A national daily front-paged
a smallish scam perpetrated by the bureaucracy and some ministers of the state
of Madhya Pradesh (MP) while on tour. What they did, however, was something
reprehensible as it only showed their hypocrisy as also their petty-mindedness.
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| MP Bhavan |
While on tour on official
business in Delhi they stayed in public sector starred hotels but made the
Madhya Pradesh Bhavan authorities to pay their bills. Madhya Pradesh Bhavan is
a MP government guest house meant for accommodating touring officers and
ministers when they are in Delhi on official business. It is a sprawling affair
with scores of rooms. And yet it seemed to have proved inadequate as another
virtually equally large outfit, the Vindhyachal Bhawan, was erected.
The scam was detected during
audit of the expenses of these two Bhavans. Quite clearly, for ministers and
senior officers staying in the guest houses is now kind of infra dig. Time was when
they all used to stay in them and there were and probably still are graded
rooms to accommodate officers and ministers of different levels. These were
constructed for their benefit as those days staying in hotels or private guest
houses was simply unaffordable for even the senior most officers. Trips to
Delhi were inevitable and finding suitable and affordable accommodation was a
big hassle.
While based in Delhi, I
recall, in the early 1970s most of the states gradually started building their
respective guest houses in the expansive New Delhi area. The government of
Andhra built a new one pretty close to the India Gate area and it became famous
for its hot and spicy cuisine. The restaurant would be thrown open to the public
on Sundays. Some, like Kerala, even converted as state guest houses the
palatial bungalows inherited by them after independence from the erstwhile
maharajas.
Senior officers of state
governments like MP are governed by the state rules and they can look for hotel
accommodation while on tour to Delhi only if the Bhavans do not have
accommodation for them. With the tide of development and relative prosperity
things started changing. After the VI Pay Commission recommendations were
implemented salaries saw a hefty hike and so did the travelling allowances. With
rising standards and aspirations senior government officers don’t find the
state guest houses good enough and, therefore, do not look for rooms in; they
like to put up in starred hotels. Hence the MP ministers and officials
apparently pitched on the ingenious method that the audit happened to stumble
upon.
With ministers and senior officials, barring a
very few notable exceptions, avoiding them, all the government
guest houses
have fallen on bad days. They largely cater to, inter alia, relatives and
friends of officers, ministers, legislators and state politicians who have no
legal or official right to avail of the government facilities. This is very
unfortunate. A facility that was provided for officials and ministers at great
public expense is not only being misused, it also has become a big drain on the
government. Not only the state’s guest houses are occupying massive areas of
scarce land in prime locations of the capital, the tax payer has to pay for
their maintenance as well as meet the fraudulent claims of the officials and
ministers. One does not know the fate of guest houses of other states in the
capital but if the occupancy rate is unsustainable they might as well do as
several circuit houses have done – throw them open to non-official itinerants
at competitive rates.
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| Circuit House, Manali, Himachal Pradesh |
The circuit houses located at
the headquarters of various districts, where once upon a time only ministers
and gazetted officers could put up, now do not also quite measure up to their
needs and style of living. But, for the sake of their survival, many of the
circuit houses, after being spruced up, have been thrown open to the public and
tourists on very reasonable tariffs. It is good that available facilities,
instead of crumbling under state apathy and negligence, have been squarely put
out to earn their keep in the very competitive market of tourism.
Set in the midst of huge
parcels of land in what used to be generally called Civil Lines (as if all
other lines were uncivil), the circuit houses were mostly built during the
British era and were formidable looking structures with equally formidable
looking khansamas (chefs) who would
lord over the place. Having served ministers and top most bureaucrats of the
state they would think nothing of smaller fries, the officers low down in
hierarchy. But some of them used to be excellent at cooking – both Indian and
continental. The rooms used to be well-appointed and a suite, if available,
would be kept reserved only for top shots.
The finest ever circuit house
that I happened to have stayed in was the one in Bhuj, Gujarat. This was way
back in 1964. It was an old converted mansion that once used to be the
residence of the British Agent for the princely state of Kutch. A huge drawing
room had a banquet hall next to it with a massive dining table serviced by
liveried bearers. Both were furnished in that princely style with quaint
furniture and furnishings. The dining hall had a sideboard full of English
silver and china tableware with the inevitable Kutch coat-of-arms. I was
allotted one of the two suites on the ground floor that had a sitting room with
a study corner, a dressing room – both lavishly equipped – and a bed room with
a four poster king-sized double bed of intricately carved mahogany. There were
two baths, both with (then rare) marble flooring – offering the choice of a WC
and an Indian pan. All for just Rs. 3/- a day! I never got to stay in it again
as in 1965 the Kutch border became hot and the army took over the building and
all that it had.
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| A dak bungalow, presumably, in 19th Century |
Another such institution
called the Dak Bungalow is now an endangered species. These bungalows were
relics of the Raj that survived for more than a couple of centuries. These used to be government bungalows along the main dak (postal) routes erected for the dak (mail) runners for exchange of mails
for onward transmission to the next stage. Government officials on tour and
non-official travellers could also camp in them.
They were, generally, one-storied thatched or tiled buildings, with a big
central dining-room and two or three bedrooms around which ran a deep veranda,
with a slightly removed kitchen and some far-removed outhouses in the midst of
sprawling properties. As in circuit houses these too would have a factotum taking
care of the brooding, heavily built premises as also of the guests.
The
dak-bungalows used to be the equivalent of hotels for officials on tours and non-official
travelers on the basis of availability straying into the hinterland. Patterned
on the old Western coaching-inns these are still operational in certain remote
areas but have mostly died out. Having a history, they had lore built around
them and, earlier, were generally known for their chicken curry and the spirits
that were supposed to be haunting them.
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All photographs are from the Internet
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