Odyssey of an Indian Bureaucrat

Contents

Author’s note

Introduction

Origin and social background

Our joint family

Economic distress, flight from Khulna, Bengal famine and our life at Puri

Back to Calcutta and communal riot victim

Departure for Benaras—survival at stake

Back to Calcutta—India achieves independence

Service at Benaras

Resumption of college education in Calcutta and family losses

Entrance to Civil Service—Loss of mother

Beginning of Civil Service

Training in service and attitude of seniors

Election experience and first posting

Transfers and first sub-division

Second and third subdivision—political confrontation

Political turmoil in West Bengall—more transfers

Elevation to Indian Administrative Service

Service at Secretariat

Service at different departments—a diverse experience

Fate of training

A few words about my family

END NOTES

Dedicated to all who have inspired me in writing

Author’s note

Bill Clinton once said everyone should leave an account of his roots and feelings for the posterity. I also subscribe to this view. Induced by this view I have ventured to describe comprehensively my feelings and my roots I have developed during the entire span of life so far. I shall deem it a fortune if my description appeals to any one. I express my heartfelt thanks to my son-in-law Debasis Baner-jee, who in spite of his preoccupation devoted attentively to the typing work of the manuscript. I also thank my sons—Sudipto and Anindya living in USA to take steps to secure publication of the book. Lastly I sincerely thank Jennifer, my younger daughter-in-law to help me in writing out the manuscript by supply of stationary and ideas.

Nripati Ghoshal Calcutta India January 2005

Introduction

When I retired from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in 1991, my colleagues and friends urged to me to leave behind an account of my wider experience acquired before and after I joined the civil service. I have lived through the most crucial period of Indian history. I have had my schooling when India was under the British Raj. I have seen the upsurge of nationalism in the 1942 Quit India movement, which shook the foundation of British occupation of India. I have seen the greatest man-made famine of 1943 in Bengal when hapless millions died without any murmur or protest. I have seen the worst communal riots sweeping through many parts of India in 1946 and 1947 involving colossal loss of lives, which was engineered by some self-seekers to push forward the claim of Pakistan. I have seen strife torn truncated India emerging independent in 1947, when the war ravaged and exhausted British Raj quickly departed bestowing a partition, that brought about the largest cross migration of people ever conceived in history and worst exhibition of communal frenzy in its trail. Independent India was born with great expectation but greedy politicians in an organized attempt to loot the loaves and fishes of power, material benefits of power, destroyed the expectations soon.

As a first-generation civil servant I have observed from the inside how the bureaucracy assisted the politician to grab power and money as much as possible and how it itself was converted into a co-sharer in that process. Thus the constitutionally protected civil servant abandoned his real role and became a pliant political servant. Corruption swallowed every nook and corner of the society. Honesty and integrity of a civil servant were frowned upon and often invited penal transfers. When I left the civil service after 36 years of service, I found it totally demoralized. All politicians and bureaucrats professed by public service, vowed to serve the people and the country but ended up self-serving. In the following chapters of the book I have presented carefully an insider’s knowledge of what I have seen, what I have experienced during the last 60 years of fateful history of India. It is a faithful account abounding with facts intended for those who want to have an insider glimpse of how the administration operates in India—a living history. It is autobiographical in character but the focus is on civil service, politician-bureaucrat nexus, how public service is neglected and how public interest suffers in India. An attempt is there to explain why India is still at the bottom of development despite execution of 10 five-year plans. I have tried to present the contemporary social and economic background of the relevant period. A historical background of places of interest such as Puri and Benares, and India’s national struggle for emancipation is mentioned to sustain the interest of prospective readers. India boasts of the largest functional democracy in the world but the ground reality speaks otherwise. This I have demonstrated in this book from my firsthand knowledge and life experience.

1

Origin and social background

In 1933 I was born in Calcutta in a lower middle class Bengali family. My parents belonged to Khulna district now in Bangladesh. My forefathers came to Calcutta in 1896 and set up a residence near the famous Kali temple at Kalighat in Calcutta. That residence was wound up in 1936 when they left Calcutta, lock stock and barrel, returned to our native village, Ajagarha in Khulna district and settled down. I have heard that my father’s grandfather was a great tantrick by cult and was the spiritual preceptor of one of the group of worshippers of Kali temple. He once performed a ritual for his disciple to secure recovery of one of his ailing sons. When he was successful in achieving his objective, his grateful disciple offered him lots of land and money. The land was paddy land with no value or importance at that time but now is highly valuable. Our said ancestor accepted a great deal of money instead of land and invested it in construction of a new building located on a sprawling landscape at the outskirts of the village. It was a splendid building situated on a vast expanse of land, with trees, tanks, grasslands. I was told that our ancestors had considerable quantum of agricultural land. I have seen ripe yellow paddy harvested from that land brought to our village home by carts, driven by our own bullocks and laborers, piled up on freshly dung coated court yard and then threshed. The paddy was winnowed, sifted and the grains were carefully stored in the barns. There was a peculiar custom in our ancestral home which even today I do not understand, that paddy grains were brought to the door of the barns, located at top by the servants, where they were collected by the women folk of the house and stored inside. None other than the house women could handle the grains inside the barn. I often saw my mother doing this job.

Our village home had three water tanks and one of them was earmarked as drinking water pond for the villagers. Bathing or washing clothes or any other activity of such nature was strictly forbidden in this tank. I still remember a vivid scene that once one of my uncles took a bath in this pond in violation of the standing inhibition and he was beaten black and blue by my grandfather in front of all of the youngsters. It was said that my grandfather deliberately inflicted the punishment to admonish others so that others refrain from such actions in future. A tank with fresh water dedicated to the use of villagers was held in high esteem and any attempt to dirty it was absolutely frowned upon.

Being the eldest individual in the joint family, my grandfather headed it and his decisions and directions were all commands to abide by and were beyond question. He was the pater familia, always respected, and obeyed. The joint family had a large number of people of all ages tied by a bond of kinship lived under one umbrella sharing, sorrows, sufferings and pains in common. On the surface the family life was peaceful owing to prevailing customs and traditions but an under current of resentment, mental distrust, jealousy swept through, disturbing the peace and sometimes fracturing the relationship. Joint families were in oneway insurers against distress and misfortune, providing economic safety to its members but in other way stifled the creative instinct of its members, scuttled individual initiatives pushing all and sundry in one identical mould. Because of its intrinsic contradictions and assailed by changing extraneous circumstances, resulted in the inevitable mobility of people in search of better pastures for livelihood. The joint family system eventually collapsed, yielding place to a new alignment of nuclear family, single parent family.

In my childhood I have witnessed both communal amity and accord in the rural society. The virus of communalism generating mutual hatred between Hindus and Muslims did not manifest itself in any ominous form. Both the communities lived side by side maintaining cordial relationship and friendship between Hindus and Muslims was a common feature. Both the communities took part joyously and gladly in each other’s festivals betraying no animosity. A liberal attitude pervaded the whole atmosphere, despite both the communities maintaining their individual identities. In our village home separate hookahs were kept for Muslims, low caste Hindus and upper caste Hindus. Every one was consciously aware of his entitlements and there was no attempt of encroachment; thus the scope of social conflict was eliminated. Caste distinctions persisted and widely respected without any bitterness. This is mostly attributable to the general belief that the doctrine of karma in the previous generation determines one’s situation and position in the present life. This preordained destiny is inescapable and it is futile to rue for it. Better do good work in this life, so that in the next life one may enjoy better results with improved social and economic status. Perhaps dependence on this doctrine of karma and luck bred a sense of satisfaction and fatalism that induced every body to reconcile with his existing status and not to grumble over it. Although Hindus and Muslims maintained their separate identities amicably, the landed gentry of the communities were very much united when the time of oppressing their subjects came. I found my grandfather with his Muslim counterpart setting on the same plans unthinkable on other deliberating occasions, how to set fire to the houses of recalcitrant subjects, how to extract forcibly money from them, how to punish them, how to eject them from their lawful possession of land and how to deprive them of their livelihood by collective refusal to employ them. Self-interest obliterated the barrier of communalism.

2

Our joint family

Ours was a conservative, traditional rural agricultural family. From an urban perspective, our family was lower middle class, but judged by rural standards we were somewhat prosperous since the family could depend on the produce from our land, pond, and cows for annual maintenance. Hardly any cash was necessary for buying these articles of bare sustenance. True, necessities for cash could not be altogether dispensed with and it was necessary for procurement of essential household articles like utensils, dresses, linen, and conveyance, and to defray educational expenses. As our village home was quite near the district town, our family members worked in the offices in the district town, had their education in the local college after completion of their matriculation from the village school. Consequently they operated mostly from the village home. This also reduced the demand for hard cash and consequently the necessity for moving out; spreading out for more improved, and sophisticated living in the urban scenario. At this time the general societal tendency was to preserve one’s root link with the ancestral village of origin despite urban living. So despite the urge to drift away, the earning members of our family had to stay put in the family enclave in the village.

Our family was mixture of strange contrasts. On one hand there was a strong bondage with honesty, righteousness, truth and all essential values of a high quality-life. Against this ran the trend of just the opposite: dishonesty, tendency to swindle, cheat, fondness for untruth and other despicable trends. My grand father was so much religious minded and a stickler for truth and honesty that he resigned his job as a village Kanungo when he was offered a bribe of 500 rupees in early twenties of last century to shift the dividing ridge between two plots of land during the settlement operation conducted by Government. His action was looked down upon by some of our relations and vehemently criticized. To give up a permanent government job fetching a decent salary was quite ridiculous at that time, indication of lunatic response and that too on the pretext of bribe attracting potential of the job. In contrast, his younger brother, who wielded much authority over the family for his earning potential, minted a fortune while working as a jailor in Alipur Central Jail. But the wonder of wonders is that whatever he earned lawfully or unlawfully was spent for the family, first for running the Calcutta house and the surplus if any, was remitted to the village for acquisition of immovable assets. Family was the superior entity, its’ well being played uppermost in everyone’s mind, no matter whether he or she liked it or not. Expropriation of ones own income for himself or for his wife and children was unthinkable largely, thanks to the umbrella of joint family.

Joint family demanded subservience, unquestioned obedience to the dictates of the elderly, mute tolerance of the discrimination between greater earner and less earner, partiality of the elders towards one who’s earning was higher, whose monetary contribution was greater. Wives of those earning less were subject to physical abuses, insults, disgraceful dealings, amorous overtures, and sexual harassments, just to cite some. Widows living in a joint family were the most sexually exploited lot, apart from doing all sorts of disdainful jobs. They had no alternative to count on for their livelihood and this helplessness was fully exploited. Our joint family with its excessive proliferation was no exception.

My mother was a victim of joint family tyranny. She was married to my father when she was thirteen. She told me that she was more developed physically than her age suggested. She read up to class five in the local village school. Her father induced by her stepmother, anxiously got her married. Marriage was the ultimate destiny of a girl those days. When a girl was married off to a man, irrespective of his qualification, physical strength, appearance and financial ability, her parents heaved a sigh of relief, as if the mundane assigned duty was finished. The unfortunate girl was left to fend for herself without any idea of what was in store for her, what situation, congenial or adverse, she would have to face in future, how she would respond to the vicissitudes of fortune, to the tortuous path of life. She was in the dark about her new environment, how to adapt herself to her new surroundings, uprooted from the familiar one and transported to an unknown, unchartered one with no support behind. If she confronted difficulty in adjusting to her new surroundings, her parents and relations avoided responsibility by squarely resting the blame on her fortune and luck. The unfortunate girl like a dumb beast of burden accepted her new situation as pre-ordained and resigned to her fate. If any one fought back or showed the symptoms of fighting back, tried to resist the wheel of tyranny unleashed mostly by elderly womenfolk like mother-in-law, she was crushed by systematic torture, physical abuse, oppression, deprivation of food and barely subsisting items, even she was turned out of house in isolated hours of night. All these were done in a planned and calculated manner to demolish her determination and to compel her to fall in line. This is exactly what befell my mother as she was of independent spirit and refused to succumb under all of the pressures and tortures. The whole family situation in our village home was so much revolting to her that my father reluctantly left his ancestral home and moved to the district town, his professional work also called for a change. My mother was the daughter of a comparatively rich man who could have afforded her a higher education but simply did not do. Even then by her own efforts she introduced herself to all renowned authors of those days and herself read many books, articles from the Bengali magazines that thronged into our village home first and afterwards in our town house at Khulna. She was a strict disciplinarian and did not brook any disinclination to do one’s duty, to avoid responsibility. How to make her sons rise in life, to attain prosperity devoid of poverty and want, was always obsessing her, and was her foremost priority goading her. She was even prepared to sacrifice all her personal comforts to ensure proper education, fixation of proper goals, to strive hard for success for her sons. I have no hesitation to admit that whatever I have achieved in life, I owe it to her. I can still see my mother in my mind’s eye, sitting in front of our reading room with a stick in hand, mindless of the hours of waiting, to make us not to sleep during reading or working on math. We all grew up under her constant watch. She did not brook any deviation from the normal routine, which she thought would stimulate character building. She was herself a voracious reader of books of all description and urged us to follow the footsteps of characters from epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata. She exhorted us to be honest, sincere, truthful and serious in our approach to various problems of life, not to be swayed away by chances of some quick gain or cheap popularity. It was at her instances that I was admitted to a regular school in 1940, again in 1944 and could continue my college education after 1946 despite several snaps in the continuity. She faced all problems of life emanating from the financial stringency and poverty befalling us after we left our ancestral home, boldly and squarely and eventually paid for it pathetically. When I consider her life with hindsight I feel she led a bitter domestic life and her relationship with my father was not cordial to any desirable extent. Crushing poverty and my fathers’ inability to earn a good income to assure a decent life contributed to this bitterness. My mother was a good housewife and unlike her contemporaries had a taste of knowledge of what a decent living stood for. She had to fight for every inch of survival and bear the pains and anguishes of existence without support of her husband or of anybody else. Our relations, in fact regaled at her sufferings as they thought that she was being punished for her independent spirit. Today I do feel some sad stories were also hidden carefully in her mind. In Calcutta in 1946/47 I often accompanied her to her visit to an ailing schoolteacher. I found them talking to each other endearingly. This gentleman was a man of learning as I could gather from his conversation with me. My mother gradually confided to me that when she was a school student in her native village that gentleman was a college student living at one of the village homes. They were known to each other and my mother’s demeanor at such a distant date convinced me that she had definitely a predilection for him. Their relationship could not be translated into a permanent one because of social obstacles. Today I do feel that my mother might have been hustled off to an unwanted marriage when her parents got a scent of any undercurrent of what might have been going on. Today breathing the air of liberated atmosphere, we are living in, I do feel if my mother’s secret desire fructified, perhaps her life might have taken a different course and her end might not have been as sad as it had happened.

My father was the eldest son of the family. Being the eldest son of a conservative agricultural family he received perhaps greater attention, affection and care of elders than what might have been proper. He knew many kinds of works, like ploughing, cattle keeping, cottage repair, painting, and carpentry and was attached to games like dice, card-playing, chess, which consumed a lot of his time. He was a little bit idle by nature, not keen about any particular kind of work. He was a fatalist and often used to say one must go by the results of his Karma and howsoever-frantically one may try he cannot out do or escape the results of his Karma (Karmafal). But he had one great quality, which I admire greatly and that was his profound love for truth and honesty. No amount of temptation or allurement could detract him from the path of honesty, path of truth; spirit of contentment was also one of his qualifications though condemned by us very often. He accepted things or situations as they came and developed, without any attempt to undo them. Whenever he had to do anything to the contrary after being goaded by my mother, fighting ensued, family tranquility was disturbed and lost. My father was a BA, LLB in the early part of 20th Century and settled in Khulna. At that time law was a lucrative profession ensuring rapid rise and good income. Success in legal profession depends upon one’s ability to distort facts, twist evidence, extract favorable statements by coaxing, applying hook or crook methods, cultivation of dishonesty, nurturing and nourishing falsehood, pretending untruth as truth. That was against the principle of my father. Attachment to truth and to truth alone cannot make one an income-gathering lawyer surrounded by a good clientele, though it may make one a man of integrity well respected by others in society. In fact this was what occurred in my father’s case. He was widely known, respected and praised in the district town of Khulna. He cultivated friendship and had playing relationship with the local district higher officials, which was a matter of great prestige during the British Raj. But this did not alleviate his financial stringency, eliminate the poverty constantly stalking him, and did not restore the lost and quickly vanishing domestic peace. My uncles were then working in local DM’s offices and were regularly earning income. They were comparatively financially affluent but acted as thorns on our poverty stricken body. My elder brother and I were studying in local government school free of cost by virtue of our general proficiency during 1941 to 1943. This privilege was awarded to us in consideration of our merit and father’s pecuniary inability to bear school cost. Our uncles secretly informed by anonymous letters the school authority that my father was a rich pleader of the town and did not deserve this benefit. Fortunately for us the Headmaster of the school knew my father very well and rejected the anonymous letters, otherwise our school education would have come to a halt. Our uncles were jealous of our performances in school and could not stand our better prospects with good education when their own children were faltering. They were so much engrossed in earning money illegally that they rarely found time to devote to their children. At the same time their wives were illiterate mostly unlike my mother and failed to create an environment in their homes conducive to the mental growth of their children. Not that my father did not get any growth opportunity during his lifetime. Once after his graduation he successfully obtained a good appointment in a Calcutta firm and started working there. But his uncle was working in the same firm in an inferior position and as he was not a B.A he had no chance to climb up to my father’s level. He felt it was beneath his dignity of work at that junior level when my father was holding a senior level post. He threatened to resign from his position and return to his ancestral home. This episode evoked a lot of family turmoil and to save the situation my father left the job and studied law to pursue the legal profession, here he was an unsuccessful starter for his scruples and persistent refusal to align with falsehood and lying. In the forties of the twentieth century certain events like Bengal famine and World War II occurred and rendered the whole social condition topsy-turvy. They shattered my father’s faith in his conviction of truth and honesty and demonstrated that the beliefs he stuck to with