NK'S POST

NK SINGH Last week’s administrative reshuffle has catapulted Madhya Pradesh to a unique position. Now, every fifth district collector in the state is a woman. Of the 51 collectors in MP, as many as 10 are ladies. This has happened for the first time in the state. The post of a collector, although not very high in the bureaucratic hierarchy, is definitely the most visible and potent symbol of administrative power. Women officers have gained not only numerically, but in importance in the labyrinthine power structure, getting prize postings. For the first time in the history of MP, the Government has posted a woman IAS officer, Chhavi Bhardwaj (2008 batch) as collector of an important district like Jabalpur. It is her second inning as collector. Similarly, it has posted Preeti Maithil (2009 batch) to Rewa, considered a difficult district, in her second inning as collector. Shivpuri is considered a political minefield for officers. Here the government has reposed its confidence in...

SUDEEP BANERJEE (1946 - 2009) NK  SINGH IRONICALLY, what   finally broke the ice was TS Eliot’s Wasteland! The atmosphere was a little heavy as Sudeep Banarjee walked into that hotel room to meet the crew of Granda TV, credited with producing some of the finest, award-winning documentaries on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. The producer, Laurie Flynn, was very tense. He had been waiting for weeks to get permission to shoot the Union Carbide plant. And Sudeep had kept him on the tenterhooks. W hen the two met for the first time --   my friend Laurie and Sudeep -- there was a mutual distrust on both sides. Laurie, almost a card-carrying radical, expected to meet a dyed-in-the wool bureaucrat. Sudeep, a passionate votary of the New World Order, expected an insensitive firnag of “anyone here been raped and speaks English” type. Du ring introduction Laurie was informed that the bureaucrat who had come to meet him was also a poet. But Sudeep, probably, could read the...

NK SINGH Two additional commissioners of Bhopal Municipal Corporation were all over social media last week after they were unceremoniously packed off to their parent departments. An enquiry committee had found them allegedly guilty of issuing completion certificates to incomplete buildings last year. The certificates helped builders avoid coming under the purview of MP Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA). The brazen effort to help builders made RERA chief Anthony de Sa, a former chief secretary of the state, livid and he had lodged a complaint at with the government. The two shunted officers, aggrieved by the corporation’s unilateral decision, gave vent to their anguish in social media. Both of them belong to State Administrative Service and there was an outpouring of sympathy for them from friends and fellow officers. Their main grievance was that they were not heard before pronouncing the verdict. Malika Nigam, among those who were packed off, commented on Fa...