdwan. I lodged a complaint with the police and saw them off with a heavy heart. I never imagined that joining the IAS meant that I had to force my wife and child to leave me simply because rules framed several years ago prohibited families of trainees staying in the settlement camp. To add to my feeling of misery the suit case with most of my wife’s jewellery was missing! I returned to Illambazar with a heavy heart and found my peon in the jail. It transpired that the Burdwan Police had conveyed my complaint to the Illambazar police station for enquiry at their end and the peon was found in possession of the box. The peon explained to me that before he could safely place the box on the roof top the bus had left and he felt that he should keep it in safe custody till my return. I had total faith in him and requested the police in writing to release him. The box stayed with me till February 1977 when I took a few days’ leave to visit Chennai. My wife was posted to a Government College in Kumbakonam, about 320 kms from Chennai, where she stayed till March 1979. This was the first time I had sent my wife back to Tamilnadu. There would be three more such occasions at different stages of my career. Our second child, a daughter, was born in May 1977 in Kumbakonam. This time we did not commit the mistake of arranging the delivery in a government hospital and she was born in a small private nursing home. We had decided that she would be called Viji due to certain reasons and when astrologers told us that her name should start with the letter ‘Ka” named her Kalpana after a friend’s school-going daughter in Kolkata. The settlement training camp is important in the context of West Bengal where most rural problems can be traced to the zamindari system which was abolished only after the West Bengal Estate Acquisition Act, 1953 was implemented. It was also useful to the government for identification of officers who could implement Land Reforms. It was a strenuous though enjoyable camp and we visited a few tribal pockets in Bankura and Purulia and Ranchi, then a District Headquarter in Bihar. The rest of the training in the District was mundane and was without much interest. 1977 General elections were announced in January 1977 and everyone got busy with election work. It is a work done with clockwork precision in government offices in West Bengal, perhaps the only work efficiently transacted. I could clear the departmental examinations conducted by the WBPSC quite easily except the written examination in Bengali and Oral examination in Hindi . I did not appear in the Bengali written examination in the first attempt as I felt that I was not yet ready. In Hindi viva-voce a dhoti clad Professor commented about Tamils worshipping Ravan instead of Ram to which I vociferously objected and without any further discussion I was asked to go out! It took me another attempt to clear both the papers. The rules of training stipulated that the first increment could be earned after clearing a few papers and the second only after clearing all the papers and oral examinations. My second increment was delayed by a few months. But, there were several senior colleagues who were appearing in the departmental examination year after year especially in Bengali . The most difficult part of the oral examination in Bengali was reading a passage, mostly from a novel of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee or Sarat Chandra Chatterjee. I remember that a few complex words would be so lenthy that they occupy more than one line! I owed my success in Bengali to the Head master who taught me Bengali without any fee and a Bengali BDO in Kalimpong who helped me to hone my reading skills. The latter was elevated to the IAS before retirement and also served in the Banga Bhavan, New Delhi. We went back to the Academy in April 1977 for three months for our second phase which mainly had Group Discussions which reflected the quality of training in different States. I was one of the vocal trainees in the 2nd Phase in the academy having had excellent training in West Bengal. It was strange that the trainees who were vocal in the 1st phase remained silent most of the time during the 2nd Phase. However, we were all counting the days in the Academy for returning to the States for our first posting as Sub Divisional Magistrate/Sub Collector. I received information from the State secretariat that I was posted as Sub Divisional Officer, Uluberia, Howrah District, very near Kolkata. The inter-se seniority among officers was decided after adding the training marks to the UPSC marks and I moved up to the 20th position from the earlier 42nd in a batch of about 130 IAS officers and was number one in my batch in west Bengal overtaking two others in the process. I looked forward to joining in Uluberia after a short break in Kumbakonam. I saw my daughter for the first time when she was about two months old and found that she resembled my wife unlike my son who had taken after me. My posting would be changed twice before I joined; at lower levels the State Civil service officers were more acceptable than the IAS in West Bengal! It was mainly because of their longer tenure as SDM while the IAS officers stay in the post for a maximum of two years, most of them for just about a year in each sub division.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 11:55:45 +0000
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