My husband is a Central Government Servant. Like hundreds of thousands of Sarkari Naukars classified into ‘Bureaucrats’, ‘clerks’, ‘Babus’, ‘Red Tapists’ etcetera etcetera, he too works for a small organisation within the vagaries of higher power in the Ministry of Finance.
Every three years, Panga, as he is fondly called, looks at the list of officials on the office notice board, slotted for transfer after completion of their tenure in a respective city, town or some unheard of rural district. Sometimes he does get transferred, sometimes he does not; depends on the boss and his opinion of my husband’s indispensability. To add to the complexity, the boss himself is transferable and so is his boss and so is the boss of the boss of the boss and ………….the hierarchy, I hear goes right up to the Hon’ble Minister himself. And his own transfer and job, as we all know are very much dependant on voters like you and me every five years and then some complex political wrangling.
The entire family waits along with Panga with bated breath on the day the transfer orders are issued for Group ‘C’ officials, the category to which he belongs. That decides whether the house / Government quarters in which we reside is to get a fresh coat of paint or whether we should apply for the three year old child’s Transfer Certificate from School.
Like thousands and thousands of my non-existent readers, many of them Government servants included, Panga too laughs at the fun poked at the behemoth called the Government and does not shirk at criticising the ‘Great Indian Red Tape Trick’.
But he is also one of those who take work very seriously indeed; in fact the entire section of the Organisational Headquarters where he is currently posted, puts any paper received from the public or any other official organ or public representative into the official motion immediately and issues reminders with strong disapproval of delays when information is not received in time from the lower formations.
He comes late, sometimes even at midnights and travels far and wide to finish off ‘missions’; maybe not as often as a jet flying corporate honcho, but the frequency is visible enough in the monthly disturbances of the otherwise secluded life of the family. So all he and his colleagues do is heave a few sighs on the ‘unnecessary’ criticism levelled by the editorials at the ‘undeserved’ pay hikes of ‘lazy’ Government servants.
Unnecessary? Not wholly so. That was his opinion after a visit to an unheard of Government office dealing with some of the legal issues being faced by the Government in the zillions of tasks it doles out to private and other Government entities. Self reliant as his department appears to be in all the tasks it undertakes, he and his bosses were caught on the wrong foot when a simple matter involving payment of tax by the Union Government to a State Government on purchase of a rare medicinal commodity came up.
And even though the rule book and all well defined procedures of the Government combined with Panga’s and his Superiors' knowledge and experience sufficed to provide the solution to the unexpected, an obscure ten year old circular brought out of the dusty closet by an equally obscure employee, made it inevitable that an opinion be sought from a designated third party. That third party turned out to be some Assistant to a Junior Legal Officer serving under a Deputy Legal Advisor in some semi-legal department within the legal department within the department of revenue, within the Ministry ……. the complexity can get on one’s nerves.. no wonder the calls for downsizing seem to get louder by the day.
So with all the necessary paperwork in order, Panga and a colleague of his left for the Delhi Office of this designated ‘Assistant’. To make sure that they would not be lost in the haze of Government offices in and around the areas of North and South Block, the power houses of the Indian governing systems, a senior officer guided the two on a mobile phone right through the entire journey after they got off the autorickshaw, somewhere near India Gate. Still they did manage to get lost and somehow lumbered at the right place sometime around 10.15 a.m.
At the beginning of this century, the right time to reach a typical Government office in Delhi and find all (o.k., make that almost all) employees in place, was / is precisely 11.20 in the morning. This of course, is applicable to those Government offices that are scheduled to open at 9.30 a.m. everyday. The logic for using the word ‘all’ goes thus: to begin with, 9.30 is an unearthly hour to be in office. No human being worth his salt in a Government office in Delhi thinks that the Government has any right to declare and enforce an entry at that hour. Even the safaiwala/sweeper/dusting boy etc. doesn’t consider it worthwhile to begin cleaning before 9.55. Naturally, the rest follows……
10.00 a.m.: this is the time when the sincerest and the most punctual of them all arrive. The category of employees otherwise known as ‘the big boss’ of the office or the ‘deity’ arrives to find the cleaner applying his finishing touches on the dust, which is around a zillionth second after the first touch. The ‘deity’ arrives to find an empty office, devoid of any life whatsoever………, somewhat like the science fiction movies that show cities of the future, where all buildings and machinery appear intact but no living being exists; the living eaten up by atomic wars or some rampaging vampires. There are others too arriving at this ‘dawn’ of sarkari time. Some of them are those, who are being tormented by the pangs of guilt of having not completed yesterdays’ work….work that ideally should actually have been completed the previous week. It matters very little that having spent the entire day accomplishing really nothing, they might come to work with the same pangs of guilt the next day too, albeit at a later hour and with much less intensity of pain.
Whoever said that ‘time heals all’, must have been a sarkari babu or closely related to one. The exception is also allowable for those who have some work to be accomplished through some ‘deity’ such as a verification signature on some bill of purchase or an inflated medical bill. It pays to be right outside the chamber of the deity, before 10.00 on such days. The smiles exchanged between the perpetual feudal class warriors, are the warmest and most genuine at this hour of the day.
Between 10.15 and 10.45a.m.: The ones who arrive at this hour are labelled differently; the boss terms them ‘the best and the ablest’; their colleagues have a number of terms ranging from ‘chamchas’, ‘nakhrewalas/nakhrewalis’ to DFWNIWTAH (Directionless Fellows With No Idea of Where They Are Headed). Most however, are content to consider them a bad example and precedence and a future threat to their own complacent existence.
11.00 a.m.: At last! The right time to be in office. The perfect MEN and the perfect WOMEN are those who have mastered the art of making a grand entry along with thousands of their brethren at this appointed hour everyday, with perfectly normal unhurried strides and a calmness on their faces that the Gurus of Yoga must have meditated decades to achieve. It is the hour that the most perfect of all of God’s creations arriving at the Government offices everyday claim as their rightful birthright.
11.15 a.m.: This is the time when the ‘Greatest of them all’ arrive. By virtue of their invincibility against any disciplinary action, invulnerability against dismissal and even the slightest rebuke from any superior; all powers attained on the day the Government made the fatal error of appointing them as ‘permanent’ Government employees; these men and women are just unbeatable. The word ‘permanent employee’ in the Government employees’ dictionary implies:
i) an employee who is appointable but not dismissible,
ii) a subordinate worthy of a polite request from the superior to work but certainly not bound to accede to the same,
iii) a member of one or multiple associations/unions/clubs/groups who flaunts only one membership at any one point of time which suits him the most at that point of time,
iv) an employee who is transferable from one section to the other which may be as far away from each other to the extent that his everyday lunch is still shared amongst the same people at the same place everyday; in other words the sections must as a rule, generally exist on the same floor of the same building.
v) a permanent employee is one who will keep coming to the office till the day he is forced to actually retire by virtue of the ‘imbecile’ law that states that Government servants must retire at 60.
vi) a permanent employee is one who will continue to gnaw at the finances of the Government even after retirement by virtue of a healthy pension and not even death will relieve the Government of his burden since there is the widow to be fed till death and his children who seem to take forever to grow up and then maybe, land up with just a Government job again…..
vii) And of course, a permanent employee is one who has to be promoted to the next level on a very timely basis when his turn comes….merit be damned….he can only be promoted…..if there were any thoughts you may have had in your ‘dirty little mind’ regarding the word ‘demotion’ or no promotion for the hundreds whose hardest part of the day and work consists of travelling to their offices, you are a ‘fascist’ to the millions of millions of…….you know who!
To be fair to the ‘early birds’ of the Government offices, the post 11.15 a.m. arrivals are considered the laggards of the office and are looked upon with disdain by even the rest of their brethren. Their reasons for delay are the subject of discussions once in a while in the office, in whatever little time the perfect men and women can achieve between 11.00 and 11.15. The reasons for the delay for a laggard can be many:
“I slept late last night c’os I had a few drinks too many. I woke up late, what else (the drinks last night are to be blamed not HIM, mind you) I missed the 9.30 a.m. bus (the late wake up is to be blamed not HIM)! I missed the connecting metro (obviously, the bus is responsible).
It was so late that I thought it would be better to go back!”
Just when you thought that the laggard is actually capable of a sane idea, comes the rejoinder, “…but then thought the better of it as I had already travelled so far to be at the office”. What began as a note of regret ends as a favour to the employer, the Government, since the laggard eventually made it to the office despite hazarding so many delays. Conquering Kargil couldn’t possibly have been more difficult!
So, at 11.15, the office and the employees are ready to receive you …..finally….or so you thought!
So, when the last person is in at 11.15, why, you may ask, does 11.20 have to be the right time to try meeting the Government official?!
Silly question! The employee takes time to get his handbag/pouch in place, order a cup of tea, take a glaring look all around to seek anyone out who might have been bad mouthing him because this was only the 364th time in the last one year that he had been late for everything ……………..he isn’t really ready to listen to you at 11.15; a cup of tea with biscuits and discussion on the merits of 1% rat-shit in PDS rice to boost human immunity has to be the first item on the agenda.
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