Celebration of Mediocrity.

June 8, 2008

This is the recent article published in tripurainfo.com. The

backgraound is tripura, but the flavour is national. The two doctors

mentioned, both retired as director of Health services, both worthy

consultants in their respective fields, one of them has a long

history of political dabbling.

Dr Ashok Sinha

{The great NEC meeting is just over. There are lots and lots of money

in NEC. There is a secretariat in Shillong. It must be having some

officers. Where are they from? From all NE states, to negotiate,

expedite and work for the home state. Is there any officer from

Tripura? As far as I know, none. Why? Two reasons, firstly if an IAS

officer is sent from Agartala, a local commissioner cum secretary

would have to work as a joint secretary there, so no IAS would go.

There are some technical posts. None are sent because a senior

superintending engineer would get to work in the rank and pay of a

commissioner there. Promoting an engineer to that level is

unthinkable. So the Tripura desk is empty.}

When Dr Bikash Ray filed his nomination for the last Assembly

elections, all of us expected that he would be the next Health

Minister, had he made it to the Assembly. We were probably right.

When a pass course dropout, with history, political science and

education becomes an MLA he is thought to be good enough to for

anything, from finance to general administration. Dr Bikash Roy, with

his 40 years of public life, administrative experience spanning 30

years, knowing people's hearts and their families for four decades,

is not good enough to be, say Rural Development, Electricity or PWD

minister, but Mr. Lalmohan is. The fact that Mr. Lalmohan has no

education to talk about, no administrative experience and cannot talk

to the secretary in Delhi, does not understand anything deliberated

in a seminar, improves his standing as a minister. One might say that

in this example Dr. Bikash Ray has no political experience. All

right, what if the name is changed to say Dr. Nilmoni Debbarman. Does

anything change?

I have no idea when this absurd idea impregnated the brains of people

who matter, that if one is not good in anything, one is good for

everything, or reciprocally, if one is good in anything, one is good

for nothing. It does not seem anything sinister at the first look,

but over time this attitude has percolated into every soul in the

society. When I came to Agartala and thought that I could write a few

lines in Bengali, I approached an editor of a daily, who I perceived

to be an intellectual. I wanted to write about social issues,

contemporary problems and took a few samples with me. This editor

gave me a look that made me check if I had animal excreta on my

shoes. He told me clearly, that I was a doctor and I should write

only about health and sickness. Later on I learnt that since I was a

simple MBBS, I should only write about common cold and at the most,

diarrhea.

One thing is true. My formal education is higher secondary. That was

when I was taught my Bengali, my Grammar, my English and my Maths.

My idea about the world was formed at that education level. May be

that is why I am unable to fathom the snub I received from so called

intellectuals while I tried to appropriate a seat next to them. The

general idea has become so wide spread that any body with a

specialized education is thought to be incompetent in everything

else, or even worse, anybody without a specialized knowledge is

automatically taken to be a competent man. The only specialized

people, who are expected to know everything with competence, are the

legal luminaries.

What if somebody tries to invalidate the theory? Take for example the

electricity scenario in West Bengal. It was in ruins, the worst in

India those days. The ministry was being run for decades by legends

of the genre, including Jyoti Basu. None succeeded in stemming the

rot; situation was deteriorating fast. So one Professor of

Engineering was brought in. The power scene improved drastically

overnight. People could feel the difference; they started talking

about it. This led to a generalized panic amongst the intellectuals,

including Newspaper Editors, who themselves are the champions of non-

qualification. All earlier Electricity Ministers had been proved to

be incompetent. Finding a fault with him one morning, one largest

circulating daily wrote that we should think twice before inviting

technical people to ministries if they cannot deliver with 100%

efficiency. From others, of course, 100% efficiency was not

anticipated. After he repaired the system this gentleman was hounded

out of office in such a manner that he was too scared to talk to the

media and generally disappeared from view. Today nobody talks about

him, nobody thanks him and nobody finds his disappearance odd too.

Newspapers have heaved a sigh of relief.

So it did not surprise me when a Principal Secretary of the West

Bengal Government told the reporters after the recent Kestopur bus

accident that they were not pre warned about such an accident, so

they were not ready for the rescue act. I also was not bowled over by

the fact that no newspaper found this statement disgraceful and a

sign of utter ineptitude. He is a Principal Secretary, not a

technical man; he is not supposed to be incompetent, you see.

Maharashtra faced a doctor's strike the other day. Newspapers

screamed about heartless doctors going on strike, leading patients to

death. Everything about the story was covered by the media except the

name of the secretary who failed to fill the posts of professors in

medical colleges in spite of repeated warning from the MCI. These

students were studying day in and out for a few hundred posts of MD,

it was a make or break thing for their career. Now suddenly the seats

were removed, because the secretary was sleeping in his office. I can

bet my last pair of socks that the secretary would end the year with

an outstanding ACR and get his promotion four years before time. Yet,

the doctors are the bad administrators, and yet the students were

punished because they went on strike. Can you believe it; in a

democratic country there are certain citizens of the lesser kind who

are punished if they protest when wronged and no one in the society

supports them?

It is well known that doctors are generally incompetent as

administrators. The health department of Tripura is in tatters; there

are no promotion, no yearly DPC, no cadre review in decades, no

proper transfer, no planning, and no discipline. Pay scales and

promotion prospects are appalling. A doctor, who was in a scale

equivalent to an Addl SP in 1978, is now in a lower scale after 30

years of service. He is still a junior officer doing thrice a week,

night duties. May be he never faced a DPC in 30 years. Guess who

administers the health department! A non-specialized person. He,

therefore, is not responsible for anything that goes wrong in the

department he heads. That poor fellow is only responsible for the

occasional success the department encounters. For last twenty years I

have never heard or read anything that even remotely suggested that

the health secretary was inept. The division of labor is like this,

the health secretary has all the powers, and the director health has

all the responsibilities. The secretary is responsible for all the

successes; the director is responsible for all the failures.

The same thing is repeated in the Engineering sector. They face the

same degradation. They are despised the same way. Would somebody tell

me why an arts graduate is holding the post of PWD secretary, which

is a cadre post of Engineers? The other day I was talking to a young

friend of mine who is a joint secretary in the state. We were talking

about his prospects of getting the IAS cadre. He rued the fact that

very junior officers like Executive Engineers were being promoted as

IAS. The term very junior touched a chord in me. I remembered a story

when the post of Director Industries was combined with MD jute mill

and a competent officer was needed to head the new department to

start the first jute mill in the state. The name of a very famous

Executive Engineer was proposed for the post. But the officer had

declined the transfer saying that the post of Director Industries was

a post junior to that of the Executive Engineer. Which was true, so

he was allowed to remain as Executive Engineer and was given the

extra charge of the directorate. Twenty-five years later, today the

Executive Engineer is answerable to the SDM, who is three grades

below the Director. The sign of complete submission and degradation

is that even after such a barefaced act, not one engineer protested.

They have seen what protests can lead them to.

Let me tell you, this is not only with these two departments. All

departments of the government where joint entrance passed candidates

are recruited, face the same scenario, because people who did not

disturb the joint entrance board, control them. Every year the

government takes the joint entrance examination to exclude the cream

of the students from getting involved in running the state. It is `no

entry' to the secretariat for joint entrance passed students. Others

are welcome.

But why am I worried about this, I am not a government servant and

none of my children would ever join government service of any kind. I

myself avoid going to government offices like a rabid patient to

water. What is my problem! The result of this oddity in thinking is

clear for anyone even with the visual competence of a bat to see. The

qualities of the people you degrade go down with time. You want them

to submit to you totally, pay them less, humiliate them and then

expect them to work. Well, if you throw nuts, you get monkeys. Merit

cannot be attracted like this; only the mediocre and below would

persist in such a system. It is already evident in the health sector;

it is manifest in the engineering sector too. Therefore it does not

surprise me that in Agartala drains are three feet higher than the

roads, roads are two feet higher than the houses. It does not amaze

me that the drain near Jagannath Bari Road is Eighteen feet wide and

ends up being eighteen inches wide at the estuary at Orient

Choumuhani. No body notices it; even after this article, nobody would

notice it. I have grown accustomed to the muck of the drains being

spread regularly on the roads for everyone to enjoy and relish. When

the muck dry up, these are picked up and in the process distributed

throughout the city. I was not shocked that the capital complex was

not taken as a chance to create a new city, because the engineer who

tried something like this in Khumlwang was punished. It did not

surprise me that at Matarbari, cementing the sides of the pond

destroyed the natural ecosystem and after a public outcry breeding

grounds were constructed for the turtles. They were intelligent

enough to put guidance arrows with signs written in English and

Bengali for the quadrupeds, though I did not find the school where

the turtles were taught these languages. No body in the state is

bothered that the rare species of turtles are disappearing fast.

This, sir, is what you get when you encourage mediocrity.

What is happening in the state is celebration of mediocrity. The

damage is long term and persistent. It is reflecting in technical

posts, in administrators, and in creative arts. Loyalty and

submission is given more credit than intellect. The `intellectuals'

are now the people who concur. A Sukanta at this time would not be

invited for tea. A new class of people is being created, from amongst

the Joint Entrance passed citizens, the Neo Dalit. Generations of

neglect and dishonor nearly broke the spine of a large majority the

population of India; the Dalit were created. A time will come when

the Neo Dalit, the educated class, will also ask for reservation, a

share in opinion making, a share in running the country.

I will end this discussion with two instances for you to ponder

about. You may or may not agree with me. But they would make you

think.

The great NEC meeting is just over. There are lots and lots of money