Former Chairman, Board of Revenue
Government of Rajasthan
THE HCM RAJASTHAN STATE INSTITUTE OF, PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, JAIPUR
From the Desk of the Director
Training in HCM RIPA has always been a memorable and a long lasting learning experience.
We remember not only the staff and faculty but many senior officers who visited us during the training period in the Institute and shared their experiences with us when we were young probationers. It is the practioner-administrators who actually enrich training programmes of civil servants.
RIPA has published a series of monographs written by stalwarts of administration who have worked in Rajasthan as civil servants and have earned both high repute and deep admiration. New batches of officer trainees may not be fortunate to meet and interact with some of these senior administrators but by reading these biographical monographs they will surely benefit from their experience.
I am certain that you will enjoy reading this monograph written by Shri I.C. Srivastava and will like to keep it in your personal collection for ready reference and timely inspiration.
This and the other monographs in the 2012 series is a Collector’s item-both in the literal and figurative sense.
Happy reading!
Rohit R. Brandon
Principal Secretary (Training) &
Director, HCM RIPA
Memorable and Useful Experiences
I.C. Srivastava
Administration may be termed as “an art of the possible”. Very few readymade or scientific solutions can be found or discovered to be handed down to succeeding generations of administrators who have to devise or improvise their own solutions and methods to achieve their goals and objectives–both short-term and long-term. Management simply defined as “getting things done” or making people do their duties towards desired goals and objectives when applied to public administration implies, to my mind, in short, as follows: management of public and state affairs by political masters assisted by senior bureaucrats and supported down the line by a vast bureaucracy.
I have penned down a few memorable experiences which may be as interesting and rewarding to readers, especially trainee administrative officers, as to me by hindsight and also useful to those who might recall, with edifying pleasures, to take them into account while being confronted with or going through similar or more challenging situations.
As an IAS officer, one gets a chance, rather a host of opportunities to come face to face with numerous problems in the field, to begin with, as Sub-Divisional Officer and early in career as Collector and District Magistrate. Thereafter, the officer is either posted as Deputy Secretary in the State Secretariat or as Head of the Department (HoD) in a state cadre unless one is seconded to a Central Government assignment quite early in career. In Secretariat and HoD postings, The officer gets to know the processes of policy formulation and the role players therein, Broadly, following this career graph I have culled some rich and intense experiences and not others not so rich or deep but nevertheless rewarding and worth reporting. However, since quite a few events and situations including experiences of three districts, namely, Barmer (1970-72), Sri Ganganagar (1976-77) and Bharatpur (1977-78) as Collector and District Magistrate have been dealt with and narrated at length in two fo my books: Cballenge and Change in Administrative System(1999) and Bhartiya Prashasan:Parivartam Ki Cbunotiyan (Hindi) (2004), the latter being an enlarged, revised and updated version of the earlier one, I have concentrated on experiences not already narrated in the two books.
Initial Training
It is with immense satisfaction and a modicum of pride I would like to state and clarify that having to migrate with my eldest brother way back in June 1955, from Allahabad, the day my High School results were out, I virtually became a 'Rajasthan' citizen at the early age of 12 years. After completing my studies with a Master's degree in English Literature in the year 1961 from the then premier Maharaja's (P.G.) College, Jaipur I Had to wait in the wings as a lecturer at two government and three private colleges including BITS, Pilani before I was allowed to write papers for the Combined Civil Services Examination of October 1965, which was held immediately after our getting over the trauma of the Indo-Pak war of 1965, not to speak of the black-outs at night and my grueling teaching task in day time at Government College, Tonk, However, IAS examination results in April 1966 did nat belie my expectations.
Joining the National Academy of Administration (now called L.B.S. Academy of Administration) at Mussoorie with great hopes and fears, I found myself managing and coping with baffling variety in curricular and co-curricular activities including oft varying timings of morning PT and afternoon horse-riding classes. Looking back, to say the least, and to sum up my experiences of institutional training which, so to say, suffused our being and personality to the core ingrained and inculcated a unique sense of rigorous discipline, punctuality and high morale emanating from values of civil service neutrality coupled with objectivity and, what goes with that, transparency and sensitivity. Recalling two incidents would suffice to illustrate the lessons. I vividly recall Nikhilesh Prasad (nick name 'Nixie'), an IFS (Indian Foreign Service) fellow probationer leisurely walking up from his Happy Valley Club room to join the PT Group at 6:20 a.m. (varied timings were ser for various groups for the whole week to inculcate punctuality). The moment 'Nixie' was going to join the PT square, he was stopped short by a horse-rider and 'Io and behold' our Director, the legendary Mr. M.G. Pimputkar, probably from the last batch of ICS surviving, first halted his galloping horse and then yelled 'Stop. You are late. You cannot join this Group. See me in my office at 3 p.m. in the afternoon'. He did not stop to ask the name of the officer and trotted away to his morning round. 'Nixi' thought that probably he did not commit any mistake, but was given the necessary dressing down by the Director, and also extraordinary leave on the second day of the entry in service, which became not only a talking point among probationers but also an object lesson for everyone to be punctual for all classes including lunch and dinner timings -for the latter ten minutes were given for entry and 20-30 minutes to finish. Punctuality wore a mantle of sanctity so much so that once our Deputy Director Senior (who rose to be chief Secretary, Uttar Pradesh and later Secretary, Steel, Government of India) was shut out by the doorman who punctually closed the doors of our classroom and politely conveyed his inability to the senior officer. In another incident, the awesome and haloed person of Mr. Pi mputkar conveyed to our group to wait outside his home between 5:15 and 5:30 p.m. when he himself opened the door punctually to welcome us for a 'formal' afternoon tea with him. Of course, once inside, we were at home and relaxed with his own sense of humour and jokes.
However, despite the near puritan atmosphere and Spartan lifestyle, we smelt the air of romance which prompted a few probationers to go walking as do and pairing by choice, which finally led to announcement of engagements a little before the training was over and also made the farewell dinner a gala and memorable event. I can still recall the speech made by the President, Mess Committee proposing a toast to the Director and the engaged couples beginning with "Despite you and your rigorous discipline some of us managed to fall in love and therefore, it is with pleasure, I announce the engagement of three couples". His speech was received with a thunderous applause and laughter. Mr. Pimputkar's hilarious congratulations to the couples over, his final remarks still resonate in my mind, "As you leave the precincts of this training institution, one final word of advice I would like to give based on my own experience. I Have seen 26 transfers in 27 years of service by now and I have never hankered after places or postings. Remember, if three of you can withstand the political pressures by resisting the temptation of postings and good places, the fourth colleague of yours will not be victimized". Alas, I could never count myself as the fourth officer having been made to resist political pressure on my own, which resulted into a mixed bag of 29 bad, good, better and so called best posting at various stages fo my career with little or no regret-only on account of having to undergo five postings in a period of two years, during the years 1976-78.
Academy training over, two of us (total being four) landed in Jaipur in the second week of July 1967 with a renewed vigour after spending two weeks with an army unit near Naushera (Jammu) on the borders with Pakistan. We made the mandatory calls on the Chief Secretary who spent forty minutes instead of ten and other Senior Secretaries to Government, one of whom a sbikari himself, desperately short of time while rushing out of his room for a formal meeting advised us to "eat what we killed in the district" to which we were posted for field training. Strange but not true, and advice we hardly ever followed. As a coincidence, I found in my second trainer-collector at Ajmer, a sbikari by hoddy, who found time to go shooting in jungles close to places of his tour which occasionally was fixed with an eye on hunting. He asked me to join him on 'shoot' or enjoy myself during probation, a period which one always recalls with nostalgia later on and also receive training with other senior officers posted in the district during his absence. Obviously, I found the latter more satisfying and edifying too. My first collector and mentor Shri B. Hooja was an outgoing, effusive and affectionate person who always enthused both of us (shri Anil Kumar, a senior trainee officer of 1965 batch) and made it a point to pick us from Dak Bungalow or residence to join him on tour. On one of the tours, he announced to us that he had conveyed to SDO concerned to get a good lunch prepared for his two 'Rajkumar'. We felt elated and enthralled at his gesture. To our dismay, he had to leave Ajmer after nearly two months, to take charge as Commissioner and Secretary, State Enterprises, Government of Rajasthan, certainly a prestigious posting even in those times.
Although the sheen, aura and ardour of academic training did not wear off easily, the field training did present an interesting contrast. My first day experience on arriving at Collectorate after one km walk from the picturesquely located Circuit House, overlooking Ana Sagar Lake was somewhat like a jolt to the mind and memory. A lone, turbaned sweeper clad in rbadi uniform was sweeping the floor at 10 a.m. while I entered the building, looking around, I saw a burly, rather heavy bodied, bespectacled officious looking person walking into the room across Collector's chamber. He was the Office Superintendent who timely advise me to go to the senior trainee officer's quarter located behind Collector's residence nearly a kilometre away from Collectorate. Apparently, Shri Anil Kumar my senior who was already aware of my arrival at Ajmer welcomed me with open arms. Though fully groomed by Mr. Pimputkar at the Academy, he gave me hints enough to be at ease and peace with myself. Friendship with him developed over the years, has lasted beyond our service career. 'Jhandewali' small room court below the high flying tri-colour national flag beckoned me from a distance and became my prize possession for more than a year after he was posted out as Sub-Divisional Officer. I went through the intensive block, tehsil and nominal settlement training besides disposing off court cases as Assistant Collector and Magistrate. Apart from a few revenue cases, I devoted time and energy mainly to learn the trial and disposal of criminal cases under Gambling, Motor Vehicles, Excise and Police Acts, Collectorate training also included functioning as sub-officer and officer-in-charge of various sections including Revenue, Transport, General, Nazarat, Record Famine, Accounts, Development etc. I was posted as SDO, Bharatpur in October 1968.