Can do without such hospitality
The world observes Anti-corruption Day on December 9, but this spring of gutter continues to flow perennially. During a training programme at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, a woman IAS officer from Andhra Pradesh said ministers and senior officers generally, when they visited districts or sub-divisions, never spent a penny from their pockets and rather enjoyed the hospitality of the local administration, which is invariably based on the resources collected by officials by resorting to corrupt ways. All officers agreed that the same conditions prevailed in other states, too. The revenue department was considered as the major victim of this greed.
In Punjab, by the mid-1970s, the forced collection of funds for small savings by the official machinery had attained alarming proportions. After the Emergency was lifted, the government announced that no official would collect funds, and spend on the hospitality of ministers and other dignitaries. The ministers were asked to partake of food in gurdwaras or with the village community. This diktat, however, lost steam.
Naib tehsildars, tehsildars, SDMs, etc. mostly spend their time on duty with ministers and other dignitaries and making hospitality arrangements for them. I had the privilege to train some tehsildars almost two decades back. Once, I came across an old trainee, a tehsildar at Doaba tehsil, who told me that the halqa incharge, who was a defeated candidate in the legislative Assembly polls, had put forth his demand to him, ‘Tehsildar saheb, the monthly expenditure of my office is Rs 1.25 lakh. You will be paying it, if you want to stay here.’ The tehsildar had defied the order and had to face suspension.
Long ago, in one district, revenue officers met the DC and suggested that since the hospitality expenditure had become unbearable, either the government should provide the funds or the district officer concerned may be deputed with the ministers or dignitaries of their departments and bear the expenses. And if revenue officers were to make arrangements, the expenses must be paid to them by the department concerned. The DC agreed and directed his assistant to coordinate with the officers.
The first dignitary, after this scheme was evolved, to visit the district was the minister for labour and employment. I had spent Rs 877 on it. In spite of repeatedly ringing up the district employment officer, the sum was not given. After about a month, he came with a bag and said he had brought the money. There was a lot of ‘chillar’. ‘I felt like a beggar while collecting this amount. I wonder how a dignified man can enjoy such corruption and loathsome hospitality!’ he said.
Perhaps because of the expertise of the administration in satisfying the culinary needs of dignitaries, the first initiative of the new government in 2017 was to enjoin upon DCs to open ‘sasti rasois’, ‘sanjha chullahs’, etc., to provide food at affordable rates to the masses, without any budget allocation.
