The Hindu Business Line : Callousness unending

THE attempt at self-immolation by a former government employee at the venue of the Republic Day parade at Bhubaneshwar captures all that is wrong with the attitude of the administrative class. As if in a flash, it exposes the callousness and contempt that an average citizen has to face, despite all talk of reforming the mentality of officialdom in all the years after Independence from the highest levels. The employee in question, with a wife and two daughters to support, was compulsorily retired in 2003, allegedly without being told the reason.

Since then he had been petitioning in vain to various levels of Government asking for a hearing and reinstatement. In desperation, two months ago, he wrote to them warning of his intention to immolate himself on that particular day and place, and reiterated it in another letter written a week earlier. Only when nothing seemed to work did he actually set fire to himself. The stir that this created has now forced the Chief Minister to agree to give him an interview and look into his case.

What does it mean? That no citizen with a grievance can hope to get the attention of Ministers and officials except when he resorts to something drastic such as suicide, protest demonstration or violence? This, at least, is the conclusion to which people seem to have been driven looking at the increasing number of instances when they take the law into their own hands.

There is also a tragic irony in the situation prevailing in free India in which citizens are ostensibly the sovereign masters. It may be hard to believe, but is true, that British rulers in their heyday were far more solicitous about attending to the concerns of the people than their Indian counterparts are today. The training manual exhorted every official to remember there was a human being behind every plough and piece of paper reaching them, and to halt in interior villages at least for 10 days in a month to redress grievances on the spot.

Replies were sent promptly, even the Viceroy signing himself as "I am, Sir, Your most obedient and humble servant"! The first thing free India's rulers did was to drop this (to them) abhorrent usage. The role has now been reversed with the citizens being made the most obedient and humble servants of Ministers and officials!

B. S. Raghavan

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