Memories of an ordinary bureaucrat :: 34 :: Mumbai (Part I)

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So I landed up in Bombay - from one metropolis to another; from the political capital to the financial capital. In Delhi I was in a General Pool house that was below my entitlement and at Bombay, too, I had to move into a below-entitlement house that was, however, not of General Pool. It was a departmental house. The predecessors, in their wisdom, never thought of getting into the General Pool. Somehow, they seem to have been happy in departmental houses. In one way it was better. I recall having visited the house of a friend that was in terrible condition with balconies ready to fall off. Compared to them our houses were better maintained. Besides, having a departmental maintenance outfit has its own advantages.

With the new breed of packers and movers it was not difficult to move lock, stock and barrel from one place to another. They had taken the sting out of transfers. Besides, the new aircraft were capable to fly cars at tariffs that were only marginally higher than what was admissible if transported by an EVK railway wagon. I flew my Maruti 800 that was only a few months old in July 1984 by an Airbus and it took only minutes to have it delivered by Indian Airlines at Bombay. Within the matter of a week my wife and I were more or less settled in our new place of posting.

My office was in Bombay GPO building which is a heritage structure in the Fort area which has numerous structures classified as such. Bombay GPO is now more than 100 years old and is situated next to the World Heritage Site of Victoria Terminus, now renamed as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus. The building is of Indo-Saracenic kind patterned after the Gol Gumbad of Bijapur. It is a building of massive proportions with a circular central hall under its massive dome.

I was appointed as Additional Postmaster General in the Senior Administrative Grade Level II. The Postmaster General was in Level I. He was a Christian from Kerala and was a very amiable and humorous person. There was, however, a darker side of him. He used to make money by hiring huge structures for operative offices. While he took care of the postal operations of the entire city the rest of the state as well as the tiny state of Goa were left for me.

As I had earlier been Regional Director at Nagpur I had seen most of the eastern parts of the state. What I had not seen were parts of Marathwada, the Western Maharashtra and Konkan regions. Among the three Konkan region was considered very charming, offering best of nature – green hills, white and yellow sandy beaches and the blue waters of the Arabian Sea lapping on the shores. One had to take to the coastal highway – a badly maintained road with king-sized potholes. The Konkan Railway was still a few years away in the future.

 I made forays into Konkan starting off with Alibagh. The place had found favour with the rich and influential for building farm houses. It seemed to have been another way of concealing illegitimate income. Curiously I came across a huge property of Sardar Angrey, a feudal of Gwalior – a sworn enemy of the Scindias. I met him later in Delhi at a friend’s place. He used to own a Rolls Royce which he sold rather cheap being unaware of the price of a vintage Rolls. He apparently had no end of regrets about the loss.

In the next trip to Konkan I covered Chiplun, a very attractive little town, a taluka town and a trading centre to boot for the King of Mangoes – alphonsos. Its hills were green and a small stream meandered its way down towards the Arabian Sea.

Around 100 kilometres from Chiplun was the famous beach of Ganpatipule. We had booked a room in the guest house and spent a very pleasant 24 hours there. The beach was clean as we saw later in Vengurla. No sand crabs or spiders to bother one. This is true of most of the beaches in Konkan.

As I was close to Ratnagiri I took a shot at it. It is a beautiful place with green hills, small streams, creeks and clean beaches. The added attraction is the Alphonso mango and Kokum, a fruit that is specialty of the region and its cuisine. Besides, there is the Vijaydurg fort.  The mountain fastnesses of Konkan and Western Maharashtra are famous not only for their architecture but also for the exploits of Chhatrapati Shivaji and his cohorts. The environment of Ratnagiri ispresently under threat as a nuclear power station with French collaboration has been planned at Jaitapur proximate to it.

On another occasion I went further south of Ratnagiri – to Vengurla, a place which seemed to have terrific tourism potential but had remained unexploited. Its clean and seemingly anti-septic beaches are like an arc similar to Marine Drive in Bombay with a rest house on a hilltop at one end. Vengurla grows cashews and a fruit much like custard apple locally called Ramphal. One understands that the state government is now poised to market Vengurla as a tourist destination.

Savantwadi was a name I was familiar with. Some of my Maratha friends belonged to it or probably would talk about it. It was much like Goa – small, narrow roads, small markets with people trading with gusto. Savantwadi was south of Malvan that had sylvan beaches that stretch out ten long miles from one end to another. Malvani food has been well accepted by people from other regions.

As I did not wish to take to the coastal road again I went up the Western Ghats from Savantwadi to come across a natty little hill station by the name Amboli. It had a lovely rest house to compel us to spend the night. During the night it was cool and comfortable. Next morning we climbed down to Belgaum and proceeded to Kolhapur, on to Sangli, Satara and Pune. Thanks to my Maruti I made it in good time.

Memories of an ordinary bureaucrat ::33 :: Delhi (Part II)

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Dak Bhavan

After completion of the Advanced Professional Programme on Public Administration I reverted back to the Department but not to Nagpur from where I was deputed. I was for the first time in my career appointed in the P&T Board. It was still a composite board of Posts & Telegraphs – “Telecom” was yet to get into the lexicon of the Department. The Secretary used to be from the ICS/IAS until the Departments split up into two – the Department of Telecom (DoT) and India Post. On bifurcation in 1985 the two independent departments got their secretaries from amongst officers of their respective organized services.

I was still in the Junior Administrative Grade and hence was posted in the rank of Director in charge of Materials Management & Printing. The work was largely uninteresting but I had to be careful to see that I did not become a victim of foul play by others. The Materials Management outfit also handled procurement though most of the items were procured through the Directorate General of Supplies & Disposals (DGS&D). There was, therefore, very little chance of getting involved in a corruption case contrived by others.

And yet a case appeared to have occurred where a junior official was involved in indiscriminate local, i.e. not through DGS&D, procurement of paper. My boss, Deputy Director General (DDG), had once asked meto have a particular file sent to him as the Member in-charge of the Board wanted to see it. I passed down the instructions but a few days later the DDG again called me up for the file. I was surprised that the file had not been sent. Hence this time I summoned it through my PA only to find sure signs of indiscriminate placement of orders. The file had never come to me. A senior clerk, much known for his clairvoyance in the entire office, was found responsible and was proceeded against. A very senior junior level officer close to retirement lost heavily in the amount of his pension. All for the crooked clairvoyant!

I had spent hardly a little more than a year in the post when one morning the Member rang me up to tell me that he had nominated me for a course on Postal Statistics to be run by the Universal Postal Union, the specialized agency of the UN for matters relating postal communications. The course was to be run in India for four weeks, in China for four weeks, in Japan for two weeks and in Thailand for two weeks. The course was to last for three months after which the participants, who were from different South Asian and South-East Asian countries, were to disperse to their respective countries.

I have written separately about the course and our visits to the three countries. The only thing that seems to me to be worth mentioning is that China then was not the economic and industrial giant that it is today. It was then in the process of opening up. Some hoardings of a few multinationals were visible on street corners. There were practically no privately owned cars on streets – only Russian-made or their Chinese copies were visible. We were, however, taken around in Toyota mini buses. Bicycles were much in use and in the evenings huge hordes of cyclists, like I had seen in Pune or even bigger than them, would invade the roads as theywent back home from their work places. Today China is perhaps the biggest market for cars, more so for luxury cars. Japan, it is needless to say, was much ahead with its two or three tiered flyovers, shinkansens (bullet trains) and multi-storied malls. Thailand, I might add, was doing much better than India. Its traffic of a million cars was highly disciplined. The city was still growing which I later witnessed during my couple of visits.

On return from the tour I submitted, as required by Government of India instructions, a rather lengthy report to the higher authorities but, sadly, it came back without any comments by the higher-ups, including the Secretary. Be that as it may, I was posted as Director Mechanisation temporarily as a lady officer had asked for the post I had vacated before going to join the course.The post dealt with mechanisation of various postal operations.

It so happened that a company that was in correspondence with the department quoted an extravagantly high price for the improved version of its registrex machines. Instead of negotiating with it I communicated with approval of the DDG the inability of the department to consider it. The representative of the company never came back to me. I had forgotten about it and had moved on to the post I was originally appointed. Then on an April day my DDG rang me up saying that I had not mentioned the case of purchase of registrex machines in my Annual Confidential Records form. I told him I had forgotten about it and, in any case, it was a smallmatter. He said he did not think so as because of my refusal to entertain the inflated price the government had saved thousands of rupees. He said, never mind, he would make a mention of it. People like him were rare and hard to come by. The DDG was none other than Shamsur Rahman Faruqi who is now a big name in Urdu literature and Urdu literary circles.

After about two and a half years in post I was promoted in 1984 to the Sr. Administrative Grade as Dy. Director General of Postal Life Insurance. For those who are unaware of this organization I might add that the system was introduced by the British Government in India for insuring the departmental employees to alleviate their pecuniary circumstances, especially after their retirement. It has become a mammoth organization today extending its tentacles to all departments of the government of India and its public sector undertakings, state government employees, nationalised banks, autonomous bodies of the Centre and so on. The Centenary celebrationswere held in 1984 during my stewardship of the organization.

Having completed four years in the P&T Board it was time for me to move to the field again. A senior officer of the Staff Branch came one morning to ask me where I would like to be posted – Srinagar or Lucknow. Having worked in Srinagar earlier I expressed my preference for Lucknow. They, however, posted me to Bombay (which was yet to become Mumbai). This is how the governments function – generally in an unpredictable manner.

(concluded)

*photo from internet