October 2014
The Dirty Truth about Sanitation
Unless you have a blocked nose, I strongly suggest that you do not drive from Bhubaneshwar the capital of Orissa, to Kandamahal, a remote tribal district, particularly in the evenings. At twilight, when you begin to wind into the interior, you are greeted with the sight of the behinds of the entire population squatting on the roadside, faces turned away and shitting. We quickly wound up the windows and switched on the air-conditioning, but nothing could stop the stench of human excrement. Read more »
A Swachch Transfer Abhiyan – solving the ultimate sanitation problem
I had concluded my blog of two weeks back by wondering how we could get ministers and bureaucrats to focus on performing ‘thick accountability’ tasks of service delivery better. From Lant Pritchett’s musings, it is clear that public servants in India are more interested in either (a) political meddling in the administration and (b) routinisation of critical discretionary tasks. Let us focus on the political meddling part, something that ministers, MLAs, Ministers and their collaborators love to do. Read more »
Whispers Turning Louder
It is easy to presume that my transfer out of the Food and Civil Supplies Department was due to my uncivil behaviour in not accommodating my Minister’s reasonable request for a few transfers of his choice. However, that was not the case; moving me into the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms to handle the responsibility of postings and transfers of senior government officers was as random a decision as any other in the government.
The Wealth and Family Hellfare Department
After my brief tenure of twenty eight days in the Department of Personnel, where I was totally at sea as I could not remember people’s castes, I was transferred to the Department of Health and Family Welfare as a Deputy Secretary. My heart sank as I saw my little room. There was construction going on upstairs and the contractor had not received his payment in time. That meant that he had been at the job for two years. He had just cast the ceiling of the next floor and generously cured it with water.
Transparency in Transfers – an Utopian Dream?
‘Can I meet with you?’ said the cheery voice on the inter-com. Read more »