commentary

S R Sankaran: In Memoriam
E A S Sarma

S R Sankaran, the retired IAS officer, who died on 7 October was an extraordinary person who directly touched the lives of perhaps tens of thousands of people. As a civil servant he was deeply involved over the decades in the abolition of bonded labour and empowerment of the adivasis of Andhra Pradesh. He was also chief secretary of Tripura and at the centre he was involved with some major policy issues such as the nationalisation of coal in the 1970s. Position and power did not matter to Sankaran, the rights of the poor did. Post retirement, Sankaran remained as active as before: he was involved with a number of peoples organisations, he headed a committee of concerned citizens to mediate between the government and the Naxalites in Andhra Pradesh, he worked with safai karmacharis to abolish this antediluvian practice and he was generally concerned with the threat to democratic rights. Two tributes.

E A S Sarma (eassarma@gmail.com) is a former secretary to the Government of India.

erukalathur Ramanathan Sankaran will remain a legend to be remembered by the civil servants in the country, as well as by the people of Andhra Pradesh. Some of us closely associated with him during the last four decades are yet to reconcile ourselves to his passing. During the 30-odd years that he served the state and the centre as a civil servant in various capacities, Sankarans home offered an open shelter to anyone in need of help and solace. He transcended the rigid barriers of the civil services to reach out to the needy, the oppressed and the deprived. His uprightness, sincerity and compassion for the poor disarmed politicians, inspired young civil servants and provided hope and succour to millions of voiceless people. He was a civil servant with a difference. More than that, he was a self-effacing human being par excellence. On 7 October, as soon as news of his demise spread and on the next day, when his cremation took place, thousands of people thronged his residence and then the crematorium nearby, to see him and pay respect to him. Among them were many individuals, dalits, their families and their associates to whom Sankaran provided comfort and support when needed. There were safai karmacharis for whose cause he devoted a significant part of his later years. There were many adivasis for whom he always remained a father figure. There were several handicapped persons for whom Sankaran was the abiding source of hope and help. He brought up many an orphan, helped him or her to progress in life and become self-reliant. As a comparatively junior officer in Andhra pradesh, I always wondered how Sankaran could cut through the bureaucratic jungle of rules and regulations to come to the help of any young colleague trying to provide relief to a needy person or serve the larger public interest. He was a beacon of hope and a source of inspiration for youngsters like me.

When I was the district collector of Medak during the 1980s, Sankaran inspired me and some of my colleagues to conduct a camp for agricultural workers to make them aware of their rights and responsibilities under the various laws, so as to enable them to resist bonded labour, untouchability, usurious moneylending and other such practices. I still remember Sankaran, who was then secretary (social welfare) in the government of Andhra Pradesh, un ostentatiously mixing with the agricultural workers, sharing food with them and sleeping on the floor along with them, so as to be able to listen to their concerns and share their experiences first hand, more as a friend than as a senior officer of the state government. The example he set to all of us at the camp transformed each one of us into a Sankaran. What followed from the Medak camp was truly a miracle. For the first time in the state, we could document a fairly comprehensive register of villagewise instances of bondage in at least one district, Medak. We secured the release of several agricultural workers from bondage and arranged their rehabilitation by providing them with assistance. Cases were filed against landlords who were found responsible for pushing the workers into forced bondage. In some instances, cases were filed against those who practised untouchability. By organising the agricultural workers, it became possible for the administration to enforce the minimum wage laws effectively. The camp had a positive impact on the morale of the agricultural workers all around.

Tribal Welfare
Sankarans contribution to governance in the tribal areas of the state was pheno menal. It was during Sankarans term as principal secretary (social welfare) that we introduced the single line administration in the tribal areas. The Integrated Tribal Development Agencies (ITDAs) became the nerve centres of administration in their respective areas. They were empowered sufficiently to be able to effectively address the problems of the adivasis. Teachers Training Institutes were set up to groom the tribals as teachers to provide an impetus to education. The powers available under

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the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution were invoked to enforce maximum reservation for the tribals in appointments to the posts of teachers, as workers in the Girijan Cooperative Corporation and in a few other departments operating in the tribal areas of the state. A series of development measures that covered education, health, agriculture, animal husbandry and so on were initiated. Despite their shortcomings, the ITDAs in AP stand out today as a fairly good model of tribal administration at the national level. Sankarans commitment and personal involvement in all this acted as the single most important motivational factor to energise the admini stration in the tribal areas. When Sankaran, along with a few junior colleagues, was kidnapped by the Peoples War Group in the forest areas of East Godavari district in 1987, the incident left a lasting impression on his psyche. While he understood the concerns of the adivasis better than many others, he was not in favour of any kind of violence, whether it was committed by an extremist group, apparently espousing the cause of the adivasis, or by the State itself, ostensibly in the name of maintaining law and order. Perhaps this was at the back of his mind

after his retirement from the government, when he undertook the daunting but frustrating responsibility of leading a serious dialogue between the government and the Maoists during 1997-2002. He took part in the negotiation process in a highly assiduous and constructive manner, unmindful of his deteriorating health. The series of reports released on this dialogue by the Com mittee of Concerned Citizens provide invaluable insights into the problems of the adivasis and the respective roles played by the state agencies and the Maoists in the ongoing struggle in the tribal areas. These reports clearly show the relentless efforts made by Sankaran to resolve the deadlock. Whatever be the reasons, the outcome of the dialogue seemed to weigh heavily on Sankarans mind till his demise.

Chief Secretary of Tripura

Before the East Godavari incident, Sankaran had been chosen to head the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration at Mussoorie. He was considered an ideal role model for the young civil servant trainees at the Academy. However, after the East Godavari incident, Sankaran became controversial overnight in the

eyes of the rulers at Delhi. His assignment was abruptly cancelled. When I visited Tripura last year, I met several residents there recalling Sankarans stint as chief secretary of the state in the 1980s. If Sankaran had remained a bachelor with very few belongings throughout his life, so was Nripen Chakraborty, Tripuras well-remembered chief minister, whose lifestyle was equally simple and spartan. Sankaran once narrated to me how Nripen Chakraborty preferred to spend a night sleeping on an uncovered wooden bench in the verandah of a ramshackle single-room rest house in a remote part of the state, so as not to disturb Sankaran who had already gone to sleep by then. Sankarans knowledge of Tripura and its problems was as comprehensive as his knowledge of Andhra Pradesh. He was instrumental in resettling many daily wage construction workers in the southern part of the erstwhile Bihar, when he found that they had been forcibly transported to Tripura by unethical contractors and forced to work at low wages, under sub human conditions. When Mohan Kumaramangalam was minister in charge of mines in the early 1970s, Sankaran assisted him in pushing

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through the nationalisation of the coal industry, which ultimately paved the way for introducing scientific practices in mining and bringing about a sea change in the working conditions of the coal miners. I had the benefit of working closely with Sankaran on an expert group constituted by the Planning Commission a couple of years ago on Development Challenges in the Extremist Affected Areas. The final report of the expert group carried Sankarans imprint. The recommendations contained in the report have farreaching implications for governance, not only for the extremist affected areas but also for the rest of the country. The central government is yet to act on the findings of the Expert Group.

Sankaran was deeply concerned at the diminishing space for democratic and human rights in the country. On more than one occasion, he voiced his distress at this emerging trend.

Ignored by the Government

Soon after the Congress government came to power in Andhra Pradesh, in a letter dated 18 August 2005, I proposed to the then chief minister a detailed action programme for enforcing the constitutional rights of the adivasis and for promoting their well being. In that letter, I suggested that the state government should take inputs from Sankaran on what I had proposed, as he was located conveniently in Hyderabad not far from the State

secretariat. I grossly underestimated the distance that existed in reality between Sankaran and the secretariat. The state government did not find much merit in what I said then. It did not care to seek inputs from Sankaran. I consider it an irreparable loss for the adivasis of Andhra Pradesh. Ironically, the same government accorded state honours to embellish Sankarans final journey. Sankaran himself would have disliked any such ritual! I hope that Sankarans ideas will shape the civil services of this country for a long time to come. I hope his vision will one day influence the minds of the rulers at Hyderabad and Delhi. For us, Sankaran will always remain alive.

An Extraordinary Public Servant

K Subramanian

R Sankaran was no ordinary person though he always wished to remain one. In his position and with his deep involvement in public affairs, especially those concerning rural poverty, tribal welfare and the uplift of weaker sections, it was an achievement for this extraordinary person to remain ordinary. He died on 7 October in his small apartment in Amrutha Hills, Hyderabad. He died in the same private way in which he had led his life while in service and, later, after retirement. What was extraordinary about this ordinary man? It is true that he had held several senior posts in the state and central governments and had also risen in the hierarchy. It is equally true that he was an officer of the Indian Administrative Service. Truth to tell, among most officers of that category whom I have come across, there was none who was less bothered about the IAS badge than SR. For him, the opportunities offered by the service were more important than personal gains or status. And he did not hesitate to use them to achieve his objectives. It was not
K Subramanian (subrabhama@gmail.com) retired from the Union Ministry of Finance.

an easy journey and not many may be aware of the trials and tribulations he had to face.

Simplicity
SR was given to the utmost simplicity and lived with the barest minimum in life. When he came to Delhi in the early 1970s to take up the position of special assistant to Mohan Kumaramangalam (MK) who was the then union steel minister, he landed in our flat. His worldly possessions consisted of one attach case with a broken latch and a small box which contained his clothes. He used to buy books and give them away to friends after reading them. It was later in life, after retirement, that he started collecting books. His books and document collections in his apartment were always in a shambles! He was embarrassed by any show of ostentation and had the utmost disdain for consumerism. Even so, he did not wear his values on his sleeves and make his friends uneasy about their lifestyles. He could mingle with them with ease without being affected by their living styles. This is perhaps detachment in the truest sense. In his early days in North Block in the finance ministry, he was spotted as the

only officer going about in winter in a khadi bush shirt, while all of us used to shiver in our tweed coats. He was known to say that he would change over to woollens only after the poor in our country were provided with warm clothing. (He did change in later years with age and illness getting the better of him!) Nobody who had visited his apartment in Hyderabad would ever know, unless told by others, that he was a retired secretary to the Government of India. Many members of that tribe live in palatial bungalows or gated luxury condos in Noida or Gurgaon. Until a year prior to his retirement, SR did not have any place of his own where he could lead a retired life. Some of his friends compelled him to sign on a few documents and arranged for the ownership of the apartment and also for financing, through withdrawal from his own provident fund! SRs commitment to the causes of the poor and downtrodden was known from the earliest days in service. In Nellore where he was collector for two terms, the people continue to worship him. In Tripura where he was chief secretary for nearly six years, he became a legend. Along with Nripen Chakraborty as chief minister he worked for a form of humane socialism which would lift the tribal people to higher levels of welfare. Until SR went there, there was not one senior officer, forget a chief secretary, who had ever v isited the tribal people in their dwellings

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