Déjà vu at the TN officials' conference

The reports of the meeting on November 13-14 of the Tamil Nadu district revenue and police officials addressed by the Chief Minister, Ms J. Jayalalithaa, give one a sense of having seen and heard all that had been reported many times before.

Indeed, a comparative analysis of the speeches and proceedings of past conferences may provide startling evidence of not just similarities but even identical passages on ridding corruption, good governance, prompt service-delivery, enforcing law and order, swift and stringent action against land mafias, crushing rowdies and anti-social elements, fulfilling people's expectations, putting the State on a fast trajectory of robust growth (incidentally, politicians, professionals and bureaucrats are nowadays getting irretrievably hooked on the words ‘trajectory' and ‘robust'), assuring the poor and downtrodden a decent and dignified life. It is all there, every whit of it, in the exhortations from the podium, at every such conference.

And then what happens? If only the rulers adopt the practice of the conscientious kings of yore and stand in disguise outside the offices of these very revenue and police officials, they will know to what humiliation, harassment and heartlessness the average citizen is subjected.

A typical harrowing scene they may witness is that of a revenue inspector at a tehsil office cruelly forcing an 80-year old disabled widow approaching him for sanction of pension or a villager for some patta or ration card to come repeatedly to the office for months, at an unaffordable cost and physical pain to the tortured victim. Each new Government, be it at the States or the Centre, trumpets its ‘robust' determination to bring about a sea-change from the corrupt, slothful, callous ways of its predecessor (if it is of a different party) in all the respects that make governance in India vicious.

But, within a few days, things get back to ‘normal' — ward councillors begin raking money in commissions, people's representatives' lord it over like tyrantsl as if to the manner born, decisions cannot be had except on a suitcase-by-suitcase basis, well, there's pretty little left to guess in the pattern in which governance and governments settle down to their old, familiar ways.

DESPERATION

Forget the average householder, farmer, small businessperson or citizen. Here is my own personal experience as one who is known to everyone in Tamil Nadu administration as three decades senior to the senior-most serving functionary and, therefore, entitled to some consideration, if not respect. I brought a case of possible grabbing of land belonging to my deceased father-in-law to the notice of the Kancheepuram Collector three years ago.

At my advanced age I personally visited the office of the Village Administrative Officer twice, and wrote and sent e-mails to three collectors who had been posted successively during the period. Finding that my complaint had made no progress, I sent letters and e-mails to the Chief Secretary.

Still bumping against a wall of silence, in desperation, on August 8, I put in a request under the Right to Information Act demanding to know whether the e-mail messages sent to the Chief Secretary are brought to his attention and whether, as per the sternly worded Government Order, he acknowledges all communications from citizens within three days and conveys the decision of the Government one way or the other within two months, citing the reasons if he is unable to redress the grievance.

I addressed my request to the Public Department since the Chief Secretary's office came within its purview. For four months, my request is shuttling between the Public Information Officers of the Public and Revenue Departments at the Secretariat, each disowning his responsibility to deal with it.

The saving grace is that both of them are keeping me informed of their duel or duet, as the case may be, by sending me copies of the disclaimers exchanged by them!

This must be but one of a thousand instances of the agony the aam aadmi undergoes every day at the hands of the minions of government. Can he be blamed for losing all faith in the promises cascading like monsoon floods out of officials' conferences?

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