Rendezvous- Going the Extra Mile

10-06/10

This happened when I was the Rural Development Officer (RDO) in Syndicate Bank, Kotagiri, Nilgiri District. The job of the RDO was not only assisting the bank in appraising loan applications of farmers and planters but also in having an equal footing in canvassing deposits, follow-up of customers, recovering loans, agricultural extension activities and development of adopted villages. Recovery work was more of rigmarole – meeting the same customers again and again and looking forward to trickles of amount coming back in instalments.

It was some day in 1987- 88. Armed with a list of loan default customers I planned to cover the area from Aravenu to Tuttapullum. After completing Aravenu, I reached Gottacombai, a locality predominantly occupied by households of plantation workers. I was in search of a lady by name Ms Kamala (name changed) who had availed a business loan way back in 1982 and had not repaid for quite a long period. Earlier, a scrutiny of the account in the ledger at the branch had shown regular payments from the next month of availing the loan but had stopped abruptly after about 8-9 months of regular payment and her individual file showed that no one from the bank had approached her after the loan repayment was defaulted.

A person at the roadside petty shop guided me to the path leading to the lady’s house. Climbing a few crudely placed steps on a steep gradient, panting for breadth I reached the portal of the defaulter’s house. The house looked bigger than most other houses of the plantation workers in the vicinity. There was no kennel or a bark of any dog- that was one important deterrent for loan officers like me in most houses in Nilgiris. With an air of safety assured, I stepped forward to tap the door. There was absolute silence all around. With no response coming in I tapped again. This time the door opened and there was this lady Ms. Kamala with more of salt and less of pepper hair in an unkempt cotton saree. She should have been in her late sixties, I guessed. She invited me with a gracious smile – a smile which would have been probably different if I had disclosed that I was a recovery officer of a bank. Without even asking me who I was, she asked me very politely to take a seat, as she was briskly wiping her wet hands with the pallu (free end of the Indian saree). “I was washing my dishes” she said as she rushed back to the kitchen. I gazed around the room and found many photos framed and hanging on the walls. Most of them were in sepia tone. She came back with a glass of lukewarm water which I accepted immediately. My panting was put to rest. I introduced myself and surprisingly there was no reaction from the lady whatsoever. I was put off for I had expected a sense of fear on her face. Instead the same smile continued. “Who else stays here with you?” I asked inquisitively, realizing the silence prevalent around the house. “I am alone here, my son” she said and looked at me with a tinge of tear wetted eyes. The serene smile was lost. The ‘my son’ inclusion in her reply and the sudden change in her mood touched me. The next lines of her conversation put me at ease as my job was made easier. “I know that I had availed a loan. It was availed for my son and he had been paying it regularly as long as he was with me. Ever since he got married to that girl he has probably stopped paying the loan” she said with an air of remorse in her voice. “Please let me know the balance and I shall clear the entire loan next week” she said. At this stage my job was over and I could have exited like most other officers of the bank. I stay put.

Somewhere in my conscience I felt that she was going to pay for someone else’s mistake. Curious to know if she had a source of income to pay her dues, I asked her, “How are you going to pay this amount?” She started weeping and started wiping her eyes with the pallu. I felt embarrassed. What a fool was I to ask this question, I thought. She got up from her seat and drew my attention to a photo. “This is my husband’s photo” she said as she was wiping the tears and squeezing her nose. “Our family is a huge one. After successively having six daughters we had a son. We were one of the early planters in this area and owned many acres of estates in Tuttapullum. By Gods grace my husband and I had married away all our daughters before his death. I live here alone”.

I was just wondering what had happened to her son when she opened up the next part of the conversation on her own. “My son was taking care of me and our estates for sometime till he married that girl” she uttered with the same remorse in her voice. “My son Rajagopal (name changed) fell in love with an Anglo-Indian girl and is living with her family” she said sporting a sheepish small smile. This smile was not the same as the earlier ones. I understood her grief. The conversation continued. No where did she seem to be angry with her son or ‘the girl’. “We both had never met since his marriage” she continued her angst on the turn of events and blamed the local community for not initiating any reconciliation process. I saw signs of anger on her face for the first time when she cursed her fate and criticized all those who were known to both her and her son for not trying to patch up the differences. She broke down again and this time I could see tears dripping incessantly. Every drop spoke volumes of her love for her son. Her only cherished son who was gifted by God after successive birth of daughters. “Forget about his friends, my friends, her friends for none had thought of the love for my son. What prevented my son from meeting me? I came to know that they have a baby too” she questioned and seemed to end her conversation. By that time I understood that she was venting her intense love for her only son and was not able to digest the fact that though she and her son were near but yet too far.

The name of her son Rajagopal rang a bell in my mind. The name and the mention about her son’s coffee estate in Tuttapullum struck a chord. I asked her to show me her son in one of the photos adorning the walls. My God, it was the same person I had in mind. I got goose pimples seeing the photo. I refrained from showing any excitement in recognising her son. I went into an instant flashback and recollected how this character had approached me a couple of months back for a loan. The Rajagopal I knew was a sober looking soft spoken gentleman. He came to me with a proposal for conversion of his coffee estate into a tea estate. He had got swayed away by the attractive prices tea was fetching then and like many others in Nilgiris he also got carried away by the fast buck from tea and had decided to join the band wagon of the quick-buck tea planters. As a strong adversary of the monoculture in Nilgiris, I remembered having given Rajagopal a brainstorming session on the need to have multiple crops in ones land and had vehemently criticized the mad monoculture of tea spreading throughout Nilgiris. I remembered him telling me that he had about 40 acres of coffee, cardamom and pepper in his estate. I had successfully convinced him in not going for a fresh loan for tea. The lady’s voice interrupted my flashback, “You might have seen him in the town.” I did not react. It was when she then asked me if she could come the following Monday that a great idea popped in my head. I told her to come to the bank at exactly 10.30 am on Monday. As I bid farewell to Rajagopal’s mother I could see the relief on her face. She seemed to thank me for my patient listening.

The same day I contacted Rajagopal and concocted a situation. I told him that he and his wife may have to come to the bank to sign some documents pertaining to their savings account. I expected them to come with the kid as both had to come. I fixed the time as 10.30 am on Monday and asked him to be punctual.

On Monday at the fixed time Ms Kamala walked in first. She was given a seat in front of my table. Her back was facing the entrance of the bank and she could not see who was entering in. In a few minutes Rajagopal, his wife and their kid walked straight to my table. The mother and son were surprised and hugged each other. Tears of happiness rolled from both the mother and the son. Ms Kamala exchanged pleasantries with her daughter-in-law and lifted the kid from her and started fondling the baby. All three of them realised that I had arranged this meeting and thanked me profusely.

As I saw the united family walking out of the portals of the bank I heaved a sigh of relief. My friend Ravichandran who was close to me was a witness to this real life drama. He was all praise for my effort. Choked with emotion he said, “Sir, you have today done a great service and this mother’s blessings will always be with you.”

For the bank an old irregular loan got closed. For me, I had the satisfaction of having gone the extra mile in understanding human relationships, going beyond the call of the regular duty to arrange a rendezvous of an affectionate mother and a craving son.

P.Uday Shankar

Planters’ Plight

09-04/10

When working in Syndicate Bank in the year 1991-93, I was posted in a branch in Kollur, in Karnataka state where I had to learn Kannada, yet another new language for me. Kollur has a predominant Hindu population around a famous temple. Soon after taking charge as Rural Development Officer, I came to know that a majority of the farmer-customers were Christian settlers from the neighbouring state of Kerala and were rubber planters. They had come to Kollur on the recommendation of the Rubber Board which had identified that part of the Western Ghats (a mountain range along the western coast of India) as a non-traditional area for rubber. Despite the tough terrain, encouraged by the Board, the settlers made it their home and planted rubber after availing long term loans from Syndicate bank’s Kollur branch.

When I joined the branch the relationship between the planter-customers and the bank’s staff was at the lowest ebb. The bank’s ire was mainly due to the fact that despite being the seventh/eighth year of the loan tenure, none of the planters had started paying back the loan. The accrued interest and principal were due from the sixth year onwards. The customers and the staff were virtually at loggerheads and were at the verge of turning it into a religious cold war.

The first decision that I took was to bring in a ‘cease fire’ with an assurance to both the sides that the problem would be solved in a month’s time. Both heeded to it, though an uneasy calm still prevailed whenever the customers visited the branch. In the meantime, I took time for conducting a reconnaissance survey of the planters’ settlements and their plantations and came to know that the real culprit was the climate! After a thorough study of the situation I came to know that the Rubber Board had in fact taken a hasty decision to declare the entire area ‘fit’ for Rubber Cultivation. Despite being on the windward side of the south-west monsoon and having received sufficient rainfall year-in and year-out, the other agro-climatic factors like elevation of the place, humidity levels and the soil status were probably undermined at the time of identifying the area. Having coming to know this as the reason for the non-attainment of the required girth of the trees for starting tapping of the rubber sap, I kept it under wraps.

In the meantime the settlers who had become rough and tough had to be calmed down. I came to know that most of the settlers owed allegiance to the Catholic faith and were members of two churches in their areas. On a Sunday morning I met the parish priests of both the churches and explained the matter in Malayalam. I told them that I have been purposely posted in that area as I knew Malayalam, the language of the settlers and because of my track record as a tough officer for recovery of irregular loans and it would be in the best interest of the settlers to change their behaviour and attitude against the bank’s staff. Both of them were at the first place, impressed by my approach and were very supportive and surprisingly they mentored their members on the same day soon after the Sunday Mass and this worked as a miracle. Soon a meeting of the planters’ representatives and the staff was arranged and the real fact of agro-climatic mis-match was disclosed. The loans were all rescheduled, after the planters came forward to clear the entire accrued interest portion, and within a few months many of the loans came out of the non-performing asset category.

The next year the branch received the best branch award. Although the management had taken notice of the situation, the frustrating part was that I did not even receive a letter of appreciation from the management. All that remains now is the pleasant thought of my effort to bring back the lost smile on the face of the poor planter.

P.Uday Shankar

Coimbatore.

Corruption- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

08-03/10

The biggest legacy the English rule has left behind for my country, India, is the bureaucracy. The babus (clerks) and the chaprasis (peons/office attendant) at the lower end, business class aristocracy at the upper end, the red taped file-pads and the green ink signatures, the wooden rulers and the writing pads so on and so forth. Visit any office of the state or the central government and just watch the infrastructure, or just observe what is going on in these places and you will be in for the surprise of your life. I have always got a feeling of getting into a time machine whenever I visited the nearby Tahsildar’s office. It may be the Tahsildar’s office, Collector’s office, the Regional Transport Officer’s office, the Commercial Tax office, the court office, the Post Office or the Education Officer’s office; they are all the same. The sight of cluttered files, dumped records gathering dust on shaky shelves, vintage wooden tables covered with faded green table clothes, Turkey towels covering back rests on vintage chairs, ceiling fans doing their rounds religiously on worn out ball bearings giving the office-room the typical audio-ambience of a screechy rhythmic noise without which the description of an office would be one notch less, piles of files page-marked and waiting to be attended with the page marks looking like popping tongues of dead bodies hung on the noose. The best of all the reminiscences is the iconic chaprasi/peon/attender, which is the first hurdle you come across in a series of stumbling blocks, in a stereotyped setting, successfully passed on from the British Raj days. The fetish for the colonial inheritance is so much ingrained in our offices and its systems that most of the state governments still follow the rotten Tottenham system of office noting and drafting. Not much seems to have changed despite all efforts to computerize government offices.

One attribute that would be conspicuously missing in a typical government office is the smile on the face of the employee. This is one virtue that has been thrown to the winds, as the employee has been, over years, successfully indoctrinated by his/her own environment to frown and scowl at the visitor. When you visit a government office the first thing one should consciously do is to save your precious smile for some other responsive social setting. In offices where there is a huge scope for interface with citizens of the country, government employees have been over years systematically transformed themselves into brash morons and even a few friendly faces would have eventually morphed into sullen ones over years of indoctrination .

Having started my career in State Government Agriculture Department, the first stint gave me a chance for an introspection and in the next two years I moved on to a public sector institution and then a private sector company before finally settling on doing something of my own for my livelihood. Based on my observation, I can now say that the incidence of corruption was always at its high in the government departments and I also understand the reason why archaic systems were still being followed in the government offices. A total revamping of the office procedures and systems would deplete the chances of corruption and perhaps that is the reason why we still stick on to an archaic globally forgotten Tottenham system, or for that matter, any other obsolete systems and procedures. More than the office procedures and systems, it is the complete erosion of ethics, by the all time greed to make easy money right from the level of chaprasi to the top echelons that has led to this deep rooted rot in the country.

With corruption having set its tap roots so deep and with adventitious roots and prop roots down there supporting the tap root, it has grown like a gargantuan Banyan Tree. Corruption, symbolically, is not only deep rooted but also wide-spread. If the sub-terrain roots depict the corruption perpetrated by the people within the various departments, the terrestrial prop roots that support the tree can be compared to the outside patronage received by politicians and political parties for permanent perpetration of this practice. Among the various departments there is a scramble for the ‘best ones’ as soon as a new government is formed or whenever a Minister is appointed for the particular department. In the State Government the Transport, Commercial Tax, and Public Works Department are the hot ones as there exists well built concealed conduits in all these departments for transfer of money to the top. As fighting elections has become a heavy investment for political parties almost all of them eye for this opportunity and no body would never ever cut this golden goose. In the name of replenishing the drained out coffers of party funds, the top echelon indulges in this act as a matter of right and in the process siphons off some for his use too (just enough to buy a Porsche, Hummer or BMW for his kids as toys!!) and after a stage continues doing it under the pretext of raising funds for the next election. For the links in the conduit, irrespective of who is the top echelon the foraging process just goes on religiously with a work ethic and dharma that is virtually skirmish free and smooth.
There are departments, like the education and agriculture departments, which are ‘dry’ and do not provide scope for the creation of concealed corruption conduits. It is when the employees of such dry departments indulge in corrupt practices, due to momentary impulses to make a quick buck or two that they get caught in the act by the target-happy vigilance department and news is flashed in the media. These small fries may not be doing the act with the dexterity and knack of the rampant ones in the established conduits and therefore would easily become a prey to these hotly published vigilance raids. A sensible citizen will know that these are the small fries in a rotten system where well established syndicates operate and transact huge sums of money day in and day out.

History of corruption traces the practice to the days of the British Raj when British officers had set the practice of taking small favours/tips from contractors, suppliers and other stakeholders. Post independence, the precedence of the practice was reason enough to continue it. As years passed on, typical conduits of corruption have been devised with well laid down rules of the game which each human link in the conduit will have to religiously follow. Post sixties ministers and local politicians became crucial links in the conduits, so much so, that they have now become the high end terminuses in the conduits.

When in the early seventies politics became a ‘profession’ I still remember an incident which gave a chance for my father to explain the situation. My mother had gone to fetch water from the road side tap in our colony that day. We were living in a housing unit, having ninety houses, where mostly government employees were allotted houses in turns. A new lady had come to fetch water that day and my mother got acquainted to her. In the course of the conversation she informed that her husband’s profession was politics. I still vividly remember the day when my mother, rather innocently and inquisitively, asked my father, “Is politics a profession?” My father explained with a sense of shame and remorse in his deliberately used low voice, “Politics was not a noble social work anymore and the days of great politicians like Lal Bahadur Shastri, Kamaraj and C. Subramaniam are out. Politics has come to stay as a profession as there is money in politics.” He further lowered his voice and said, “Yes. It is now a livelihood and only God knows how they earn their money. They should be powerful too. Just look at the way they have managed to get their flat allotted to them out of turn.” These were words of my father, a teacher since his first day of service, and every word was indicative of the typical middle class moral thinking of that time.

So who are the good ones in a typically corrupt office/department? In a typical office were a corruption conduit exists you would still find a few good ones carrying on their job throwing a cool Nelsons eye on the happenings around. This category of employees may be fully aware of the conduit and still would have opted to remain clean. Such people would not normally be coaxed by the conduit members to join them but in turn would be judiciously used in ‘non-committal’ positions. For example the good ones may end up as a record clerk in a Regional Transport Office, a reception-cum-writer in a police station, instructor in a training outfit of the department, so on and so forth. This person would never speak about the existence of a conduit in his/her office. The links in the conduits never fear this lot of their comrades as potential informers or whistle blowers as the good ones ‘behave’ oblivious of the happenings in the office for fear of reprisal.

The next category is the more good-less bad category. This is the category which cannot afford to be out of the conduit as their very existence in the department would be at stake if they do not do their bit in the conduit. The constant fear of being neglected and ostracized, fear of being transferred to difficult places/ hardship areas, denial of promotions, drive this category of employees to get into the conduit. Therefore, a conscience driven person would still join the conduit and opt to remain clean. Yes, it is a difficult proposition. Given the chance of a constant temptation of taking his/her legitimate share in the conduit, a person needs a conviction of Casablanca to stay put clean in the conduit. Many fickle minded ones would soon sway to the next category. One needs to have a high sense of conviction and a bit of chivalry too to be a part of the act of passing on the greased money to the top echelons without laying ones hands on it for their share or in other words without greasing ones own hands. The person opting to be a more good-less bad category needs a strong will power to desist from the perpetual temptation of taking a share of the booty.

The more good-less bad category may be sticking on to the conduit under the impression that they are only victims of a system and after all they do not take a share of the booty and therefore may be absolved from any attempt of framing them up as corrupt. They may be logical in assuming so. They go by the logic that giving bribe and taking bribe is a crime, and just passing on the money amount as not a crime. All said and done these guys would be in a safe haven till everything goes on smoothly. The fact however remains that if such conduits are sincerely busted all hell would break loose and each one of them would be accountable.

The next one is the less good-more bad category. Here the person sheds all his/her inhibitions and takes full participation in the conduit’s activities by not only enabling the smooth flow of the booty down the conduit but also takes a predetermined small share for being an active member of the conduit. These are the ones which can afford to lead a lavish life style, own cars, possess houses in almost all their household members’ names depending on how long they have been in the conduit. A few years back I had a chance to talk to a senior Central Government Officer in Chennai who had got transferred from another metro a few months back. He said that he wanted to get rid of the rut in that metro and had opted Chennai thinking that his department would be better in Chennai. He soon found out that his compatriots in Chennai were in no way better. Corruption was so rampant that many of the top officials in his office, where there were many parallel conduits working, had so much of their share that many were maintaining more than one ‘family’.

In offices where such corruption conduits work the crucial links in the conduits namely the more good-less bad category and less good-more bad category all work in unison and the whole conduit is safeguarded so securely that no watchdog can ever smell what is going on. No one would know when money comes, from where it comes, and where it goes except the conduit members. All members in the conduit work so religiously that no beans are spilled at any cost at any point of time.

All said and done there is a perpetual danger of a Damocles sword hanging on the heads of these persons. What if someone in the link unexpectedly goes berserk due to personal animosity or personal grudge or due to sheer jealousy? What if he turns out to be the whistle blower? A member of the conduit would indict his compatriot or a group of them by remaining incognito but he would also land up in trouble eventually.

The ultimate category is of the ugly ones. These are the impatient ones which jump the conduit’s rules, out of sheer greed, to make a fast buck. These are the underworld dons of the bureaucracy. These are the ones which own vast stretches of land in not only all names in their extended families but also in fictitious names. These are the ones which blatantly profess the religion of corruption with all impunity when in government service and later seek immunity in politics, religion or social service by starting trusts- a clever way of transition from impunity to immunity.

Corruption is a national sickness- an epidemic where middle class morality, value systems and lip sympathy are the only cheaply available prophylactic- an epidemic which affects all segments of the society, the worst being the poor and gullible- an epidemic for which the diagnosis, prognosis and remedy are all done by the public themselves since they themselves are the vectors (carriers) of the virus - an epidemic which is much loathed and despised but little effort has been put forth to prevent the spread- an epidemic which has penetrated into every nook and corner of the judiciary, police, military, central & state governments, public sector, private sector, and religious institutions. Corruption is an epidemic with which the people of the country have learnt to live with.

P.Uday Shankar

'Mahatma Gandhi is My Hero', says Obama

07-09/09

As a child my father had bought me scores of books about Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Martin Luther King and John F Kennedy many of which I have lost on the way. My father and I were frequent visitors to Baskaran Nair’s kiosk in Pulimoodu Junction, Pai & Sons at Statue Junction and the famous Higginbothams in Thiruvananthapuram in the sixties.

The famous “I have a dream” speech of Martin Luther King made on the 28th August 1963 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial had remained deeply embedded in my mind as much as the famous “Sisters and Brothers of America” speech of Swami Vivekananda who addressed the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in the same country.

Later on, as I took interest in history I came to know that Mahatma Gandhi’s Principles of Non-violence have been a source of inspiration for many freedom movements across the globe. It is indeed a matter of great pride for Indians. Today yet again President Obama made me feel proud of our Father of Nation Mahatma Gandhi when he said that Gandhi was his hero. I am a great admirer of Obama and I felt elated to hear his opinion about Gandhiji.

The Hindustan Times carried a good piece of news about this matter and I thought of sharing with you all.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Mahatma-Gandhi-is-my-hero-says-Obama/H1-Article1-451797.aspx#hide

'Mahatma Gandhi is my hero', says Obama
Lalit K Jha, Press Trust Of India
Washington, September 09, 2009
First Published: 10:33 IST(9/9/2009)
Last Updated: 10:52 IST(9/9/2009)

US President Barack Obama has said given a chance he would like to have dinner with Mahatma Gandhi, whom he considered a real hero.

Obama expressed his desire in response to a question from a student Lilly during his discussion with 9th graders at Wakefield High School in Arlington Virginia where he accompanied with the Education Secretary gave a national speech welcoming students back to school.
Obama called for students to take responsibility and to learn from their failures so that they succeed in the end.

"Hi. I'm Lilly. And if you could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be?," Obama was asked by one of the students.

"Dinner with anyone dead or alive? Well, you know, dead or alive, that's a pretty big list," Obama responded amidst laughter. The next moment he was serious.

"You know, I think that it might be Gandhi, who is a real hero of mine," Obama said. "Now, it would probably be a really small meal because he didn't eat a lot," he said amidst laughter. But Mahatma Gandhi is someone who has inspired people across the world for the past several generations, he said.

Terming the iconic figure as the source of inspiration for many, Obama said "he (Mahatma Gandhi) is somebody whom I find a lot of inspiration in. He inspired Dr King (Martin Luther), so if it hadn't been for the non-violent movement in India, you might not have seen the same non-violent movement for civil rights here in the United States".

Tailpiece:

Till yesterday I had held Obama in high esteem for being the son of a Microfinance Practitioner (his mother) and for fulfilling the dreams of Martin Luther King. Today my opinion about Obama has gone further up with his opinion about Mahatma Gandhi.

P.Uday Shankar

Coimbatore

Working in a Jinxed Branch of a Bank

6-08/09

In my earlier blog post of June ’09 titled Road to Manantoddy, (now renamed Mananthavady) I had written about my first trip to Wynaad District, Kerala state in India. Quitting from the Government service in 1982, I was on the way to Mananthavady to join as Rural Development Officer in a nationalised Bank.

The Bank had only one branch in Wynaad District and it was covering the whole district. The picture given to me about Wynaad was that it was a popular punishment placement for government officials and was a difficult place to live and work. Had it not been for the then Manager of the branch, I would have indeed got frustrated. From day one he took good care of me and guided me well. Incidentally he happened to be of my fraternity – a graduate in Agriculture and that was another reason for the proximity. He was the one who patiently taught me banking and initiated me into rural banking. A native of the Lakshadweep Islands, he was a devote Muslim, an altruistic person and big hearted when it came to helping poor customers of the bank. My seeds for Microfinance were in fact sown in this branch despite being plagued with incessant problems.

As days went on it became difficult to work in the branch although the agriculture loan portfolio was being taken care of very well by my team. The Mananthavady branch of the Bank was in a way a jinxed branch. On the first day of my joining the branch I was informed by the Manager about his predecessor’s corrupt practices. The former Manager had landed in jail for his nefarious activities and investigation of the case was still in vogue when I joined the branch.

One year passed of and even before dust could gather on the files of the case, another case of embezzlement of bank’s money by a Senior Clerk came to the fore. This person had been discounting fictitious foreign instruments and had been siphoning off bank’s funds for over a year. The case was first detected by the bank’s inspectors during the regular annual inspection. But it was a bit too late as the culprit had bolted off into oblivion by that time. In a major set back to the branch, the second case was also handed over to the same central agency for investigation.

Two cases at the same time was a bit too much for my Manager to take it lying down. With little moral support and logistics coming in from the headquarters for the branch my friend started showing signs of a grind down of his spirits. As a person doing namaaz religiously five times a day and with an impeccable and unsullied sincerity he started showing signs of withdrawal. By this time a third case of embezzlement also surfaced wherein a Clerk had siphoned off an amount.
With all these three cases and a Nelson’s Eye treatment meted out on the branch by the headquarters forced my friend to take the extreme step of quitting from the position of Manager. It came as a bolt from the blue for most of us in the branch. For me it was a personal loss.

The onus of running the branch then fell on the Assistant Manager who had been desisting from taking up Manager’s position for quite sometime despite his seniority and experience. He took charge of the branch reluctantly with assurance coming from headquarters about immediate support from them. I had to take up the role of joint custodian as there were no officers between him and me. As days went by the assurance vanished in thin air and the Assistant Manager developed cold feet. The recalcitrant attitude of the head office about such a serious matter drew flak from all the staff of the branch. As an officer on probation I was under training and just learning general banking, although the rural finance portfolio was taken care of well by me and my team, I was piqued by the fact that a joint custodian’s responsibility was entrusted on me so early. Just as I was contemplating on the pros and cons of this additional responsibility rammed on me, the Assistant Manager “fell ill” and applied for a fifteen day leave. He handed over the responsibility of running the branch to me and went home.

Driven to the corner I had no other options but to take the responsibility. For a person who had always aspired to join the army, this was like a call to go to the war front ! I get goose pimples even now when I think of that bolt from the blue responsibility. It was the year 1984 and we did not have cell phones and computers. The first job I did was to shoot a one page hard hitting telegram to the head office informing them that a junior officer on probation had been entrusted with the work of running a branch, which had three cases being investigated, and needed new officers to be posted immediately. The Nelson’s Eye attitude of the headquarters seemed to go on undeterred with absolutely no response. I had to run the branch for three months before a Manager was posted. Despite the pressure on me I was able to run the branch without any major problems. The fact however remains that the bank took almost six months to find an alternate Manager for my good friend!

My friend’s predecessor, the former Manager, had a stint in jail and was dismissed from job. He is reported to have ruined his life after that. The Senior Clerk was reported to have been absconding for about two years and finally was caught one day. His life also got ruined after that. The Clerk who got involved in the third fraud case was given a reprieve and was transferred to Cannanore in Kerala. As committing fraud was probably in his DNA he was caught red handed when trying to cheat a lady customer of that branch and was summarily sacked from his job.

Those three fraud cases and the three month stint of running an ill fated branch still remain as a nightmare for me.

I had a chance to see where man’s greed and lust for money can lead to.

I worked in that ill fated branch for two more years before getting a transfer to yet another difficult place.

Twin surprise

5-07/09

Two buds of Nishāgandhi

The two buds at night on 13.07.09

Just before blooming on the night of 16.07.09

In full bloom at 10.30 pm on 16.07.09




The twins in bloom
(all photographs were taken by my son Abhishek)

The Dutchman’s Pipe (Epiphyllum oxypetalum) is a cactus like plant grown in our small garden. Popularly known as Nishāgandhi, this plant blooms at night. It belongs to the cactus family and can be easily grown at home. The flower blooms at the end of a stalk that grows out of the leaf and therefore looks odd. In the stage of a bud the reddish tepals of the flower, which would measure up to 10 cm, give an eerie look to the bud. The bud blooms into a beautiful flower with a scent that is very pleasant. It is said that the aroma of the flower is similar to the smell of benzyl salicylate. The plants in my house have bloomed many times but this night we had a twin surprise. Two buds bloomed at the same time. Normally the flowers bloom between ten and eleven in the night and stay in the bloomed condition for around two hours before they slowly droop down and wither away the next day.

Moving Away from a Beaten Track

4-07/09

My 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.