Category: My Blog

Predecessor successor syndrome in the IAS

Very unfortunately, many of my innovations that have been transformational in scope and depth have not been continued by my successors. At the Harvard Kennedy School, I was taught by Mr.Mark Moore, that for am innovation to succeed, the following three conditions title the “Strategic triangle” have to be satisfied:

1. Is it administratively and operationally possible? (The authorizing environment)
2. Is it politically and legally possible? (Legitimacy)
3. Is the purpose publicly valuable? ( The public value proposition)

But during the concluding class of Mr.Mark Moore, I proved to him by  examples how an innovation is only as good as the successor. Even if the above three conditions are fully satisfied, still the innovation will not succeed, if the successor does not want it to..

Let me illustrate this… I succeeded Mr.Mangat Ram Sharma IAS as the District Collector of Krishnagiri in June 2006. As is the ‘dictum’ the ‘system’, meaning your PA, your officers etc will not say anything good or bad about your predecessor, till they kind of deduce from your behavior or words as to how you are disposed to your predecessor. They will then act accordingly. I am sure this is the experience of many a leader.

So, the ’system” didn’t tell me anything about the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ that my predecessor had done. But I was seeing a lot of english speaking young farmers who came to my first Monday grievance day in large numbers, who were saying what my predecessor had done for them and how it was now stuck. I could easily have ignored the petitions and the pleas of the youngsters, saying whatever my predecessor had done was bad, and only i could do any good, as is the wont in our Indian bureaucracy. But I called these boys separately for a meeting, and then realized that Mr.Mangat Ram Sharma had indeed done a great thing with these boys. He had made three clusters of rose cultivating farmers in Bairamangalam, Thally and Hosur, had got subsidy sanctioned from the Small Farmers Agricultural Consortium, Government of India, had tied up with the nationalized banks for loans etc for 1008 farmers who were desirous of putting up greenhouses for rose cultivation, including micro irrigation. So, then what was the problem? The problem was that not one rupee had been released as loan to any of the farmers against the subsidy sanctioned!

Naturally I was aghast to say the least! I went after the bankers and the rest is history! Today most of the farmers are income tax payers! Since 2008, come an Onam, they will come to my home in Chennai in a lorry full of flowers worth lakhs of rupees, against my plea that I require flowers worth only Rs.1000/- which in any case I would be purchasing from the Koyembedu market as I have always done since I landed at Chennai…

M worldview on this is that if you look at hotspots of the world ( I mean where conflicts are rife), one can always discern a pattern of subjugation of the girl child and the woman; the chances of her dreams of her flowering into womanhood with an equal chance to be part of society, and as an equal partner to a man when she marries looks remote…This pattern is universal…..it exists in India too, wherever the general level of standard of living is below par, there one can assume that the girl child and women are subjugated.

I dream of a society, where every girl child can not only achieve her dreams but also flower into a woman who can hope to live in harmony and dignity within the family, as an equal partner to her husband and be recognised for her contributions to societal well being. This can happen only if she is given the chance to pursue her dreams of completing schooling, completing college and getting a job, which will make her feel confident and strong. She should think of marrying only after she attains economic independence.

A series of policy approaches will enable dignity and position for women in our society

1. Age bar for being considered as a child should be raised to 18 years which is unfortunately 14 years in the Child Labour Act
2. No child, boy or girl shall be left out of school or allowed to drop out under any circumstance. The state shall ensure this through mechanisms that I have illustrated in my “out of school children tracking” intervention in Krishnagiri district, which enabled about 10,000 children to be brought back to school and retained.
3. Our marriage law should be amended to raise the minimum age for marriage of a girl from the present 18 years to 21 years.
4. Advocacy initiatives at the family level should be intensified to enlighten the family members of the importance of girls education.

All these and the yeoman services of veterans and inspirations in the field of women’s empowerment like Vandana Shiva, Malala, Kulandei Francis etc will one day catapult India as the first Country to have absolute equality between men and women. Boys and men should be brought up such that every girl or woman would feel safe in his company or safe in the company of men.

On 30.08.2015, when Mr.Lalu Prasad Yadav, spoke about the need to create Smart Villages as against Smart Cities, some memories of my work came flooding in. When I was District Collector Sivaganga in 2003 for a short stint of about 8 months, I started a campaign called 100% Village. If any Village Panchayat achieved 100% in 8 out of the 10 items of social change I had delineated, then that village would be nominated as a “100% Village Panchayat”. Obviously the question that arose was, as to what would be the incentives for the Panchayat President and others in Government to take up such a cause. Other than giving priority to such villages while taking up developmental projects and making them dream that these villages will be trendsetters for India, I had no other incentives to give!

The ten items were:

1. That 100% of children would go to school; dropouts from any standard would be reenrolled and monitored.

2. That every child would be immunized for all vaccine preventable diseases

3. That every home had a modern toilet, which will be used by every household member, and personal hygiene would be top priority in every family

4. That everybody in the Village Panchayat would be made literate

5. That every woman in the Village Panchayat would be part of a Self Help Group

6. That every deserving family was issued with a community certificate

7. That every family was issued with a bank account compulsorily

8. That every deserving villager was brought under the ambit of social pensions like OAP/WP/PCP

9. That every landholder was given a title to his/her house site or land

10. That every delivery in the village would be conducted at hospitals

One thought I always had and have is that, while we have a Directorate of Town and Country Planning to take care of our towns and municipalities, we haven’t extended the concept of physical planning to our Village Panchayat, so much so that these villages are haphazard and disorderly, from the point of view of providing common services, and also from the point of view of aesthetics, obviously because there is not much revenue that is forthcoming.

I could implement the first ideal when I was District Collector Krishnagiri in 2006-2009 through the www.baack2school.in initiative and the ideal of livelihoods creation was demonstrated through the creation of the rural BPO FOSTeRA

When Dr.Kalam visited our Rural BPO FOSTeRA (Fostering Technologies in Rural Areas), India’s first rural BPO, I had the audacity to propound my concept of PUORA (Providing Urban Opportunities in Rural Areas) to Dr.Kalam. This thought was ignited by Dr.Kalam’s as PURA concept (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas). Dr.Kalam being the great man he was, immediately approved of the idea.

I am of the firm opinion that in the life cycle of any product, a few processes can be outsourced to villages. For e.g. Titan watches are assembled and Tanishq jewelryvillage boys and girls in Krishnagiri district, through a partnership with MYRADA, a renowned NGO. When boys and girls start earning, the economy will grow and there will be demand for better services and natural growth will happen, and most importantly, migration to our already congested cities will slow down. Yes, I think it is time to think about Smart Villages!

Poverty line Vs. Prosperity line

As far as a I am concerned, poverty is a negative construct and prosperity is a positive one. Rather than taking somebody above poverty line with the risk of him falling back below that line, isn’t it a better idea to start thinking about establishing a prosperity line for our Countrymen? Shouldn’t we as planners for a great future for India think about what are the metrics that we have to ensure as Government to enable every citizen to aspire big and reach his/her potential? Is reaching food through our PDS system the bare minimum for our citizens to come out of poverty? It is this warped mentality that recently made the planning commission decide that an Indian can manage a day on Rs.32.00!

It is all good for highly earning bureaucrats and politicians to look down upon our poor as somebody whom we can do without or who can marginalized to the edges of society with this feudal mentality. But it does no good to our high-sounding slogans and standing among the comity of nations. If the Europeans, Americans and our South East Asian neighbors had thought like that, they too would have ended up like us: a perpetually developing country, with no timeline to reach excellence! But they realized the innate potential of every human being to develop and reach his/her potential given a proper circumstance. It is this circumstance and whatever it takes that we should quantify and designate as the prosperity line. It is like the escape velocity; once that velocity is reached the stars are the limit!

According to me, a good education, good personal hygiene, good environmental sanitation and livelihoods for parents will create a constructive atmosphere at home conduce to the enablement of talents to bloom.