My experience as Collector
They say a man has three personalities; that which he tries to project before other, that which he thinks he is, and that which he really is. No man can really know what he appears to other, because the view from the outside is always different from the view from the inside. It always surprised me therefore when I was told by my respondents, that the emotion I chiefly inspired as an administrator, was fear. I have always believed that I have a fault, it is that I am too kind hearted and loath to punish people. But there is no rationality in these matters and analysis is useless. Let me therefore take you to the high point of my official career, my tenure as collector, without further ado, and leave this matter to your judgment.The post of collector is a legacy of colonial rule. It still evokes visions of Pucca sahib in a pith helmet astride a horse and surrounded by supplicating ryots. There is no doubt that this post epitomizes a paternalistic vision, a certain view of themselves which the British had. The trappings that go with the post leave one in no doubt that it has an imperialist background and history. But it would be a mistake to regards it merely as a colonial imposition. The British merely grafted their own notion of governance upon exiting practices and institutions. They also brought to the business of governance a certain moral earnestness and evangelical fervor. This too is now a part of the history of the post. It is not therefore a case of one type of deposition superimposed upon another. It is rather a view of despotism tempered with a regard for the rule of law and the welfare of the governed.
I think this moral leaven makes the post unique. it is as close as you can get to Plato’s Guardians, without bringing in the less benign aspects of his system. There is no other post which offers such opportunities for doing well. The people used to look upon the collector as the Mai Baap. Literally as their mother and father. While this undiluted paternalism may be offensive to liberal sentiment, this is how things stood when I was collector. The people had total faith in the power of the collectors to redress their wrongs. Whether one was a victim of the tyranny of petty officials or of the local landlord, whether one had a land dispute or some other problem of a personal nature, it often came before the collectors for solution. The authority of the collector has now been weakened greatly and the balance of power has shifted in favor of politicians. This is all to the good. I support these developments wholeheartedly. However I speak of days when the Mai Baap sarkar was a still a reality. No officer with a conscience could let down such touching faith. I was certainly resolved to uphold it to the fullest extent.
In my opinion there are three types of collectors. The first type is the conscience civil servant, keen to do good, but strictly within the narrow bounds of official propriety and without rocking the boat in any way. This officer likes to play by the rules, he would not be a party to wrong doing, but nor would he be willing to go out of the way to help someone in distress. His Good Samaritan instincts are kept well in check by a scrupulous regards for official decorum and by unwillingness to risk of his own career in any way. The civil service is a hierarchy where the opinion of senior officers has some impact on the career of a civil servant than the sentiments of the people whom one is supposed to serve. Hierarchies favor conformity with conventional wisdom. This being the case the conscience civil servant is forced to circumscribe his finger feeling within pretty narrow boundaries.
The second officer is the outright cynic who dismisses all moral consideration and agrees to be a total stooge of politicians, in return for the favor which they alone can bestow. In the civil service, an officer is only as good as the post he holds. No account is taken of a man’s ability and character. It is a complete amoral system where personal advancement is the only ethical creed. In spite of all rhetoric and pious platitudes, this is the sad truth. Now there is a vast difference between different posts which are nominally is the same grade. For instance the Chief Secretary and the President of the Board of revenue are nominally in the same grade, but while the Chief Secretary wields a lot of power, the PBR is only a figurehead. The politicians know this, and as all posting are in their hands, they have been quick to exploit this weakness to manipulate the civil service. The irony of the situation is that independence and political neutrality are still considered the core value of the civil service, and a bogus pretence of neutrality is still sought to keep up. The politicians enjoy this irony. They are not taken in by the pretence- they laugh at it. It only provides a convenient cloak for official complicity in ministerial malfeasance. All this applies with even more force to the post to collector.
The second type then agrees to sell his soul to the politicians for forty pieces of silver, or whatever we consider its modern equivalent. He ignores the tradition of politic neutrality. He is not only blatantly partisan; he is often corrupt as well. He obviously enjoys the trappings of power. In fact vulgar ostentation is his forte. The sad truth is not that this type of officer is increasingly coming to dominate the service, but that people are so redesigned to their lot that they do not expect anything better.
This brings me to the third type this is the benevolent despot, the original archetypal collector during the days of the Raj, but now a vanishing breed. This is a man (for woman) who lives by his own rules. He is often eccentric, wayward and prone to megalomania, but he is nonetheless the best representative of the bureaucrat as a ruler. It would seem the easiest thing in the world to be depot but this particular type needs more courage of convenience and moral integrity than any other type. The reason is not difficult to see. To be worth your salt as collector you are required to act independently and not be seen as an agent of the state government. This is unlikely to endear you to your bureaucracy.
As the career prospects of a civil servant depend entirely on the opinion of his seniors and politician in power, it would require an unusual degree of commitment to an ideal to risk one’s for the stake of some belief. There are however still many civil servant who are driven by their own inner conviction and who do not mind incurring the displeasure of the power that be, for the sake of making the most of the opportunity that is provided by this office. Let me however add a classification. I do not want to give the impression that the word ‘depot’ which I have used in this context, signifies some hidden craving for power. Those who are driven by a desire for power are always willing to make compromises for its own sake. The possession of power requires a certain submission. Submission - not only to those who are nominally in superior position, but also to popular prejudice and rulings conventions.
But an officer of this type never makes compromise for the sake of expediency. He is a depot only in the sense that he uses his authority, his very considerable authority to the fullest extent, in order to deliver justice. What this means in practice, I shall explain presently. As far as I am concerned, I was lucky in the sense that I had I did not have to face any moral dilemmas. I had made up my mind to quit the service as soon as I was eligible for a pension. My career did not interest me. In any case, given my temperamental angularities I did not have any career prospects. I did not aspire to be the chief secretary. I was without ambitions of this kind. Consequently it was easy for me to decide the issue. My decision was to use my authority in the widest possible way. I had also decided to keep as little contact with the state government as possible and not to cede any of my influence and authority to politicians.
To those of you who are not familiar with this office it may be interesting to know the kind of life a collector leads. As I have already said, it is an imperial legacy and outwardly the most obvious signs are the trappings of this colonial heritage. My official residence for example, was a rambling old bungalow that had once been occupied by the political agents. It stood in a compound that was several noble old trees and clumps of giant bamboo that formed a small wildness. At the back of the house were fields which stretched away as far as the small river which flowed through the town. by the side of the river was a jetty where a paddle boat was permanently moored. The house itself was the usual colonial affair, with cavernous high ceiling rooms and large verandhan in front. Although it was kept in good repair its splendor was a rather faded. The ballroom had been converted into a meeting hall. The parquet flooring had lost its shine. The yellow plaster was flaking off here from the wall. The liveried servant, the bowing and the scraping, were still there but the grandiose pose seemed to have lost its meaning.
I should like to set down my recollection of how a collector’s time is apportioned between various activities. My own estimate of my work schedule would be a follows:-
· Meeting people 50%
· Case work 10%
· Disposal of flies 10%
· Touring 20%
· Meetings 10%
My chief recollection of my tenure as collector is of being surrounded by people all the time. These people were not the local grandees, or the important people of the district. Nor were they the hangers on and the power brokers who surround those in authority. They were by and large the common people of the district- the farmers, the laborers, and the mechanics and factory workers who constituted the bulk of the population. They came as usual with all kinds of problems and they expected me to solve them. Many of them came from far corners of the district, some brought their own bundles of firewood with them, knowing that they would not be able to get back the same day and prepared for an overnight stay. Many came clutching bundles of papers yellowed with age, dog eared and begrimed with much use. These papers were usually orders passed in their favor by some court or authority –order which had perhaps still not been implemented. The sight of old limbs burden with such a weight of woe, old eyes clouded with so much despair was enough to touch any heart, however hardened.
However I do not want to give the impression that a sentimental regards for the people is all that is needed to make a success of the job. There is much more to it than that. The people of India are as shrewd and canny as people anywhere. They are good judge of character and have an actual political consciousness. They can see through humbug and can’t quite easily and appreciate firmness and the capacity to enforce tough decision. What they look up to is the strong arm of the state to protect them, but it still has to be a strong arm.
The other important thing about the job is that it is a territorial charge. One is conscious of the large size of the territory in one’s jurisdiction and the sheer length and breadth of the geographical area which forms the testing ground of one’s ability. This large size of most district means touring of indispensable if an officer is to keep abreast of development in his district. Luckily for me I enjoy touring. I much prefer it to sitting in an office, however comfortable that office might be. I like the feeling of being on the open road, out in the country, with a long way to cover and miles to go before I sleep’. I like the sight and sound of the Indian country side, and its changing hues that change with the seasons. The sight of steak trees in flower in the winter, when the cloud of dust colored blossoms envelop the trees or the fragrance of the myriads sal tree is bedecked with panicles of fragrant flower in glorious profusion, when all else is withered with the heat. I have a cast of mind that is peculiarly susceptible to the romance of strange places and the beauty of nature. And though I have trouble remembering faces, my memory is peculiarly tenacious when it comes to geographical feature. I can still remember the name of the innumerable rivers and stream and rivulets that one encounter on a given stretch of country.
It is not that I did not have scholastic aptitude, but that I spent my time in reading Bertrand Russell G.E Moore and other philosopher when I should have been reading critical works on Yeats and Eliot. There was thus every chance that I would not be able to improve upon my performance in the final examination. If you want to answer examination question on literature, it is better not to be too fond of it. I thus found that I had been too busy reading Shakespeare to take much note of the various textual variation in the folio editions, or the seven types of ambiguity found in the Metaphysical poets. This is how matters stood when my father summoned me to a fateful interview, one May morning in 1975.My father was an officer in the Indian police service. Being a police officer, he had often been at the receiving end of the arrogant presumption of the IAS officers and had probably come to believe in the myth of their superiority. I mention this as background information which may serve to explain the conversation that followed. My father told me that my academic performance had been less than impressive and my future prospects were not very good. I was forced that this was indeed the case. My father then said that considering my poor academic record and the lack of any particular professional aptitude there were really only two options before me- I could either become a clerk or become a civil servant. Both these jobs did not require any particular technical accomplishment. All that was needed was the ability to get through the entrance examination. The examination itself was a bit of a gamble and the system of evaluation was not really based on academic ability. In fact the duffers stood as good as chance as the brilliant student. Once selected the rest was smooth sailing.
I also remember the names of most the village that I have visited even once, and many of these names have the evocative power to recreate the original sensation which one felt on first visiting them.
However touring is not only about covering terrain and geographical distance. It is about people. Even in the remotest forest one finds some settlement, whose denizens require your attention. And there are innumerable administrative problem which are solved simple by virtue of your being on the spot. It is the only way to a deeper involvement with the people of the district. It is therefore this combination of purposeful activity and innocent enjoyment which makes touring so pleasant.
Touring can come in useful in unexpected ways. To give you some idea of how this can happen let me tell you an incident that happened when I was collector of Sehore district. The year was 1985. The month was November. I had just returned to the district after attending a trai9ning course, when I was received news that a child had been killed by strange animal in Ashta Tehsil. This incident occurred in broad daylight. A man and his wife were working in a field on the edge of forest. Their only son , a boy of about eight, was playing a little distance away. It was a little after mid-day and the man and his wife just opened their afternoon repast when they heard a strange cry and on looking up saw an animal carrying off their boy into the forest. They ran after the animal shouting and brandishing their laathi, but they were already too late. When they reached their boy they saw that they he was already in the throes of death. His stomach had been torn open and the entrails were hanging out. An animal which looked like a hyena scampered off into the forest at their approach. The agony of parents losing their child in this ghastly way, before their very eyes, can be imagined.
The news of this incident travelled all over the tehsil like wild fire but before the authorities had any time to react another incident occurred a little over twenty kilometers from this village. A woman was working in filed in front of her house, which was a little distance away from the village. Her small child was sleeping in a makeshift hammock slung between two trees. When the women returned from her work to pick up her child, she found the hammock empty. There was a small splash of blood nearby, apart from this there was no other sign to indicate what had happed, however the news of the first incident had reached the village and the same animal or animals were suspected to be behind this incident. A search party was soon organized, but apart from finding the garment which the boy had been wearing, they had no other success. The boy’s body was never found.
This incident naturally led the whole area being put in a state of panic. An undeclared curfew was observed over the entire Ashta Tehsil. As soon as evening fell people locked themselves indoor. Mother did not leave their child alone, keeping watch over them. However as the strange animals only attacked during the hours of daylight and children can never be tied down completely, these precautions did not seems to work and in a space of a little over two month, seventeen children were killed over an area of roughly four hundred square miles.
I should like to give the reader some idea of the area in which this incident took place. Those of you who have travelled from Bhopal to Indore will remember Ashta. It is a small tehsil town about mid way between Bhopal and Indore. A few miles further south west of Ashta, the road come across a small plateau. This plateau extends for about ten kilometer along the road. As one decade from the far side a vast panorama of rolling hills and a wide valley lying between them opens out to the west and the south.
This broad valley is drained by the Dudhi River, a seasonal torrent with a rocky bed which is dry after the rai9ny season. The valley is roughly bisected by the Indore Bhopal highway running east to west. To the north and south are low hills of the kind already described? On the far western side the road ascends very gradually, till it enters the forest of Dewas distract. The vast amphitheatre, roughly twenty kilometers across, on either side was the scene of the tragedies which I have just mentioned.
Investigations by the forest department revealed that the killer animal was a wolf. At this stage it was not suspected that a whole pack of wolves, rather than a single animal was involved. This fact emerged later. Initially our suspicions were confined to ma single wolf of giant size whose pug marks were found near the site of one accident. The whole story of how this pack was eliminated is an interesting narrative, but here I only wish to show how many intimate knowledge of the geography of the area played a part in accounting for one of the animals. A few miles to the south-east of the small village of Dodi there is a bend in the Dudhi River which contains a deep pool of water serves as a water hole for various animals during the dry season. Further south of the river are fields of jowar and a little beyond is a small hill at the foot of which runs a dirt track much frequented by animals as well humans. I suspected that the wolf we were looking for used the water hole for drinking and must therefore sooner or later turn up at this spot. As the dirt track was much used by animals it was reasonable to suppose that this wolf would also use it.
The little hill I have spoken off commanded a good view of the dirt track and any animal using it could not escape notice if there was enough light to see it. However it was quite possible that the wolf being a man eater would use the cover of darkness to quench its thirst.
It was necessary therefore to set a little trap. Our plan was to use a small dummy of a human child to bait the wolf. As the wolf was used to hunting during day light it was quite possible that it would approach the dummy while there was enough light to shoot by. In order to confuse the wolf the dummy was clad in cloths recently used by a child. This would ensure that the cloths had the human smell which would entice the wolf. To complete the deception we also recorded the crying of a child and used the tape recorder to create the impression of a child crying his head off. Having thus completed the trap we took our station behind some bushes a little distance from the dummy. There were three of us, sitting over the dummy. There was the district judge who, apart from his legal acumen also possessed a keen interest in shikar, and there was the Assistant Conservator of Forest who was there at there at the call of duty. The three of us sat in a wide semicircle. All of us were armed with .12 bore shot guns and flashlight.
Imagine the scene then. The dirt track passing at the foot of the hill and being lost to sight beyond a bend that looks it behind us. Field of jowar , standing as tall as a man, stretching away to the west and the sun setting beyond them over the brow of another low hill. It was tranquil scene. As the twilight deepened the silence became deeper. Suddenly the tranquility was shattered by the eerie long draw out wail of a wolf. There is something uncanny about the cry of a wolf; it is like the tortured wailing of a human soul in agony. I think all of us felt little tremor of anticipation as well as apprehension at the cry.
This cry was however followed by silence. By now it was completely dark. I switched on the tape recorder to set up the crying of the child. After a while I switched off the machine so that we could hear the animal. Should it fall into our trap?
But we heard nothing. The silence was by now palpable. Just to relieve the tension I switched on the flashlight and shone it to the dummy. It was well that I did so, for there was the wolf, practically in the act of springing on the dummy. Two guns to my right and left spoke simultaneously. The animal was hit twice and was thrown off its feel by the force of the discharge. As it lay writhing, the ACF fired again. After he had emptied both the barrels he ran down and started hitting the animal with the butt of his gun. The wooden butt was soon broken, but the animal was dead. Later a post-modern confirmed our suspicions. Human remains were found in the stomach of the wolf. Pieces of cloth, as well as hair and bone fragments, confirmed that we had indeed killed the man eating wolf of Ashta.
The point of the story is that it was due to my familiarity with the terrain that we were able to choose the right spot to set our ambush. That was the reason why we were able to succeed where many shikaris had failed.
I have recounted this incident to give the reader an idea of the flavor and texture of the life of a collector. It is a life spent mostly out of doors, on the open road, or in upcountry rest houses. It is a life which is subject to periods of inactivity, followed by bouts of feverish activity. But above all it is a life whose meaning and purpose depends on the incumbent. Everything depends on his personality and this dependence on personal factors shows that there is something seriously wrong with the way we have defined this job.
Conventional wisdom holds that the collector is an agent of the state government. The historical antecedents of the post confirm this and the constitutional position of an unelected official in a democratic polity cannot be otherwise. Yet the people expect the collector to be an independent authority above party politics and quite detached from the political agenda of a government, which after all is formed by a political party.
During the British Raj the government was a remote entity which did not have any political rival. The collector was therefore the government of the district. He could afford to be to be neutral when adjudicating between people who did not pose any challenge to the political position of the government. But in this democrtatic day’s government in power have political rivals who also expect to be treated fairly. The demand for neutrality has therefore grown, while the scope of a collector’s discretion and his ability to distance himself from his political master has declined. This has set up a conflict of expectations. The people expect the collector to function in a neutral manner, but the government expects him to toe the line. On the other hand where the collector is expected to take sides and the throw the weight of his authority and influence into the scale – he is often to do so because he does not have a proper conception of his role.
As all the cards are in the government’s hands and as the people have no influence on a civil servants career, it is only natural that most collector’s accept the conventional view and act as agent of the state government. This is a pity, because by doing so they abandon their basic role, which is to deliver justice. By justice I do not mean the sort of justice that deliver justice. By justice I do not mean the sort of justice that follows after a lengthy and expensive course of law. The sort of justice that follows after a lengthy and expensive course of litigation I mean a deliberate attempt to redress the balance of power in favor of the underdog. By justice I mean a pro-active use of state power to help those who are the victims of oppression. This many mean setting aside the involved legal procedure of institutional justice, it may also mean taking recourse to rough and ready means sometimes. But this to my mind is the only way to help those who are often too poor, too ignorant, or simply too weak to help themselves.
Let, me illustrate what I mean by referring to some true incident. One day as I sat in my court receiving petitions, a man appeared before me, bowed down with a weight of woe. His face seemed prematurely wrinkled and aged; and his eyes were clouded with some secret sorrow. He clutched a sheaf of paper in his hand which he thrust at me. On going through his papers I saw that he had a judgment passed in his favor by the High court directing the respondent to pay damage to the petitioner for the death of his son; caused by rash and negligent driving by one of the respondent’s trucks. The judgment was more than two years old. On talking to the man I learn that although he had won damage from the high court, the local authorities were loath to recover this amount from the respondent because he was a powerful man with a dangerous reputation. The Tehsildar had been issuing recovery warrants against the respondent, but very time the notices were brought back without service with the endorsement that the respondent was not to be found at his given address. Finally, when the respondent was forced to appear in court, his plea was that he had no property with which to pay the decreed amount, and this statement was found to be quite true. Though, obviously a rich man, with a fleet of trucks, the respondent owned nothing in his own name.
Here was a nice question for the legal pundits. The poor old man worn down by his grief, had gone from pillar to, post petitioning all the authorities, including the collector, but no one had listened to him. He had neither the money, nor the energy to start another round of litigation. He had come to me, not indeed with hope, but out of sheer desperation. At the same time the respondent: who was a local grandee, held court everyday and walked about with a swagger.
Any one of his fleet of trucks would have yielded more than the amount required, but legally he could not be touched. Here is a case which called for administrative justice in the sense that I have described. What actually happened in this case is another story which, for the sake of modesty I will not recount here.
Let me rather tell another story of political interference which I suspect must have happened to many people in my situation. In the town of ‘S’ was a gentleman who was notorious for his skill as a forger. He had managed to forge a ‘patta’ dating back to state times, in his favor and by virtue of the forged instrument had obtained possession of some prime land in the heart of the town. All this was also a professional litigant, that is, he was able to use the law to his own advantage and to the disadvantage of his adversaries by involving the whole issues in a complex web of law suits. This man had a large circle of friends, and held court every day on the encroached piece of land. This land was so situated that I had the spectacle. In short it was a standing affront to the rule of law and I resolved to do something about it.
I knew that the affair had already gone through a long course of litigation, having gone right up to the Board of revenue, and the last order in the case was passed by the local Tehsildar, confirming the title of the said gentlemen. Nothing daunted. I took up the case in suo motu revision and after a brief hearing posted the case for final judgment. This date fixed on a Friday. The reason being that Saturday and Sunday being holiday, the respondent would be prevented from getting a stay order from any court of law.
This was essential because as I have already mentioned, the respondent was a past master at using the law to delay matters. Things went according to plan I announced the final judgment on Friday, rather late in the day, directing the responded to remove his encroachment within twenty four hours, failing which he was to be evicted by force.
Needless to say, the encroachment was not removed and the demolition was accordingly fixed for Sunday morning. A large contingent of police was kept ready, because the respondent was expected to mobilize his supporters and create trouble. I was all ready to set out when my home guard jawan whose task it was to attend the phone appeared before me, all in a flutter, and said ‘sir! The chief minister is on the line’. This is too was not unexpected, and I had specifically told the man not to take any calls from the state capital, but he had been so overawed by the mention of chief minister’s name that he had forgotten his instruction. I told him to tell the person at the other end that the loin e was very bad and I would call later.
Needless to say I did not call back. There would have been no point. There was trouble expected, but a major part of the encroachment was removed. I have narrated this story to illustrate how administrative justice differs from the justice that is purely legalistic in orientation. Let me add, as a postscript, that the respondent was able again to use the law to his own advantage, and by dint of court orders, albeit from a revenue court this time, he was gradually able to re-establish himself. Today, I am told, he is back to his original position.
It is satisfying to be able to do justice, even in one case. It leaves one with an abiding satisfaction to help out someone who really needs help.
Yet many officers who have been collectors and have paused to reflect on their job will agree with me that most officers complete their tenure with a sense of dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction comes about partly from the conflict of expectation that I have already mentioned and partly from the way things are organized in the field. As is only natural in a democracy, the substance of power has now passed on to politicians, but formal authority still remains with the collector. This effort to maintain a bogus pretence is responsible for many of the distortions and falsities that have crept into the system.
This system of make believe is maintained because it suits politicians. Politicians like a system which allows them be to the de facto rulers while keeping up the presence of government by official because it gives them power without responsibility. Power with responsibility has always been, as Churchill said, the prerogative of the harlot down the ages. It is attractive but ultimately fatal. At the same time the civil servants who jump on the bandwagon are able to exercise authority without accountability. Their political godfather ensures that they do not come to any harm for any sins of omission or commission. We thus have the worst of both the worlds.
The politicians like this system for another reason and that is that is enable them to protect their power in the same manner as an autocratic government while keeping up the pretence of democracy. The collector’s officer is after all a relic of colonialism. We have to ask ourselves why the state government needs an agent whereas most democratic governments are able to manage their affairs quite well enough without an unelected official acting as their plenipotentiary. By using the prescriptive authority of this office, the politicians are able to project their power into the far concerns of the state in an autocratic manner. No wonder the most vehement supporter of the office are the Chief Minister.
It is satisfying to be able to do justice, even in one case. It leaves one with an abiding satisfaction to help out someone who really needs help.
The second reason why this system of pretence and humbug survives is due to civil service elitism. It is one of the basic tenets of elitism that a member of the elite is good enough to do any job, whatever the qualifications needed. The demands of functional efficiency and public interest are not taken into account. Consequently the job of collector combines widely divergent function which should be really quite separate. Broadly speaking the collector has two different kinds of responsibilities. First come his statuary responsibilities, conferred on him by the various status and regulations that have multiplied over the course of time. Then come the various powers and responsibilities that have devolved on him by virtue of his position as an agent of the state government. This includes his co-coordinating role in district administration and his status as the repository of the residual power of the state. These two powers were combined in the same person by the British for a good reason. The British raj was an autocracy tempered with legalism, and the collector was therefore a despot who maintained a façade of the rule of law. He was not really a civil servant in the modern sense. To transpose this office to the present day and to graft it on a democratic polity is all but impossible. Yet we have gone through with this false synthesis in the interest of civil service elitism. The way out of this regime of humbug and proxy rule is to separate the two streams of power vested in the collector. The executive authority of the state should be vested in elected councils, as it is in Europe. The Panchayat Raj system has already gone some way towards this and this tendency should be taken to its logical conclusion. At the same time the statutory powers of collector should be vested in a functionary who is outside the control of the state government and can thus act in an independent and unbiased manner.
He may be ultimately accountable top the state legislature or some other bipartisan body, but he should not be subjected to political control in his day to day functioning. This is absolutely imperative if we want to save the rule of law. To give just one example of the flagrant manner in which political control has vitiated the independent statutory authority of the collector one has only to refer to incident of breakdown of law and order where the state government has interfered to the detriment of law as well as public order. The code of criminal procedure does not recognize any authority above that of the district magistrate in matters of law and order, yet most DM’s consult the Chief Minister and proceed on his advice in maters where their own discretion is supreme. In one celebrated incident, where a DM did not use force. Such order, if indeed there were any, did not have any legal sanction. But the poor DM chose to put his own self interest, above the rule of law. This of course is not an isolated incident. Many a time the peace and security of this realm has been violated because of unwarranted and unwarrantable interference by politicians in a matter which should be left to the discretion of a neutral authority. As long as the DM is a creature of the state government such incident will continue to happen.
I am aware that the earlier part of this chapter where I have argued in favor of the collector being a benevolent depot will appear to be in conflict in with the arguments advanced above. Let me therefore explain this apparent inconsistency. When I spoke of the role of the collector being mainly to dispense justice I was speaking from the point of view of a civil servant who wants to make the most of an opportunity that has come his way.
From the perspective of a civil servant who is keen to do well and is not constrained by careerist ambitious or sheer timidity of character this seems to me the only sensible way forward. Therefore given a second inning I would still follow the same policy that I have outlined above. However on reflection, I do not recommend this policy top others, simply because I do not think most civil servant will follow it sense and too much self denial in another. I say too much self assertion because only someone who is willing to stand by dispose to follow the course of action outlined above. Too much self denial, because only a person who is indifferent to the trapping of power and the insidious way in which it corrupt a man’s judgment and discrimination could go on resisting temptation and doing justice to the underdog. Such contrary virtues are seldom found together. One cannot therefore recommend a creed which puts such a strain on human fallibility.
However the latter recommendation regarding the restructuring of the collector’s job is from the stand point of a reformer who has the national freedom to- ‘change this sorry scheme of things entire’. This freedom is the birthright of authors everywhere. Looking at the issue from this angle I have suggested a change in the whole set up for two reasons. First I do not think we should allow our politicians to get away with the irresponsibility of proxy rule any longer. They should be given the executive authority of the sate and should be then held accountable for what they do. No longer should we permit them to pull the strings from behind the scene and pin the blame on bureaucrats when things go wrong.
This would put an end to the regime of humbug and make believe and would be in the internet of official as well as politicians.
Moreover this would prevent Chief Minister from running a personalized autocracy while swearing by democratic principles. They would find it much more difficult to deal with an elected council or a Panchayat than a handpicked official who is beholden to them in the first place.
The second and much more important reason is that it would be a step towards the establishment of civil society. If we accept the principle that a civil society is chiefly distinguished by its reverence for the law enforcement and liberating it from partisan political control would only conduce to the rule of law. It would also put an end to the culture of dependence and force the people to take responsibility for their own lives. When they stop looking to an over mighty official that represents an imperialistic conception of state power and take their destiny in their own hand- that would be truly a change in the direction of freedom and democracy. The time for such a change has come.
