Has IAS failed India? — As I see it

Has IAS failed the nation? This question was asked and answered by a former member of the service who rose to the rank of Governor in the RBI in an English daily recently. Looking at the state of the nation today, when the state is falling short of meeting increasingly high aspirations of the 21st century generation, majority might hold a perception of answering this question as a Yes. Arguing to the contrary, especially when one is a member of the IAS, may be looked upon as being defensive or unrealistic. Yet, I will risk some of reputation by arguing the following points

1. India is too complex a country for any single block of individuals — be it politicians, be it judiciary, be it bureaucracy or be it any other social group — to either be credited or blamed for any success or failure.

2. Even though IAS has leadership role in Indian bureaucracy, civil service is comprised of a number of other services as well. While it is not unfair to lay part of the blame of failures in each and every segment, it will be unjustified to lay the entire blame on IAS for all that is wrong in the state of the nation today.

3. While we may think that the situation today is bad and we are facing many fundamental problems even 75 years after independence — and I don’t want to reduce import of any of the problems we are facing — we only need to compare ourselves with peers who have equally complex society, who attained independence with India and have remained democratic throughout. We can also compare to advanced democracies like UK or US with how their democracies looked 75 or 100 years after they came into existence. I bet that if we do so, we will be tempted not to make sweeping statements like some institution has “failed” our nation.

Let me begin by arguing for the first point.

a. I do believe that malaise in our bureaucratic system is significantly responsible for many problems we are facing in the country. That was the very reason I first decided to join the service — to be an active agent in transforming our nation. However, having spent eight years in service today, I can confidently say that just as IAS is not solely responsible for everything good that has happened, it is also not responsible for everything bad that has happened. And similarly, just as we cannot say that IAS has performed perfectly all these years for the nation, we cannot say that IAS has “failed” the nation.

b. IAS does not operate in theoretically ideal environment. Politics of democracy is messy and many times, decisions are motivated not by reason or logic, but by what the masses want. Most well argued decisions are reversed under such circumstances and since no one has a crystal ball to predict the future, one abides by the decision of the masses taken through their representatives. Decisions have consequences and bad decisions have bad consequences. Many problems we see today are results of such bad decisions taken. Just think of socialistic direction we collectively took our country in after independence in consensus with leading experts of the time. Will it be fair to blame the politicians, the bureaucracy or any single group for decision which had widest consensus when those decisions were taken?

Now, I come to the second point of my argument:

a. For every success or failure that has happened, while IAS does share blame, as it occupies leadership positions in the government, the blame must also be shared by other sister services. If you think policing can be better, let IPS also share the blame; if you think taxation should be better, let IRS also share the blame. I can enumerate several others but I think you get the gist.

b. Every time pay commission revision is around, IAS is being projected as golf-playing busybodies occupying high positions just because they secured few extra marks in an exam taken decades ago. Same people when asked who runs their department, be it home or finance, will argue tooth and nail that contribution of their IAS bosses is at best marginal and it is they who “run” the system.

c. IAS officers don’t occupy their positions just because they secured few extra marks in an exam taken decades ago; they do so because of the experience they gather during those decades as they work in various sectors close to citizenry of this country. There is no other service — NO OTHER SERVICE — which provides facility to observe how education, health, taxation or any other sector performs close to the ground. No other service provides facility to interact with each and every citizen of this country. It is this distinction which provides IAS an edge over other services. While there may be bad apples in the IAS, while there might be better subject experts in other services, wherever a broad understanding of society will be required in decision making, IAS will be better placed to provide the leadership. And as leaders, IAS will share blame in every failure there is. However, all those who work in the team will also be equally responsible.

Finally, I come to my last point:

a. The author in the article mentioned in the beginning compared India today with UK today, saying how cabinet secretary equivalent there was investigating the PM, Boris Johnson and how such impartiality would not be found in our country. I think it is a valid argument which should impress our minds to think ways of improving ourselves. We must investigate reasons why same thing is not possible in India and address those problems. But before we cry over the sorry state of democracy in India, let us understand that UK has a modern democracy 400 years old while in India it has been around for 75 years only.

b. In democracy, it takes time for systems to evolve. By their very nature, good systems must balance competing demands of the society and take time to develop so that they are not subjected to rapid changes. Just imagine — what would happen if parliament widely changes its functioning every year! That will lead to confusion all around! By being around for 400 years, UK and US have managed to develop systems of checks and balances which are much better and which we must learn from. However, just as an exercise, reader may check how these same democracies functioned 100 years after they were founded. It will pacify the alarmists in India.

c. When India became independent, we actually were 565 countries coming together. Society was deeply divided along communal lines. Economy was nothing to speak about. Doomsayers were already predicting demise of our nascent nation. These are problems we do not even think of today. You only have to read what our representatives were saying when they gathered in our Constituent Assembly between 1946 and 1949 to understand the problems they were most concerned about. These are the problems which we most certainly have improved upon with, I would argue, few having been solved completely out of our imagination.

d. When all India Services were being conceived, they were designed to provide uniform administration and strengthen administration which was deeply divided. I would argue that in this task we have been so successful that no one today worries by thinking what kind of government they would face it they were to migrate from Kashmir to Kerala.

In the end, while I will not say that IAS, or any other service for that matter, has come out with flying colours in last 75 years, I will definitely say that it will be unfair to call them “a failure”.

Surveillance capitalism and its threat to human autonomy

Reading the book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” authored by Shoshana Zuboff, I questioned myself, “Is it alright for platforms like Google, Facebook and other social media platforms to collect huge caches of information about my behaviour, often without my permission, and then provide this information to advertisers who may then try to sell their products to me?” I tried thinking as an ordinary person not too concerned about their own privacy, justifying it by claiming that they have nothing to hide. Instead, an average consumer will even see value in what such platforms are doing since they will see products and services which are more relevant to their needs. In this age of customisation, when individuals display their uniqueness with the products around them, being targeted by advertisers according to their own preferences does make sense.

The point where this acceptability breaks down, however, is when we are not being sold any product or service but an “idea” which we may not necessarily agree with. Armed with knowledge of our likes and dislikes, proponents of such ideas will find huge help in converting us and shaping us in their own image. Imagine this, for a large majority of population today, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc. have become their only source of information regarding the outside world. By studying how we interact with the contents, each of these platforms have fairly accurate information about what makes us “click”; about what will make us open an article and spend some time reading it; about what it will take us to like or subscribe to a certain channel or page and get further involved with the community so on and so forth.

Now imagine that in your country, highly contested elections are coming and you are yet undecided about the candidate or party you would vote for. Now, based on your online behaviours, it is very easy for social media platforms to determine that your vote is still undecided. Imagine that one of the parties has deep pockets which it can use for spending huge sums on advertising. This party goes to social media platform which in turn guides it in producing set of articles customised to influence your opinion in its favour. It is quite possible that left to yourself, you may have had decided against voting for this party. But now, due to huge cache of information available with social media platforms, deep pockets available with he political party, the chances of your going against this party reduces.

Now what happens if you are living in an authoritarian country and the ruling party is willing to arm-twist these social media platforms in behind-the-doors deal? Or what happens if one of the parties has very deep pockets while others are unable to compete or buy the same advertising spaces? Each and every incident of this kind reduces my autonomy over my own decision by exposing me to partial information on social media with which I interact unsuspectingly.

It is this aspect of surveillance capitalism which needs checking. When industrial capitalism began, it came with its own set of problems. Society took time to come up with relevant administrative mechanisms, labour laws, environmental protection laws, competition laws etc. to ensure that industrial capitalism does not lead to exploitation. Democratic societies are relatively new to the challenges being posed by surveillance capitalism. At the same time, surveillance capitalism is advancing at a pace much faster than industrial capitalism and in a much complicated technological manner making it difficult for societies to adapt. Our societies will have to come up with mitigating structures quickly if we want to prevent our hard-earned autonomies from becoming subjugated to “click-based and profit driven” mechanisms of companies which are at the forefront of surveillance capitalism.

The Enigma Called China

I recently saw a Cut the Clutter episode of senior journalist, Mr. Shekhar Gupta, in which he was describing some of the recent puzzling actions taken by the Chinese State against their homegrown tech companies, which has wiped out more than a TRILLION DOLLARS of value (with the number still rising) from their economy. That in this day and age, a country would wilfully impose such damage on oneself, is why I call China an enigma (though there are several other reasons also to call it so). During the course of his explanation, Mr. Gupta mentioned a Twitter handle, named Cathy Guo (@_duxfemina_), which had shed some light on happenings inside the Chinese black box. Out of curiosity, I checked all the tweets made from this handle and tried to make sense of them myself.

But before I come to the tweets, I want to mention the context which Mr. Gupta places these tweets in. It is now common knowledge, how disastrous the consequences of the muscular one child policy of China has been. Faced with increasing dependency ratio in their population, Chinese State is now encouraging people to give birth not even to two, but to three children. In different manners, it has been portrayed to be national duty of the citizens! There is just one problem; Chinese people have no interest in producing multiple children. The reason, besides natural consequences with come with high levels of education and high level of participation of women in the labour force, is high costs associated with rearing a child. It is with this intention — the intention of lowering the cost of living — that the Chinese State, argues Mr. Gupta and Ms. Cathy, that the Chinese government has taken recent actions against their tech companies.

Now let us see what Ms. Cathy says in her thread of 9 tweets. She says that domestically, the Chinese government is cracking down on three burdens of modern middle class Chinese citizens — Education costs; healthcare costs and real estate costs — while pushing for stability in media and finance. Ed-tech companies, which means software firms in the business of education, are only the first ones to bleed. In the slew of new measures announced, EdTech companies have been barred from making profits — lifeblood of any company — along with several other restrictions even for non-profit platforms. As a result, such companies have lost 70% of their market cap within span of 5 days. Their owners have seen upto 90% shrinkage in their net-worth. And all of this has been done to lower the level of stress and costs which modern expensive EdTech platforms have brought on average Chinese family, which values, and spends a great deal on, their children’s (actually child’s — since most have only one) education.

“Cutting cost burdens & predatory practices for consumers at the expense of billionaire founders & VCs [Venture capitalists] signals massive acceleration of a key part of China’s (meticulous) 5 year plan”, Cathy tweets. “Protect and uplift the communist base. Even if it dramatically punishes capitalists and capital”. She concludes by saying, “What’s clear is this: the Laissez-faire days are over. The ‘open economy China’ trajectory from 1978 is now in RAPID swing back to a much more central planning driven, state control model even in previously seemingly untouchable industries”. She also points out that what’s happening in China has wide support from the masses.

In his book “One Hundred Years of Marathon”, a noted China expert Michael Pillsbury describes how Chinese strategic thought works, and for anyone interested in China, I recommend it strongly. Chinese thought is long term. Action they often take is taken keeping decades and centuries in mind, one of the reason why they have been able to go from a poor country to a global superpower in matter of seven decades. They however do make mistakes — the one child policy being the case in point. China, while in name it remained communist, derived all success and benefits from becoming a state-led capitalist economy ever since 1970s. Whether the recent change in direction — from market-led growth to a more interventionist government— ends us becoming a master stroke or another strategic mistake only the time will be able to tell. But if history is any guide, all regimes, empires and governments that tried exercising too much control, ended up writing their own obituaries. It is only through true freedom, along with struggle of ideas that it brings, and the discovery of best path available that it leads to, that governments sustainably rule aspirational people over long time durations

Resources Trading Scheme — A Market-based Solution to Address Allocation Problem for Resources We Want to Reduce Consumption of

As demand for rare and exhaustible resources like drinking water, fossil fuels etc. increases day by day, making them available for everyone will become more and more challenging. Grappling with problems like clean drinking water for all, electricity for all etc. will be one of the major challenges governments around the world would be facing in coming years.

One of the possible solutions to this allocation problem is putting a cap on maximum quantity that any entity can consume, thus ensuring that the resources are distributed widely to some extent. However, like any strong arm tactic, it will not only act as impediment to growth and expansion, but will also breed corruption. Another approach is charging progressively higher rates as the quantity consumed increases. While this discourages high consumption, it provides no added advantage to people who adopt expensive latest technologies, other than the cost savings they make by reducing their own consumption.

Open market trading, I submit, is another solution through which allocation of resources can be done, high consumption can be discouraged and adoption of expensive green technologies encouraged by enabling speedier recovery of investment. Emissions trading scheme (also known as carbon trading scheme), which has been under implementation all over the world to control emission of greenhouse gases, provides a template for how this can be done.

For those who are not familiar, emissions trading schemes are market-based solutions aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, produced during burning of fossil fuels, to control global warming. It is a cap and trade system, in which each entity is given a maximum limit of greenhouse gases that it can emit into the atmosphere during a particular time period. At end of the time period, those who have exceeded their quota have to buy surplus quotas from entities which have emitted less greenhouse gases. Cost of each unit of emission is depended on demand and supply. If more people pollute, demand is high and supply is low, thus earning good revenue for those following less polluting practices. If a polluter who has exceeded its quota is unable to find such seller, they are fined a certain amount per unit of their exceeded emission. The system overall punishes the polluters and rewards those who adopt green solutions. By doing so, it encourages adoption of green technologies.

Imagine a similar system for allocation of water to industrial units. Considering the increasing stress on water resources, we would like to encourage practices which save water, just like we want to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to combat global warming.

Imagine a water distribution system, in which each industrial unit is given a maximum limit on the amount of water it can get every day, say one lakh litres, which will be charged basic rate of say, Rs. 50 per kilo litre (kL). Above this daily limit, progressively higher charges of, say Rs. 75 per kL, are charged.

Now, at end of the quarter, if an industrial unit exhausts its limit, they would have consumed 90 lakh litres and overall bill is Rs. 4.5 lakhs. However, there will be a number of units that would exceed their allotted quota, while there will be others which will have savings.

Say there are two units — Unit A, which had consumed 75 lakh litres and Unit B which had consumed 105 lakh litres during the same quarter. Thus, A has a surplus of 15 lakh litres and B has a shortage of 15 lakh litres. Going by prescribed rates, B would have to pay Rs. 75 per kL (Rs. 1.125 lakhs total) for this excess water, which will make its product less competitive in the open market. At the same time, while A, which has implemented latest technology and followed good practices, makes saving through its own reduced consumption, it has no extra incentive to continue doing so or to invest more to improve its own practices in future.

If we are able to create a platform where A and B can come together, and where A can sell its excess surplus to B at mutually agreed price, still less than Rs. 75 per kL, it will benefit both the parties. Say A agrees to sell its surplus to B at Rs. 65 per kL. B ended up saving Rs. 15000 while A earned Rs. 22500 extra. This is a win-win situation for both A and B.

Also, if there are multiple industrial units who have exceeded their quota, A will be able to get better competitive prices, and thus will be able to quickly recover the cost of technology introduced to reduce water requirement. This will, in theory, encourage more and more industrial units to introduce water saving technologies.

While this example demonstrates an example for consumption of water, this is equally true of any rare resource. We can allow trading in electrical units — which will encourage adoption of low energy technologies; or trading of coal allocation quotas; or any number of similar items. Market-based allocation mechanism for goods we want to reduce consumption of, I submit, can provide better alternate to either progressive charges based approach or strict consumption limit based approach of resource allocation

Challenges in lab to land transfer of agricultural technology

I recently came across following statement from Bill Gates in his book — How to Avoid a Climate Disaster — in which he comments on why the farmers in Africa were not accepting new seed varieties which were known to provide better productivity. “Understandably so”, he writes, “If you are eking out a living, you wont be eager to take a risk on seeds you have never planted before, because if they die, you have nothing to fall back on”. Reading this line made me reflect upon my own experiences that I had during my three year stint as District Development Officer as we were trying to convince more and more farmers to adopt new technologies, especially Suhas Palekar Natural Farming method.

Suhas Palekar Natural Farming (SPNF), also known as Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), is an agricultural methodology in which no external inputs, in forms of fertilisers or pesticides, is required. Up to thirty acres of land can be cultivated using chemicals produced by the farmer on farm using gobar and cow urine from a single cow along with a few other ingredients which you can easily find in any ordinary household. Having seen first-hand the huge transformation it could bring, not only in terms of reduction of input costs, but also in quantity, quality and value of the final agricultural produce, I thought that the adoption of this method was absolutely a no-brainer for any farmer. And it was thus that I started pushing it to the farmers during all my field visits.

I was surprised to find, however, that farmers were not so keen to migrate from their existing practice even though the benefits were so obvious. It was then that I became aware about the reluctance to which Bill Gates alluded in the context of African farmers. While the methodology of SPNF was slightly more laborious, the economic logic of it was easily understood by most farmers. However, Indian farmers, like their African counterparts, are mostly small and marginal farmers with their livelihoods totally dependent on their farm’s output. They are thus not very keen when it comes to trying new things — seeds, fertilisers, methodologies etc. — as there is no fallback option in case the ‘new thing’ fails. Getting them to adopt something may only be an experiment for us, but it is a matter of life and death for a farmer. Changing their behaviours, therefore, needs persistent training and education about robustness of technology, along with all the necessary post-adoption support.

In every district, there is ATMA department — Agricultural Technology Management Agency — which is supposed to train farmers in up and coming technologies and provide technological support wherever required. It conducts classroom courses and organises exposure visits for farmers to research institutions and fields of other progressive farmers. For any farmer, what another farmer says or does carries much more credibility than what any government servant or scientist could do or say and exposure visits to fields of progressive farmers are a major medium for getting farmers to adopt anything new. It was through mix of such visits and other programs that more than three thousand farmers in Bhavnagar district started implementation of SPNF in their farms. In order to make sure that they find good price for their produce, we even started a weekly market in Bhavnagar city where every week, 300 farmers used to do business of over one and a half lakh rupees. Such markets were under consideration for other places as well at the time when I got transferred which will provide access to market to more farmers.

Still, there were more than two and a half lakh farmers in the district and three thousand was a minuscule number. I wanted to understand what was stopping other farmers. It was then that I happened to visit farms of two brothers in Moti Paniyali village of Palitana taluka. One brother practised SPNF, and was getting all associated benefits, while the other was not. Since it was a particularly bad time for onion crop, the impact of SPNF was clearly seen on their farms which were located side by side (Onions on the farm of brother doing SPNF looked clearly much healthier). I wanted to know why, even after seeing such clear differences, was still this brother not migrating to SPNF. After a few remarks here and there, when I persisted in my questioning, he made a confession. “I do not cultivate my farm myself”, he said, “I have given it to a sharecropper. My brother, on the other hand, cultivates his farm himself.”

So this was one of the main reasons SPNF was not getting adopted as it should have been. While the process is laborious, farmers do come around due to low input costs. While farmers are sceptical of new technologies, ATMA can play a role in educating them and converting them. However, no such education program exists for agricultural labourers! And sharecroppers are particularly special kind of labourers since they remain associated for the entire duration of crop (Other labourers come only for certain activities like sowing, harvesting etc.) In their negotiations with land owners, sharecroppers generally negotiate the types, quantities and qualities of seeds, urea, NPK, pesticides etc. which the land owner would provide for cultivation. If the landowner then sermonises him about how these things are not required, and how he should practice SPNF instead, sharecropper thinks that the landowner is not sincere and that his stupidity will cause a financial loss to him also and declines to work their farm. It is therefore, that even when landowner somehow agrees to migrate to SPNF, he actually never does so because of the resistance shown by his sharecropper. Now, sharecropper too may change opinion if he is provided training and exposure visits like we do for farmers. In the abovementioned case of Moti Paniyali village for example, after witnessing impact on onion crop during bad season on the adjacent farm, the sharecropper agreed to give this new technology a try in coming season. Unfortunately, we don’t have any provision in ATMA or any other scheme under which we can train or organise exposure visits for such sharecroppers, and they continue to remain a hurdle.

As a result, because a vast majority of farmers employ sharecroppers, unless and until we train these people, SPNF, and any other new technology for that matter, would not find much traction.

In summary, while there are lot of problems in bringing technology from labs to the farmers, their adoption is much a more complicated problem. Farmers don’t trust scientists, especially because while for scientists it may be an experimental pursuit, for farmers it is a question of their survival. Even if system somehow manages to convince them about usefulness of a new technology, their sharecroppers provide resistance. And unlike the farmers, we presently do not have any provision under which training programs and exposure visits can be organised for agricultural labourers. This is one area which we must work towards. This is not to say that training agricultural labourers will solve the problem of lab to land transfer of technology. It would, however, help in overcoming a significant hurdle in the process.

New Office on the block — Regional Commissioner of Municipalities

Ever since my appointment as Regional Commissioner of Municipalities, Rajkot, I have received a number of queries from friends, especially those in services in other cadres, enquiring about what this job actually means. Their curiosity is totally justified since this institution is unique to Gujarat and was only constituted in 2018. This institution is a brainchild of incumbent Chief Minister of Gujarat, Vijay Rupani, who also happens to be the Urban Development Minister. A former mayor of Rajkot himself, CM Rupani is perhaps the first Chief Minister of Gujarat who has had such vast exposure to the complexities of urban administration before entering into the office. This provides him a world view much different than any other political leader born and bred in the villages — a distinction which increasingly urbanising state of Gujarat very well benefits from.

According to Census 2011, 43% of population in Gujarat lives in the cities. Latest estimates show that this number has gone up to 47% today. Moreover, this does not include people living in peri urban areas, census towns or who commute from villages to cities for work everyday. If we add them, urban population of Gujarat may go beyond 60%.

Anyone who is familiar with administrative sciences will know that administration of cities is wholly different from administration of a district. Before the creation of the institution of RCM, while Municipal Corporations had senior IAS officers working as Commissioners — who ensured quality of administration— smaller municipalities were an ignored lot. To deal with the issues pertaining to municipalities, there was a District Municipal Officer, working under the Collector, who sanctioned various development works as well as reviewed decisions taken by municipalities. Collectors were empowered to overturn any decisions made by municipalities if they did not conform to the law. Overburdened by day to day administration of districts, Collectors were finding it increasingly difficult to pay due attention deserved by increasing aspirations of the municipalities. They also found it difficult to spend time and attention required to grapple with political challenges which come while reviewing improper decisions taken by these bodies, cases of which were increasing with increased resources available. Furthermore, Collectorate was not staffed with technical manpower which is required to design and execute complex infrastructural projects of the cities. As a result, urban administration suffered. Gujarat government headed by a former head of urban local body sensed it needed to change the system to enhance administration and thereby satisfy aspirations of urban voters.

A new institution of RCM was created in 2018 giving an IAS officer of moderate seniority responsibilities of all municipalities over a few districts. Not only were they entrusted with all the powers which earlier used to be with Collectors, they were also provided technical manpower for town planning, execution of infrastructure works etc. This made them more empowered than the Collectors, at least as far as urban administration was concerned.

Undisturbed by influences of politics which work at district level, zonal offices under RCMs have already made their presence felt. Infrastructure projects which earlier used to take upto 4-5 years for approval, now received full attention and got approved in months. Decisions of municipal bodies now received closer scrutiny thus preventing misadventures with public money. Complex projects like Sewage treatment, underground drainage etc. is also being monitored much better.

Three years, especially when half of it was struck by pandemic, is too less a time for any administrative setup to stabilise. Systems are still developing and new power structures emerging as RCMs assert their authority. As this sector gets closer attention, many administrative issues are being identified and sorted out. Just as an example, while there are several training institutes for panchayat employees, no such training institute exists for municipalities! Hopefully this, and many such issues, will be resolved as the institution matures.

Other states too have taken notice and are visiting Gujarat to see the changes that this new setup is causing. This may be a brainchild of the incumbent Chief Minister, but no political regime in a state with 60% of population living in cities will be able to ignore it. Institution of RCM is here to stay and is only going to become stronger in days to come. My hope is that I, my batchmates and the other officers who will come in this institution after us, do justice to the expectations that the Government and the people have from us. Officers rarely get an opportunity to setup new institutions. Fate has blessed us with one and I hope we build something for the entire country to learn from.

Adios Bhavnagar!!!

When I was asked to exit my office for my car standing downstairs for the last time, to pass through hundreds of my colleagues standing in the passage, literally waiting to shower me with their love and adoration, my legs felt heavy. I stood up from my chair but could not move. I was hit by a sudden realisation that this was my last day as District Development Officer, Bhavnagar — position I had held for over thirty eight months, thereby making me the longest serving DDO ever — and also my last day as the executive head of District Panchayat. I was going to walk these stairs with ownership for the last time. Some of my deputies standing before me. I looked down. Tears started rolling from my eyes and I could not stop them.

When I came to Bhavnagar, I was an inexperienced Assistant Collector who had barely spent eighteen months in service. Also, having had served relatively peaceful tribal subdivision, I had limited exposure to negotiations and crisis resolution efforts which come with senior administrative positions. From what I knew then about Bhavnagar, it was anything but like my earlier subdivision. Furthermore, staff working under me was seasoned with decades of working in this same sector and I was supposed to “guide” them. I had a big self-doubt regarding whether I will actually be able to do justice to this institution, the responsibility of which was being placed upon my shoulders.

Looking back, while all these factors were correct, what I did not know about was the all embracing character, loyalty and devotion of people who call Bhavnagar their home. Right from the first day, they not only welcomed me and withstood my ignorance, they helped me learn the tricks of the trade. Whatever I am as an administrator today, I am because of the salt present in this soil and sweat present on brows of thousands of employees working under Bhavnagar District Panchayat.

And we have been through some tough times. While repeated agricultural distress every year, which led to mammoth undertaking of disbursal of relief money, could have been challenging in any situation, once in a century pandemic and once in a generation cyclone did add some extra pressure. However, the dedication, devotion and tact with which everyone did their jobs helped us to fight each and every challenge with minimum damages. I am proud that it was our collective work which helped us prevent unfortunate and gory situations which took place in few other cities.

People of Bhavnagar have showered me with immense love and respect. However, the greatest gift I got while serving here were my children. Both my kids — my daughter and my son — are born on this soil. Bhavnagar will remain “place of birth” in their birth certificates forever. Therefore, Bhavnagar not only made me who I am professionally, it also gave me my complete family.

As I bid adieu to this great city, district and it’s great people, I do so with deepest gratitude. Finally, a parting word to all my dear colleagues — right from peons to my deputies — No matter where I go, no matter what I do, I will always remember you. Life is long and our paths are bound to cross and when that happens, I would like to take some of your time and catch up. I will always like to know what is going on with you and this great place.

A new paradigm for healthcare service delivery

I classify healthcare service delivery into three types of modes.

First mode is called the passive mode, in which healthcare service providers remain at fixed locations, and, it is the responsibility of the patient to decide which institution he/she wants to go to. It is also their responsibility to approach it all by themselves, without any involvement either of the healthcare service provider, or of the government. This is most widely known and practised form of healthcare service delivery.

In the telemedicine domain, passive mode of healthcare delivery involves presence of healthcare services either in form of helplines or in form of mobile apps. Patients needing consultations either call or log in on these platforms and wait for their turn to speak to the professional on the other end.

Second mode is called hybrid mode, in which there is some proactiveness shown by the healthcare service providers in locating the needy patients. Healthcare camps, where service providers go close to the community and use volunteers to identify and mobilise people needing treatment, is an example of such hybrid mode. In this mode, while healthcare centres come closer to their homes, patients are still required to leave comfort of their homes and approach these centres to avail their services. Also, such hybrid service deliveries are only available for temporary periods of time and are not present all year round.

In telemedicine domain, hybrid mode of healthcare delivery involves presence of a technology operator, close to patient’s home, who is connected directly to one of the healthcare service providers. Patient can approach this operator, who then connects them to service provider through telemedicine. Considering the poor digital literacy levels in rural communities, passive mode of telemedicine is difficult for them to access. Hybrid mode of telemedicine enables them to overcome this disability even if it requires them to leave comfort of their homes. Also, unlike hybrid modes of traditional healthcare, in telemedicine, this mode is available all year round.

Finally, there is active mode of healthcare delivery, in which service provider proactively identifies people who need healthcare, and then provide it for as long as it is required at their homes itself. If consultation at any healthcare centre is required, that too is arranged by the service provider, including all transportation and logistics involved. Services provided by ASHA workers to pregnant and lactating mothers, or those provided by MPHWs to patients of tuberculosis fall in this category. While active mode of healthcare delivery reduces delays, morbidities and mortalities, thereby providing excellent results, it has an inherent drawback. You cannot follow up all the people, for all the diseases, all the time. Since you have to track all the people all the time to make sure no one is left out, you choose not to cover all the diseases. Instead you select specific causes for which you monitor them. RCH services by ASHAs, DOTS for TB, ART for AIDS etc. are all examples of this mode.

Active mode of service delivery is relatively new even in traditional healthcare. It was totally unheard of in the realm of telemedicine. However, during COVID-19 pandemic, active mode of telemedicine was borne out of necessity in Bhavnagar district of Gujarat where I am posted.

During the second wave in April 2021, large number of people who were on oxygen support were undergoing home isolation due to shortage of beds in hospitals. At the same time, there were large number of mildly symptomatic people too who needed continuous supervision to make sure that their condition did not deteriorate. Conventional healthcare system which was already overburdened by tracing, testing, containment, treatment, vaccination and all the reporting that went with it, was finding it increasingly difficult to track each and every patient every day as their numbers kept on rising. We needed a solution to this ever increasing problem.

At any point of time during the peak period of the second wave, we had four to five thousand people in home isolation or home quarantine in our district. To expect that our overburdened healthcare workers would visit all of them everyday was a fool’s dream. Yet, it was essential to checkup on each of them everyday.

It was with this intention that we created a team of 140 teachers and distributed list of these patients between them. We asked these teachers to call each and every patient in their list everyday and ask them some basic questions — what is your temperature? What is you SpO2? And things like that. Each patient, in best case scenario, was supposed to receive calls for ten days. We made sure that they received them from the same teacher. In case they found any patient who was not well, their details were passed on to a team of doctors. There was one doctor appointed for every ten teachers. The doctor then made a call to these patients and provided consultation. In case the doctor thought that these patients needed in-person medical attention, they passed on their details to a district nodal officer. Nodal officer then coordinated with field teams and ensured that healthcare workers reach in shortest possible time and the patient got shifted to a healthcare centre if required. While healthcare workers on ground found it challenging to check all persons in home isolation every day, this filtration allowed them to focus their efforts only on those who were truly in need.

Between May 01 to May 07, 32490 calls were made in this manner by teachers. Approximately one percent, 379 to be exact, were found to be needing medical consultation. These patients were transferred to the doctors who then called and provided medical consultation. After consulting, doctors found that 57 people should be visited physically by healthcare workers and their details were provided to the district nodal officer. After field visits, all of these 57 were shifted from home isolation to healthcare centres for treatment.

Benefits do not stop here. People who received calls from teachers developed a special bond with them. They started calling when they did not feel good, or needed medicines, or when someone they knew developed symptoms and needed to get tested, or for any number of reasons. In the times of isolation, this knowledge that they could call someone and expect prompt response, without waiting on the line, must have provided them some mental comfort. Our teachers also went beyond the call of duty and arranged whatever was necessary to make sure that patients remained comfortable.

Going forward, such active mode of telemedicine can be used for any number of specific diseases. In future, as the people with weak immunity, or those suffering from major illnesses, avoid going to healthcare centres for the fear of catching infection, such active healthcare delivery can help comfort them while maintaining their privacy. It can also play a major role in case of people suffering from mental illnesses.

Pandemic has been difficult for a number of reasons. But it has also brought to fore solutions which, in any other circumstances, would have taken years to emerge. We just need to build upon the lessons that we have learnt the hard way.

Defending the Defenders

ON Wednesday, in Nagaur district of Rajasthan, an angry crowd had captured some of the constables from GRP (Government Railway Police). The Superintendent of Police (SP), Nagaur learnt about this and reached Sanwarad GRP police station, the spot of incident, along with young lady IPS officer. On reaching they learned that the mob was attempting to burn the police station down. “We saw some people trying to burn GRP constables alive. When we intervened, the mob attacked us. SP was injured in the attack and I took shelter in a house”, this is what that lady officer said later on. There were reports that the mob manhandled, molested and disrobed her. Thankfully, this was not so, a fact that she later clarified.

Attacks like this have become a common place. Only recently, District Magistrate of Mandsaur district in MP was attacked by the agitating farmers when he went to pacify them. In my own home district, a lady IAS officer posted as Chief Executive Officer of district panchayat was saved by the police from a crowd that had entered her own office and was threatening to heckle her. All three organs of administration at the district level – the District Magistracy, the Panchayats and the Police – are increasingly under attack by anti-social elements of the society.

Being a young officer in such is situation is very disheartening. The lady IPS officer, whom I mentioned earlier, happens to be my batch-mate. Reading about what had happened to her, imagining myself or anyone of my kin in that situation, makes me cringe. It makes me to think, ‘What is the reason for the current state of affairs, in which, the officers of the state, who are supposed to exude and represent the authority of the state, are coming increasingly under attack?’

I have been in service for less than three years. In this time, I have realised that the positions that we, as officers, hold are immensely powerful and influential, and using that, we actually can get a lot of things done. But I have also learnt that it is not about how much power you possess; the only thing that matters is how powerful you are seen by the people. In other words, perception matters more than the substance. An individual or an institution which is able to inspire awe in everyone coming in contact with it is the one which can get work done, and get it done smoothly. Power vested in them can only help for damage control. Somehow, I think, state authorities have lost their ‘awe’, and consequently, are perceived to be as weak – a situation which is exploited by muscle men as well as collection of individuals in a mob.

But how did this come about? How did we lose this ‘awe’? While awe in one sense means admiration, it also means fear. It does not matter how powerful is the position that you are holding; if people don’t see you as a powerful person, and/or are not respectful towards that power, and/or refuse to submit to your authority, you are only a paper-king and you have no real authority. While in an ideal society, people would respect and submit to legally established authority without any force or compulsions, in reality, people submit to law only due to fear of the consequences of not doing so. For example, while some might not mind parting with 30% of their hard earned money as taxes because of their love for their country, majority of us pay taxes because we are scared of spooks in the Income Tax department. So, fear creates awe which gets work done, and power is only then used to discipline bad apples who need an extra-serving of authority.

In recent times, however, this ‘fear’ is on the wane. There is an increasing section of society which thinks that they can do wrongs, derive profits out of it, and not get punished. Our slow, and sometimes defective, justice delivery system reinforces this belief. Every time a person breaks a traffic signal and is not punished for it, he gets bolder; every time a person mugs another person and gets away with it, he gets bolder; slowly and steadily, people who used to break signals start breaking curfews; and those mugging people, start mugging members of the establishment.

Then again, it is the responsibility of the very same state, and thereby responsibility of the very same officers under attack, to make sure that every transgression of law is punished. But this is easier said than done. Unlike ordinary people, officers and agents of state, are held to much higher standards, as they should be. While a mob trying to burn constables finds passing mention in media, a lathi charge by police on a violent crowd gets cover to cover coverage, as an attack on society. While an injury suffered by policemen in a law and order situation is dismissed as an occupational hazard, something similar happening to a civilian opens a series of inquiries and investigations, which consumes and destroys several bright careers. While crowd and mob get organised around a single point agenda, and are not handicapped by niceties and boundaries of ‘laws and rules’, state officials have to care of myriad permutations and combinations. All this, and much more, contribute to erosion of authority.

Even the intellectual class is against a strong state. Recently, in an essay in the periodical Frontline, a member of “the thinking class” compared our present Army Chief, General Bipin Rawat, with the perpetrator of Jallianwala Bagh massacre, General Dyer. The reason? Gen. Bipin Rawat told PTI, “[Your] Adversaries must be afraid of you… and at the same time, your people must be afraid of you… we are a friendly Army, but when we are called in to restore law and order, people have to be afraid of us”. This intellectual I am referring to, found these comments preposterous. Can anyone say, that in a law and order situation, which has deteriorated so much that Army has been called to intervene, people should not be afraid and keep on rampaging? Absolutely not!!! People who create such law and order problems should even be afraid of my beat constable, leave alone the mighty Army. It can be nobody’s case that such people should behave as daredevils and not be afraid of hands of the state.

So, in conclusion, unless the fear of state authorities is injected in everyone who dares to think of doing anything illegal, it is very difficult to arrest the trend which has set in light of the examples mentioned in the beginning of this article. Comments of the Home Minister of Rajasthan, following the attack in Nagaur is something which builds confidence in members of the administration (click here to see those comments). Support of political class is sine qua non for revival and reestablishment of state authority. People need to remember that those serving in organs of administration are humans too and possess same rights, and are affected by same fears, which affect everyone else.