Top of the World

It reminds me of the “Top of the world” song by the Carpenters. Nothing describes the feelings of these days more aptly and more succinctly as this song does. In fact I have been literally humming the song for a while now. It has been exceptionally good for a while. The reasons – my clearing of the final hurdle of ‘student life’– the Civil Services Examination – with ranks to spare, and my shifting from B-702 Pali Hill to 11, Grant Road. No prizes for guessing which one is the bigger elevator, but the smaller one has its own merits. So let me describe it in short.

4^th May, 2012 began with the impending results pretty much last on my mind. If any examination related thing was on my mind at all, it was the RRC examination for ‘erstwhile’ Group ‘D’ recruitment. I was to act as centre in charge on 6^th May, and the administration had deemed it that we should learn on the job, and with a little training and almost no manpower, I was to hold the fort at Malad. I had to recruit my trusted lieutenants amongst a mass of festival-crazed reluctant subordinates. Also, my DMS Receipt had been on a long leave, and hence I had a huge back log of pending receipt cases. To top that, it was the day of the Depot festival / ceremony as well as the visit / inspection of the Controller of Stores, Western Railway. I, as the Depot officer, was totally torn between my examination duties and my duties to the Depot. In the end, in all honesty, I could do justice to neither. Still, the COS inspection went almost alright. The ceremony was proper. The Controller was able to find faults in the best depot of the whole district – the EMU Mahalaxmi Depot. Then he was able to find something amiss in the best kept ward of my Depot – the 41 Ward. So much was the tension in the air that it turned the strong and dependable CDMS Raut ji into a mumbling fumbling schoolboy. However, no great harm was done. The worthies were dropped of at tea as I worked behind the curtains. It was then that I started getting insistent calls from Vineet, a friend in the IRSE. Not the right time for some friendly chat, I disconnected, many times. Still the calls persisted. Finally, as the dignitaries were shepherded back to their vehicles and things started returning to normal, I called back. A breathless Vineet informed me that someone, who might be my namesake, was there at Rank 16 on the merit list of Civil Services Examination 2011, which was, by the way, out. Exchange of Roll Nos. confirmed it was me. A check up on the internet was the eaten proof of the pudding.

Now I had always fancied what such a moment would be like. Not that I thought I had any realistic chance of being amongst ‘those guys’. Still, I had imagined it. Yet, when the moment came, it was totally different. Before the interviews, I had known that I had a chance this time. By chance, I meant getting into 400’s, or if my luck ran so far, into the 300’s. The interview was a disaster by any standards, so the figure was reduced to 500’s. But then, beating all odds, there I was perched in the top 25. And no, there were no jubilant somersaults, or excited phone calls to home. I sat with my trusted DMS Receipt, clearing the cases, as he became the second person to know my result (or third, counting Vineet). I was feeling light headed and confused. My work life had gone to dogs in past few weeks, and I was in the middle of it – and I had this miraculous opening. Then the torrents of calls started. Friends, from IRSS, RSC Foundation were the first. Then a short chat with my family. Then I actually switched off my cellphone to concentrate on the examination work!

By evening the word was pretty much out – and many people from village were calling, giving the reference of their spatial location on the Rampur garh thoroughfare. By next day, it was the local media of Gorakhpur and Patna area. Soon I had made it to the covers of Hindi dailies in these cities. While the papers sang paeans to me on 6^th May, I was waging a losing battle against disorder, conducting the RRC examination. By the evening of this day, I could have cried in desperation – so tiring was the task. It was only after the dusts of the RRC exam settled that I came to savour these moments of joy.

The joy comes from multiple sources. The first and foremost is from the fact that one does not have to study for another cycle. The whole CSE process can be really draining. Spread over a year, involving 27 hours of writing, it can break the most weathered pen warriors. Strangely, even my faculties have understood it – they say that after selection the IAS officers become knowledge proof. I do hope that’s not true, but I must admit that I am unable read the very educating editorial pages of the Express since that day.

Next is the feeling of leaving a rather monotonous job for hopefully something new. Not that this was bad here. Still, there is no job as diverse and fulfilling as the one on the offer.

Finally, there is the glory of it all. Deservedly or undeservedly, this result has given the persons I care about the most, immense joy. The folks, the grand folks, all are really happy. That’s good, isn’t it? Plus, there have been a lot of news articles, and one radio interview too. Had I been in the heartland, I would have been hot cakes. After many days such a time has come when calls from unknown numbers turn out to be positive and uplifting!

Not that I am not worried. I know that for a self confessed lazy boy like me, leaving a staid 9 to 5 job in Mumbai for a 24 hour shift isn’t the best of moves. I have a really nice house (more on that later), and a really good work going on. My whole ‘financial plan’ compiled with great efforts last year, to be implemented from this year, was premised on my continuing in Railway Service! Plus, the whole single working guy routine had been nice. A return to schoolboy life of probation will have its pitfalls. Still, on the whole, it has been a joyous occasion.

Now coming to my other source of joy – my new flat at 11, Grant Road Station. First of all, the mere simplicity of the address is appealing. No messy explanations to the cabbie – just a curt “Grant Road Station chalo!” is sufficient. The flat sits atop the station building. So, in the morning, I simply climb down the stairs to catch my train. Compare that to the mad dash for auto / bus at Pali Hill. The train ride is just 2 stations. So I can stay longer, cook my own breakfast and be nice. The markets are nearby, and cheap as hell. The whole area is very interesting – downtown markets, slummy yet thriving. It hosts the famous Irani restaurant, of whose famed Mawa Samosas I’m yet to take a bite of. (They do have a really unearthly timing – 5:30 to 17:00!!) To top it all, I have finally succeeded in getting my airconditioner installed. So now I sleep like a baby, unlike the tossing and turning of 702 Pali Hill.

Amongst other news, my short Railway career has already yielded two prizes. GSD Mahalaxmi was adjudged the best depot of all Western Railway. I personally received a District Officer level award. Of course, this area was dimmed when I heard from a person who heard another person who heard one of the CMM’s say that I was a useless officer who “came in at 11 and left at 4”. Coming after 6 months of relentless 9 to 5 and sometimes 9 to 6 service, that had potential to hurt. But it didn’t, because I am on the top of world.

On Fiat in Public Procurement

One of the perils of being in the business of public procurement is the fact that everybody considers you easy and fair game. You are looked at with suspicion – and your every decision is seen from angles that you can never imagine while making them. The trouble is that the population at large has a rather low opinion of those entrusted with public procurement, and that translates into instances of vendors trying to cut huge corners, trying to mollify you with shavings from these cuts.

The problem is especially huge in items in which the functionality of the material is not impaired very significantly even on large departures from the specified parameters. Items like paper, stationery, garments, linen. The standard for photocopier paper (the ubiquitous ‘A4’) is 80 GSM, but my printer works fine with 58 GSM. And how does a passenger on board the Rajdhani Express know whether his sheets have 30 warps per cm or not. The unscrupulous vendors try to exploit this idea of functionality to pass on functional yet substandard products to you. This problem is especially acute in case of material shortage. The vendor knows the level of your desperation – and knows that you have little choice but to accept what he has to offer. The material is functional; you need the material desperately; the choice is between a.) turning a blind eye to the deficiencies and accepting the material, so that everybody is happy (even you can be happy, if you are willing to lower your morals) and b.) rejecting the material – functional material, that you need desperately, and earn the ire of your bosses and colleagues from the departments depending on you for the material. Someone has said that beggars cannot be choosers – this is very clear in such cases.

Such trouble can occur only in a public procurement process and not a private procurement deal. A private procurement manager can acknowledge that the firm has given them no choice, but for the next time, the vendor will not be considered. However, in public procurement, there is no grey area in acceptance. If accepted, material is deemed to be perfect, and hence the usual penal provisions of black listing such deviant forms can never be carried out – unless you have rejected the material.

Hence, public procurement needs to be strengthened in a way on public procurement can be – mandatory confiscation of substandard materials. Current practice is to let the vendors remove their defective materials and supply fresh ones in case of a rejction. Thus, a decision to reject is an order to starve yourself as much as it is an order to penalize the firm. However, if the government can give itself the power to confiscate and use such materials as it pleases, then the supply chain is not starved, and the vendor is penalized. It is a good countermeasure to the tolerance gaming that vendors do – they try to supply the material to the lower tolerance band – and in the effort dip even lower – and then try to convince the accepting authority of the ‘functionality’. In case of the confiscation rule, all this material can be used, at no cost to the government, and exemplary deterrent is given to the vendors. It also removes the pressure from the backs of honest and sincere officers, who are often forced to accept substandard materials only because the choice of starvation is much worse.

On State employment

While growing up, somehow, I had imbibed the idea that I was to join the State services as a means of livelihood. Well, to be honest, that was not a very big surprise, considering that in the parts of India where I hail from, a sarkari job is the ultimate achievement, and anyone who shows potential to read, right and speak coherently is expected to take on one or the other of the ‘UPSC’ exams, to get a shot at the ultimate in sarkari job – a Class I (Group ‘A’) Service under the Government of India.

Well, taking an inside view, joining the government service as a young officer certainly has its ups – one becomes the boss of hundreds to thousands of men and women – people senior to even one’s father in age. It gives an ultimate sense of responsibility when a person who has been slogging away with the pen on his desk for a quarter of century asks for your esteemed opinion on intricate matters. It instills a sinful sense of power, when those manning the notorious people-unfriendly lower rungs of Indian bureaucracy, who, at first, glance at you with the same disdain that is reserved for any 25 year old, suddenly melt into obsequious bows and start sirring you on a flash of your Bronze token. It certainly gives a sense of pride when your folks back in the village can proudly call you their own. It brings about a great sense of irony when fathers of cute chicks, chicks who are totally out of one’s league, chicks with whom the nerdy one would never have dreamt to even hold a long conversation, if one tried, come asking for your hand in matrimony. However, the best of all, is the sense of working not for some shareholders’ private gain, but for the upliftment of the nation as a whole, and for the welfare of the common man. It is with utmost pride that one looks at the glittering “For and On Behalf of The President of India” underneath one’s signature on official papers.

However, it often comes into my mind – have I joined the right arm of the State? Well, the State hs three organs – The Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. The legislature is largely closed to selections, as it is on the whole an elected body. All the glare is on the Almighty arm of the State, the Executive. It comprises of two major rungs – the elected, temporary Political Executive, and their underlings, the anonymous, selected Permanent Executive. It is this Permanent Executive which comprises of the sixty something Civil Services that we have at the Union Level. Hence, being a Group ‘A’ Officer, one is a part of the executive arm, the doer, the mover, the shaker, the maker. As one has described in the last paragraph, the job is definitely good. So how does a job in the executive compare to a job in the other arms, especially the Judiciary? In my opinion, very badly.

Let’s look at the hours, the pressure, the power and the perks, one by one. Let’s begin with the hours. Well, I belong on one of the most lightly worked services in the Ministry of Railways (so complain my overworked colleagues in the IRSE, IRTS, IRSEE, IRSSE, IRSME) – yet, I work six days a week. I leave house at 8 in the morning and return home by 7. Weekends have become a blur. Even Saturday nights are not spared – yesterday I was returning from out of station duty at 10 in the night. And there are no breaks. Any leave one takes, one has to compensate in extra work later, as the work keeps on piling, and anyway, the phones keep ringing. What about the judiciary – well, the hours as such are some what similar. But then, they work a five day week, and they get vacations – real long summer vacations, 2 months of no files, no phones, no angry bosses. In contrast, here I am sitting pretty worried about the time I’m spending out of my precious Sunday in blogging. Executive 0 – Judiciary 1.

As far as the work pressure is concerned, both the organs have their backlogs. My own office has some 20 to 30 cases in all, which could not be resolved due to some difficulties. Some of them get resolved, and some new one’s keep popping up – on the whole, such cases are going down under my watch, since the higher up’s are giving us stiff targets. On the other hand, the number of pending court cases in upwards of 20 million, and rising steadily. That speaks about the nature of the thrust on compliance. Then there is the sense of responsibility. An officer of the executive is fully responsible for any decision he takes. Any mistake of his lives on in the files throughout his career, waiting like a landmine to be stepped on. On the contrary, any mistaken judgement taken by a lower judge is simply overturned by the higher judiciary, without any pain being inflicted on the lower rung for making that mistake. For a higher sense of irony, the judiciary is overturning the decisions taken by the highest offices in the executive, but in this case, the exective officers are being penalized for their mistakes. Exective 0 – Judiciary 3.

As far as power and perks go, the things really go haywire in comparing the two organs. It must be really nice to have the power to punish for contempt – even ‘criminal contempt’. Zap. Like that. The executive officer, on the other hand, is fair game, for all – the unions, the media and yes, the Judiciary. The unions in some organizations, particularly the Railways, are pretty strong, and can make life difficult for someone who tries to get the fair amount of work extracted from the subordinates. Then, the walls get covered with colorful slogans painted you as a rapacious robber, a tormenter of the poor huddled masses. The media will always portray you as a sleazy, corrupt person – guilty until proven innocent. And the judiciary, in its “obiter dicta”, will more often than not, castigates you. On the other hand, the media got a spanking of a life time when they, erroneously, portrayed a retired (clean) judge as corrupt. A Rs. 100 Crore damage is something they would not forget in a hurry. Executive 0 – Judiciary 4.

So why is it then that people are still going about the executive services more in comparison to the judicial ones. The reasons can be many. For one, unlike the Civil Services, the Judicial Serivces are open only to law graduates. Hence, automatically the crowd thins. Secondly, Judicial Services that are open to open selection are confined to the lower rungs, at the state level. In effect, they are Group ‘B’ services – and hence rank conscious people are not so keen. In fact, one of my IRAS colleagues had left a job in the Bihar Judicial Services to join IRAS. Finally, the top Group ‘A’ services like the IAS already have substantial element of judicial power incorporated in them. However, there recently have been suggestions about creating an All India Judicial Service, at par with the Group ‘A’ services. I believe that whenever such a thing is created, it will easily give the Executive services a run for their money, if not out rightly defeating them by poaching away the crème de la crème. Maybe, the next generation of those sarkari job seekers would covet the black robes instead of the safari suit.

On Adulthood

What is the surest sign of one reaching adulthood? Is it the range of physiological changes that a boy undergoes during his transition to a man? Or is it the attainment of big academic qualifications of graduation or post graduation? In my opinion, it is the lifting of the curtains of ‘fairness’ and the exposure to the ‘unfair’ world.

Throughout the pre-adulthood stage of the life, one is taught that one should confine oneself to the right, to the fair, to the just. And as long as one remains confined to the ‘straight and narrow’, one will never come to grief. Of course, even in the pre-adulthood days, one is often encountered with the striking arm of justice. However, more often than not, in such cases, one knows that one had veered off the ‘straight and narrow’, and one accepts the consequences with a sense of justice, if not equanimity.

However, the big bad adult world has no such ‘straight and narrow’. It’s all a big, fuzzy mess. It’s like growing up from the Newtonian determinism to the amorphous, jellylike world of quantum mechanical uncertainties. All the normal cause and effect relations taught in the ‘moral science’ lectures are contradicted. The reason is not hard to find. The world, and the Nature in itself, is simply amoral. There is a right thing to do, at one point of space, at one point of time, and in situation. Thus, there is no straight and narrow. If one is lucky, one at least has a narrow, which, though not straight, is contiguous and one is able to negotiate. Occasionally, however, there come situations where there is no ‘righteous path’ from the point one is currently situated. To come back to the path, one has to take a ‘quantum’ leap through the murky space, whose stink may cling on. So, in a sense, a breakdown of the simple moralistic world is what can be termed as an encounter with adulthood.
I had one such encounter on 10th February, when one of the very senior Bosses of mine castigated me for doing something which was right. May be it was just a flow of Nature – one is often asked to choose between the right and the difficult vs. the wrong and easy. The catch was that the right was easy for me but difficult for him. So maybe the whole tongue-lashing was an exercise in making the ‘difficulty’ bear upon me, thereby making my choice a moral one – between the right and the easy.

On Standardization

Eli Whitney started a big revolution in the industrial world, when his concept of interchangeable parts brought about the concept of standardization – how the life would be easier for everybody if the parts were made to standard specification and could be used interchangeably, so that one does not have to make specific mating parts. If that was a game changer, then the Engineers at Allout Mosquito Repellant have gone a step further. They have achieved what I would like to call a one way standardization. Here is a description. I had a Good Knight vaporizer machine, and I was shopping my stock of refills. The shop did not have Good Knight, so I accepted All-Out refills – a lot of them (my monthly stock). Only to discover, once home, that the darned things won’t fit in the vaporizer machine. That was strange – since till then I had only seen interchangeable refills vis-à-vis machines from any brand. Why would Allout do this suicidal thing? Then I saw that the empty Good Knight refill fit snugly in the Allout Cap ( a proxy for the Allout vaporizer cavity). Then it hit me – the geniuses at Allout had made some design change, so that while Good Knight machine will not fit their refills, the Allout machine would fit both its own as well as Good Knight. Effectively, it was an effort to make hapless people, who had bought Allout refills, in good faith, for their Good Knight machines, buy Allout machines. It was a gamble – either the customer can chuck the refill in the dustbin / return it and get a fresh Good Knight one, or he may go –‘Oh, what the hell’, and get an Allout Machine – which fits both refills. Or, he may be like me – I compared both the refills and noticed that the Allout guys had changed the stopper design a little bit. So I took my cork screw and changed the stopper on the refills – and I was still using the Allout refill with a Good Knight machine. This was mankind’s triumph over evil corporate designs to cheat hapless consumers

On Shopping

Shopping, for me, is a very harrowing experience. May be it is because I am looking for very specific functionalities in the goods I am going to spend my buck on. Like a good public procurement officer, I am very thorough in framing my specifications. Most people would buy a Levi’s or a Wrangler. I’d buy a pair of jeans – medium shade of blue – between navy and royal, that has lycra blended, is not tight fitting, and has straight pockets. Even the shopkeepers are exasperated when they hear my demands – they are so specific and ‘business like’ that their ‘consumer market’ stocks cannot keep a match.

Similar is my trouble in shopping in big cities. I currently live in Mumbai – the biggest city in the country, with all sorts of things being sold – if it is sold in India, it is sold in Mumbai. Yet, I do my shopping in the south Gujarat town of Vapi – whenever I am in the town for official work, and have some after hours to kill before the return train. Strange! No. As I have admitted, shopping is a chore for me. So I cannot shop in Mumbai. Here, it is like – you want elecronics – go to Dadar. You want clothes – go to Linking Road. You want provisions, go to Fort. I’d rather prefer I get all my things in within one walk. So, I prefer the markets of small towns, where one shoe shop stores all varieties, and it is next to a garments shop, which keeps all variety, which is next to the Pharmacy, which won’t ask you for a prescription to give you the drugs you need for your emergency stock. I would rather not repeat my experience of trying to buy a new pair of shoes in Bandra – no shoe store in Pali Hill area – go to Linking Road. On the Linking Road, all you get are weird sounding ( and obviously pricey like hell) exclusive stores – and no familiar comforting names like Bata, Action or Liberty. In fact, they check you out up and down if you ask for those stores! In the end, you spot a small Woodland store, the only familiar name in this jungle of brands, all waiting to classify you into matrices and S- curves and skim off your money! It is then one realizes – “once a small town shopper, always a small town shopper.”

On Hobbies - Reading

Well, it is that time of the year when the aspirants to the Services start brushing up on their ‘hobbies’, in the hopeful anticipation of getting a shot at the interview of a lifetime. As the venerable panel of high and mighties go down one’s history sheet, the entries under ‘hobbies’ provide a very vast and game changing field. More often than not, a few probing questions tear through the veneers of a hastily conjured up hobby, much to the detriment of a very uncomfortable guy sitting on the hot seat. However, if one has an expertise in one’s professed hobby, and that hobby interests the panel, chances are there that most of the interview would revolve around it, on one’s home turf, which will lead to those astronomical scores of 200 plus, which can get one the top jobs, or resuscitate those with borderline written scores. What was supposed to be a recreational pastime is indeed a very serious business.

In my two encounters with the Almighty ‘panels’, I was asked about my recent reading, and it usually was stuff like Freakonomics, False Economy, Superfreakonomics, the God Delusion, the Selfish Gene, etc. In my first interview, it got a simple response – ‘You must be good at economics’. And then nothing. In my second interview, the panel again stressed – ‘Have you read anything other than your textbooks!’ (Economics being one of my optionals) In both the interviews, I felt that they wanted to hear about the fiction I had read. However, I was not very comfortable going there. I mean, I am the biggest expert on all things Harry Potter, after Almighty JKR herself! But still, when the venerable panel asks about your reading habits, they expect you to be connoisseur of a whole genre, and not just a particular book, or author. Going with the HP line would have led to the fantasy genre, and the next biggest thing, LoTR, was totally off my radar. I mean, I could not even stand the movie 1, so I could never read those books anyway. Plus I had to have a balance between reading of foreign and Indian authors – that is the politically correct thing to do in the interview. So this February, to set the things right, I stepped to Bandra East on one of my commutes back home and purchased two books – ‘Revolution 2020’ by Chetan Bhagat, and ‘The Immortals of Meluha’ by Amish Tripathi. The reasons for the choices were very clear. R2020 (no, that’s not the name of a refrigerant, but an acronym used by Bhagat in his book) was a book that would complete my reading of CB’s books. I mean, I’m no high brow reader. In school I enjoyed Hardy Boys and Sidney Sheldon in my pre and post pubescent days. Hence, reading Chetan Bhagat was no big decline for me. In fact, I really enjoyed ‘Five Point Someone’, and ‘2 States’ and ‘3 mistakes’ were also good. ‘One night at a call centre’ may have been a true dud. So there was a 3 to 1 odd that I was in for some enjoyable reading. May be somewhat less than 3 is to 1 – lately Bhagat had taken to writing in the editorial pages of the Times of India (what else!), and his ideas, though loveable in the Bollywood potboiler novels, seemed very jarring in the holy columns of newspaper editorials. I mean, come on, we do like Singham’s and Chulbul Pandey’s on screen, but I would not like them in my actual neighbourhood, blowing away civilization to bits. I mean, Bhagat’s columns were one reason why I stopped reading ToI. Still, there is some thing about having read ‘all the novels of the author’ especially if you are claiming that reading is your hobby. I’ve done that for JKR. CB would have been the Indian counterweight. On the other hand, ‘Immortals of Meluha’ was a work of fantasy based loosely on the characters of Indian mythology, so it would have broadened my claim on the fantasy genre and would have brought in the much needed Indian touch. So, it was not without apprehension that I brought these books home – it was a conscious ‘career decision’, not a mere source of entertainment.

In the hindsight, I need not have worried. Both the books were enjoyable. Let’s begin with ‘Meluha’, since I read it first. Set in what is known to us as the Indus Valley Civilization, it is essentially a story about love and heroism, with good stretches of suspense. ‘Meluha’ was a name by which the Mesopotamians described some really advanced civilization that they were trading with. In all probability, it referred to the Harappa culture, and that seems to be the inspiration for the author. It is the story of Shiva – the Lord Shiva, Mahadev, Neelkanth, Shivshankar himself. It assumes that the destroyer arm of the holy trinity was actually a man, a Tibetan migrant, who, through his sheer bravery and heroism, came to be venerated as a God. The thing which is likeable about this novel is the broad way the story is moving – the portrayal of ‘the other’ as despicable at first, and simply different at the end, the whole rank and order of a fantasy world, with its own rules and stuff. However, the writing style is not so good. It’s, in places, like, in the immortal words of Berta the maid in the series ‘Two and a Half men’, boning Evelyn (like riding a bicycle over a railway track). Too many ‘damns’ and schoolboy curses. I think the book would have been better in a chaste language, perhaps in the Sanskritized Hindi. Also, some places where the author pauses to describe the cities, buildings and battle formations read like a Wikipedia entry. However, despite these very serious flaws, this was a good book, and I am definitely reading the whole trilogy now.

R2020 had no such glitches – it was finished in one straight night and day – the day being over a Vapi to Mumbai train journey. It read like the Bollywood drama it is supposed to be, with a grey hero – something I’ve like about this novel. A story of “dost dost na raha, payar pyar na raha”, variety, about falls and redemptions, somewhat like the movie ‘The State of play’. This one is highly recommended if you are not the nose in the sky types who would not touch anything that does not take a day to read a page.

The real twist and irony, however, came outside of the books. When I finally located my ‘personal summary’, I found that I had not written ‘Reading’ among my hobbies!! It was “blogging, online debating, trainspotting”. Take a guess why I am online!