4-07/09My career started in March 1980 in the Indo German Project of the Horticulture Department in Ooty. My work was in the Vijayanagaram Farm and I stayed in the quarters near the farm (please see picture- courtesy Google Earth).
After this first stint of assignment I was shifted to the Collector’s office on deputation to the ARDC Scheme (ARDC- Agriculture Refinance Development Corporation is the old name of NABARD). The scheme office was a hotchpotch of people from different departments and functioned under the State Government.
The scheme office coordinated the work of the four Cooperative Land Development Banks (popularly called LD Banks) in the four Talukas of the Nilgiris District. ARDC refinanced loans to the LD Banks. I was entrusted with the work of inspecting farmers’ plantations before sanction of long term loans for planting tea, coffee, cocoa and pepper and also before release of annual loan instalments in the Coonoor and Kotagiri Talukas. The loans were long term mortgage loans with a major portion of it released in the first year for the purpose of clearing the land, landscaping & soil conservation measures, cost of planting material & planting expenses and maintenance cost for one year. Depending upon the crop three or four more annual instalments of the loan would be extended every year till the plantation is ready to yield.
Specific days were allotted for my visits to the two LD Banks. Farmers who were in need of loan instalments would visit the Bank and I would accompany them to their plantations. Nilgiris District had good roads and buses to almost all the villages and therefore I started insisting on traveling in public transport buses to save the farmers money spent on hiring a car or a Jeep. The practice followed earlier was to engage a car or a Jeep to visit the farms. However, in some cases we had to travel in a car or Jeep as the site would be in a very remote area not connected by buses.
Eventually during the visits I came across another practice which I had to stop with lot of resistance from many angles. There was a practice of tipping the inspecting officer with cash or kind (fruits, tea, coffee, cardamom, pepper etc.) soon after the inspection at the farmer’s plantation. I put a full stop to this system. The practice had been introduced by my predecessors and was then followed as a tradition for quite some time. The farmer who extended the tips seemed to be oblivious of the fact that he was in fact bribing or greasing the palm of the official for a smooth sanction of the loan amount. They were simply adding it to their cost of plantation.
Initially, I tried to educate the farmer that he was in fact committing a crime by extending such a “incentive” to the officer and later, went to the extent of counseling them that if they carried out the plantation work perfectly they had the right to get the next instalment of the loan and they need not waste their hard earned money on bribing officials.
This earnest effort of mine to educate the farmer sent ripples across the banks and the scheme office and I was looked as an intruder on a beaten track. Despite the estrangement I went on the path driven by my conscience. I had hardly worked for nine months and I was transferred to another new project in Kotagiri where my job was, as a Subject Matter Specialist, to train co-workers in methods of dissemination of technical knowledge to farmers under the Training and Visit System of the World Bank financed project.
The day I left the assignment I had a gratification that a new trend was introduced for my successors, if they are conscience driven, to emulate and pursue. As I took the bus to Kotagiri I thought that what I had done was right. If you are not able to make a sea change in a rotten system you can at least make a small difference by not taking the beaten path and by being different.
