ISB at the top of the world

This morning was special, as I logged on to my lap top I had this wonderful news waiting for me. ISB had made it into the top 20 B-Schools of the globe in the Financial Times rankings.

The message spread like wild fire on the campus, with the excitement spreading through mails and word of mouth as we discussed the news during classes and in the breaks. Then there was this formal announcement in the atrium by the Deputy Dean in front of media and press. What summed up the sentiment on the campus is well covered in the words of Deputy Dean ‘we will celebrate- with dignity, humility, and sensitivity’.

As our 1 year journey at ISB is reaching its end, this day signatures of another journey that will be much longer in its duration and stronger in ties.

The announcement of the rankings meant different things to different people. For some, it was an affirmation of the belief they had put in ISB amidst what a year back looked as ‘better options’. There were moments of disbelief but then nothing succeeds like success. So whosoever might have had doubts till this day will agree that there could be no looking backwards from here. There is only one way from here and that is to the top.

And I think that is what it means ‘we will celebrate- with dignity, humility, and sensitivity’. And I am sure while there are celebrations around and the heroes of this saga- the alumni, the faculty, the students, the management and the board members are being heralded; there are people thinking ‘where forward from here and how?’. For the journey has just begun, barely six years ago and a lot remains to be covered. But still, today was the day for many to take a small break, look backwards and smile before taking the next step forward.

Memoirs of a lost world

What does a bureaucrat do when he has wants new ideas to solve a problem? Obviously, he convenes a meeting for brain storming and hopes to get new ideas there.

Amit had convened that meeting with his 7 BDOs and the Sabhapatis (the elected head of the Local Self Panchayat of the Panchayat Samiti at the Block level). Also present were the Executive Magistrates at the Subdivision and the ACMOH. The health officials at the block level were not present as it was expected that the meeting could turn out more of a fire fighting exercise if they were there.

Amit set the ball rolling with the condition that he was not looking for easy excuses but sincere suggestions.

The initial moments belonged to the ACMOH who proudly informed about his meeting at the state capital where he had been summoned and finally congratulated for a bare 60% but genuine vaccination in three days (as against the previous drives which had reported figures of 100% plus coverage). But that had also earned an extra polio drive for Warpur alone in the whole state on one of the weekends.

The most extrovert BDO began with what he had been asked not to do i.e. complaining against the health department. His point was that since the public were not getting the regular health services, their dissatisfaction was resulting in poor response for the polio drive. He continued to say if the campaign had incorporated the Anganwadi workers, the confidence of public and the result of the drive would have been different (it turned out to be the most useful suggestion).

The Sabhapati of the same block said that he would not stop from criticizing his own brethren i.e. the politicians, who were afraid to come out openly in favour of the polio campaign under the fear of the religious leaders.

The Sabhapati of the neighbouring block, a lady, started narrating her experience of the last drive when she had pulled one of the panchayat members out of hiding after he had threatened and driven health volunteers away from his areas.

Then another BDO suggested that the campaign should be broad based. The administration should involve school teachers in the drive. But many people objected to it since the teachers were already involved in a number of activities they might not agree to any additional duties

One of the magistrates suggested that to ensure that more children reported at the booth on day one, the campaign should involve senior school children to bring young kids to the polio booths. Class IX and Class XI students could be issued certificates of appreciation for this work and it could be considered part of their community service course.

Then there were pointers to update the performance of the health department, including the number and name of children below 5 years. It was clear that this had been avoided as quoting more children could get more remuneration for volunteers, training etc. Similarly a record of the vehicles deployed could increase the mobility of the supervisors and take vaccine to the volunteers early in the morning. That was relevant because due to delay the vaccine became ineffective, as visible on a sticker on the bottle.

Those were all good points. Amit was thinking how to go ahead and implement those. It was decided to have a block level monitoring committee with the BDO, BMOH, Sabhapati and the CDPO. This could rope in the resources of most of the people functional at the grassroots. There was supposed to be a Government employee for every 10 booths (besides the health staff) who would be personally responsible for ensuring coverage in the booths.

The senior most BDO then suggested that the campaign could be effective only if the big industrialists or the ‘bidi houses’ were involved in favour of campaign. Warpur happened to be the biggest producer of hand rolled cigarettes (bidi). Since the local economy was mostly based on bidi rolling, the people who ran the industries actually provided livelihood of over 600,000 people of the subdivision. But the issue was that whether they will or why they will come in favour of such a campaign and go against the religious sentiments.

Still many people present were of the opinion that when one talked of the opinion makers and leaders of the society in Warpur there was none who was more prominent than the managers and ‘munshis’ of the bidi companies.

The other view was that the reason why Warpur was so severely affected by polio was due to ‘bidi’ industry. Since children, women and even pregnant women rolled bidi almost everyone had no defense to any sort of virus. And the spurt of polio virus was possibly due to low resistance.

When contacted over telephone, the manager of the largest bidi company suggested Amit to hold the first meeting in a smaller company to gauge the temperament and build base before directly involving the biggest group. He himself was convinced, being from the minority community that the issue was mostly of ignorance. His suggestion was cautious but positive.

Only one of the BDO was willing to organize a candle rally with school children in his block to raise awareness for attention building. To most it appeared to be an immature step for such a campaign. However, all the blocks agreed to organize a meeting in their blocks with the Head masters of the schools so as to request them to give a message on polio during the daily prayers.

One of the blocks was to start the campaign with a large meeting with Panchayat members to sensitize the political functionaries. The District Sabhadhipati (head of the district local self Government, and of the rank of a minister) was to be invited to talk on the seriousness of the issue and Amit assured that he would request the District Magistrate to also attend that meeting.

They also agreed to have a polio booth on all the bus stands as it was reported that parents were shifting their children to the bordering neighbouring state during the campaign dates.

Amit was excited about the initiative that his team was taking. However, the senior magistrates forewarned him that the whole exercise might soon fall flat if the health department was not activated fast. There were many grey areas and the whole team was at best ‘hopeful’.

Course Bidding for the last term at ISB

The bid for the courses to be taken in the eight and the last term is over (though we are in the middle of the seventh term). I have been allotted Financial Econometrics, Business Law, Retailing, Marketing Modeling and Property Finance & Investment. I am taking the maximum possible five courses though could have opted for less. To me it makes sense, after all this will be the last chance to learn in this wonderful institution. Last week we completed our presentation for the Experiential Learning Project on our project on Term Sheet; yes, it is time to wind up the pending projects.

Nostalgic mails and memorable photographs of the year have begun to appear randomly on the mail, though preparations for the Placements are the prime concern at the moment for most people. So, this post is to keep the blog updated for the time being in this rush.

Memoirs ..........

The data entry work for the final publication of electoral roll got done on war footing, but that meant that every thing else had to be shelved for 5 nights and four days. There were no surprises either in the form of voter deletion or other changes.

The next Sunday was quite important as it was the day for the Pulse Polio drive, which was mostly organized on weekends.

Warpur had been in the news for some time in the state for wrong reasons as it had reported all but 1 polio cases in the state. The problem was serious because the minority community (which happened to be in strong majority in the sub division) was refusing to administer the vaccine to the children. Rumours had been spread about the affect of the vaccine on the child bearing capacity of the children in future.

The day began as Amit reached the office of the ACMOH at about 7am in the morning, as per the appointment. The ACMOH was there but his vehicle was not. As the vehicle did not report for the next half an hour they started on Amit’s vehicle. In the mean time, the ACMOH had been frantically informing the Health officers in the blocks that the SDO would be visiting their offices.

The reason was obvious as the first office itself was barely opened in the morning. Some of the supervisors who were there complained about the lack of the conveyance to bring them to their offices in the rural areas. The ACMOH told that there were supposed to be a vehicle for every 10-15 booths and most vehicles were in the field now and those people would have been late. The same story repeated in the second and the third block also, though no vehicle was visible around anywhere.

The Block Development officers, the administrative head of the blocks had counter information that possibly no vehicles had been hired by the concerned department. In the booths where 4 volunteers were supposed to be present, either two or three volunteers were visible. The turnout of children was hopelessly low while the target was 80% coverage on day 1 of the drive. This figure of 80% was important as the passage of vaccine through the stool of the children would kill the wild polio virus in the nature as well and some sort of immunity developed against virus.

Only by 10 am had most of the booths been activated. By 11 am the supervisors had again disappeared from the field after handing the boxes of the vaccine. Some had to be called back from their homes by the visiting team. In most cases the volunteers had no idea of the number of children they had to cover in their booth. It was sad to see that the doctors in the blocks had not taken any round in their areas to supervise the campaign and most were in their clinics.

The BDOs were reluctantly accompanying the SDO around their blocks. They explained that previously the scheme was being supervised by the BDO’s office and now the health department had taken over for some time. It was almost non participation, if not non cooperation, that prevailed. BDOs complained that the BMOHs had not ‘called on’ them and didn’t attend the Block level monitoring committee meetings or visit the BDOs office. Basically there was no inter-department coordination.

In the field the parents were hiding their children from the health staff and the health staff was not entering the interior parts of the villages as they feared reaction from the people on religious grounds. Some even explained that the local religious institutions had been advocating to people locally for past some days to abstain from the drive.

The whole day the campaign ran in utter chaos. Most of the volunteers were not aware of the target of 80% coverage on day one. Huge amount had been spent on the training of the volunteers but they were not aware as to how to convince the parents. Only in the booths where the volunteers present could be contacted, the coverage began to improve by the end of the day.

When Amit returned back to the Head quarter it was late evening. All the block offices had started working on compiling the reports of vaccination coverage. The ACMOH took leave to get the data compiled in his office. He was to fax the same to the district from Amit’s office later as there was no fax in his office. It was a disappointing and tiring day with hopelessly poor returns of very hard work.

The average coverage was between 30-35% against the target of 80% which the ACMOH confirmed over the phone and then he was not accessible for over two hours. Amit was surprised as he waited in his office for the final report. The ACMOH came to his office at around 9.30 pm with the final report to be sent to the district.

He tabled a report of about 102% coverage on day 1 of the Pulse Polio drive. 2% higher would be for children above 5 years of age, who got covered in the drive, he explained. While he was sincerely ashamed of the huge discrepancy in the actual coverage and what he was going to report, he explained that he had been ‘instructed’ on the matter. As it is Warpur was reeling under a disaster, a report on low coverage would only show poor preparations by the administration, he had been told.

Amit had to put his foot down that he would not allow that report to be sent from his fax. They needed serious steps to build up a campaign in the next few days. There were senior officials heading their respective blocks who had not moved out of their chamber. There was literally no supervision, the vehicles were missing, the volunteers were missing, and funds had been spent on training while the training had been missing. That way they would never be able to handle the situation.

Come monsoon and the situation would aggravate as the virus would spread faster. The only way out was drastic measures and that would only happen if a realistic picture was brought to the notice of the decision makers.

The ACMOH was reluctant to sign on the low coverage report, but finally he agreed to send the low turnout report under joint signatures of the SDO and ACMOH.

Memoirs of a lost world

The journey to the new district took over 4 hours by car. The District Magistrate had arranged for Amit’s stay at the District Circuit House and he had been invited for a dinner at ‘Nesheman’, the bungalow of the District Magistrate. So it was here that may be Robert Clive and party had one day planned the battle of Plassey, people were discussing about the Bungalow and its references in the Gazetteer. Amit noted that the wooden stair cases were about 12 feet wide, big enough to take a rider up mounted on a horse back.

Amit was told that the Bungalow of SDO Warpur, where he was to stay as the SDO, also had seen some important events in the past. Like most of those old Bungalows, the one in Warpur was known to be a confirmed haunted one, and Amit was advised not to worry much about that.

One of the highly reputed officers who was present there (he later got posted in the World Bank) advised Amit that events in Kalipur had made him quite famous in a very short career. But Warpur was what could establish if he really was a good officer, for reputation gets build over a period of time while fame could be instantaneous yet short lived.

Since he was associated with the Health Department he told Amit to immediately get involved in the Pulse Polio work. Warpur had all but 1 polio cases reported recently in the state. That even meant that the number was high enough to make the state one of the worst affected in the country. The country itself was one of the few on the globe where Polio virus had resurfaced. So plainly speaking, Warpur was where all the attention hinged and Amit had to tackle the issue soon.

The ADM of the District had his own set of instructions for Amit. They were not getting the report on the work of electoral roll revision for some time while the publication date was due in next 5 days.

The next morning the car had come to pick Amit from the circuit house for Warpur. The subdivision was over 50 km from the district Head quarter, a real outlying subdivision of the district as they say (much like Kalipur in that respect). It had over 100 km of international border, plant of National Thermal Power Corporation. They had one Member of Parliament and 7 Members of Legislative Assembly.

The driver told Amit how the Subdivision had been important during the ‘Indigo Revolt’ during the freedom struggle. Then he informed that the famous Battle of Giria for the supremacy of the state (which later led to the supremacy of the country) had been fought in his subdivision. He also asked Amit if he had seen a prominent movie of the master film maker Satyajit Ray which had been filmed in the house of the Zamindars of Aamtita, in one of the blocks of the Subdivision.

‘Sir, we have the fresh water Illish fish, the most prominent Bengali delicacy, in our subdivision. The place where the Ganges separates into the Ganga and Padma (which enters into Bangladesh) is in our subdivision. Illish is in abundance there’, he informed.

‘OK’, Amit responded.

‘Sir, the Aamtita Zamindar house is also there, we will go there if you like’, the security informed.

‘Sure, very soon, in a day or two at most’, Amit replied.

‘Sir, we are approaching Warpur, our head quarter. This place is called ‘Phansi Deva’ means where people used to be hanged during the Indigo revolt’, the driver told.

The main road leading to the small town built as twin city on the two banks of Ganges was water logged on its both the sides. Clearly there were over 10 feet deep broad drain visible on either side, clogged with remains of broken constructions checking water around.

‘This is a flood prone area, every year rain water enters here but there is no exit’, driver continued.

There clearly was drainage in place long back, Amit thought, but people have encroached over it and now water gets trapped there and these people believe floods are inevitable. ‘So next to Polio work, agenda number two, get the drainage back before the monsoons’, Amit told himself.

The car entered the premises and was driven some 200 meters further before it stopped in front of a massive building, much much bigger than what Amit had expected in his thoughts. While a lot of people started running to get the luggage down of the car, an old man in dhoti-kurta came forward. ‘Sir, I’m Kundu Babu, I am supervising the roll revision data entry’, he proudly informed.

‘Great Kundu babu that you are here. So the work must be over by now, we completed it a few days back in Kalipur’, Amit said.

‘Naa sir, that is why I ran when I saw you coming. We have heard about Kalipur, but in Warpur the work did not start at all. We have only entered some 8000 data and I am working with 1 computer and one data entry operator. I am an old man so I can stay back but no one is worried about this work. Since SDO Sahib was leaving, she ………… and hence the other magistrates also ……..’, Kundu Babu blamed his officials.

But obviously that could not be true, Amit thought, the roll publication is after 4 days. He probably does not know all the things, so Amit immediately rang his batch mate who was posted there before him.

She only confirmed what Amit did not want to hear, ‘Those people are always fighting and telling stories about their history. So I also left it to them. Anyway you are sitting on that chair now, so take care’

As Amit entered his office, he read the names of the people on the board who had been posted there in past 150 years. Many of them he had read in the history book while preparing for the Civil Services.

‘So Warpur is some place to be at’, Amit thought considering the aura and grandeur of the building, the place and its past. His first phone call he made was to his boss since the computers for the data entry had to be provided by the District.

Amit felt he would have preferred a break. But the boss had been so worried for some days asking Amit to join without the joining period. They had some work at hand, and this was it.

But yes, Warpur was a place to be at.

Foodgrain Distribution Problems

A tale of two friends- One of the friends was a regional distributor of the food grains to the rations shop owners. The other was a rice miller. Every time the distributor got a weekly allotment for collecting the food grains, he would hand over a part of it to his rice miller friend to repack the grains and deposit with the official agency against his quota of levy rice. Since both the friends had been in this family business for years, this had become an established norm. They could sell the same Government foodgrain back to the Government a number of times thus. Every time the official agencies were sent the bills for foodgrain, transportation and subsidy.

The smaller players in the game i.e. the ration shops were given a share of their allotment for informing the beneficiaries at the grass root level that the ‘allotment’ had not been made by the ‘Government’. All the beneficiaries believed that the allotment for the foodgrain came once in a blue moon. At least two generations had become older living with this ‘fact’. The occasional distractions were in the form of some isolated starvation deaths reported in interior places and those would later be ‘diagnosed’ as cases of ‘tuberculosis’. As if malnutrition was not known to have any impact on the health of the people.

Gradually this friendly practice between the distributor and the miller became so rampant that substantial amount of the foodgrain distribution started occurring only on papers while the bills were claimed for real. Those distributors and ration shop owners who did not get into collusion with the rice millers started selling the PDS rice in the open market.

The fact remains that there are actually no numbers available as to what amount of foodgrain reaches the beneficiaries under the various schemes, which would vary from shop to shop and region to region.

To check the malpractices, there are orders to demonstrate the list of the beneficiaries in the ration shops. The ration card shop owners rarely display these lists. The reason is that there might be huge duplication of beneficiary names or presence of bogus beneficiaries in the list. One copy of these lists is also supposed to remain present in the local self government office. While some exceptional panchayat went to the extent of painting the list of the beneficiaries on the public wall, for transparency, a majority don’t even preserve these lists.

In one case when there was a complaint of non distribution of the foodgrain by two of the ration shops. When the shops were inspected they had not displayed the beneficiary list, their licenses were suspended and the beneficiaries were tagged to the ration shop of the neighbouring area. Ration shop owners still managed to create a lot of disturbance on the ground of inconvenience to the local public due to large distance from the new shop. They could keep the administration on its toes under the threat of sub-division wide strike by all the ration shops. Though that was manageable, the repeated deputations by the association were a regular irritation.

At the lowest Panchayat tier, i.e. on the seat of a member of a Panchayat, it is very common to have either the Ration shop owner or his family member as the elected representative. This becomes easier considering the clout these people exercised locally owing to their capacity to control the supplies of the ration.

A Case of 'Official Activism'- In one case a truck was caught carrying the PDS grains after it had left the distributors godown. The driver and the small scale rice seller in the neighbouring district were arrested and the police handed over the truck and its content to another distributor to hold it in his custody. The poor fellow had to accept this job unwillingly. The concerned official of the food department immediately raided the godown of the custodian and suspended him, while no action was initiated on the person illegally selling the PDS grains. That was an amazing case of 'official activism'.

The district administration had to stand against this case of gross injustice and finally suspension order was received against the food official who had suspended the custodian. The order mentioned the service of the order to be made against the suspended official in 24 hours. In one of the previous instances against the same food official, such an order had not been served as he had gone into hiding for 24 hours without trace. In this case also, despite a number of raids, the person was untraceable. Finally, he was nabbed in a distant district where police had been deployed beyond his anticipation. It was an instance of suspension of one of the most senior officials in the entire racquet.

A New Year, The Foodgrain journey continued

The next step in the supply chain of food grain distribution is the processing of the food grains by the Rice mills (our example we started with). This seems to be simple, after all the mill should remove the husk and the rice is ready to be cooked, isn’t it?

Not quite so.

The rice mills have licensed permission to process the paddy. One might ask, why should there be License Permit Raj? Well, I came to know of instances where the bursting of boilers in unauthorized mills was reported. So one of the reasons I know, which is told, is to ensure safety of the production process. The other reason informed is to ensure equitable distribution of the excess production capacity and avoid monopolistic tendencies of large millers. So the annual rice procurement targets for the millers are informed at the beginning of the arrival of paddy in the market. The district level committee which decides the quota to be deposited to the Government consists of the Collector, the representatives of the Panchyat bodies, the officials of food department, the representatives of the cooperatives, representatives of FCI, and the members of the rice millers associations amongst others. This broad base ensures the fairness of the system.

Now consider that there has been a bumper crop in the state and neighbouring states (you may also consider neighbouring country if you are in a border state) then the market will be flooded with surplus crop and the market price will drop. The Government procurement price will be higher than the market price and the millers would crowd to sell the processed rice to the Government food department. This might lead to favour of some millers at the cost of others if the district level monitoring committee is not strong.

In contrast if the crop has not been so good around then the market price of rice could be higher than the Government procurement price of rice from the miller. The millers then try to avoid selling the rice to the Government and prefer to sell it in the open market. Then, illegal understanding with the officials involved might lead to forcing a few millers to sell their rice to the Government while the favoured ones will sell it at higher margins in the free market.

Then there are issues of which cooperative society will sell its paddy procured to which miller (they prefer the nearest ones, but the milling capacity and the paddy available might not match) and imposition of the minimum support price (MSP) in the purchase of paddy by the millers. At the time of delivery of the processed rice to the Government the millers are supposed to submit documents signed by the inspectors of the Food department that the rice is produced from the paddy procured at the MSP. Sadly, the inspectors give that certificate to one and all and the MSP mostly gets implemented on paper only.

The millers pay less price to the cooperatives, traders or the farmers who approach them to sell the paddy on the ground of high moisture content, high dust content and poor grain quality etc. then what is approved by the Government. No doubt rice millers are politically very powerful and their network exists from the block level where the mills work to the sub-division, district, state and national level. Some of the bigger traders who purchase and stock the paddy are also relatives and family members and hence I found that the inspectors were too small to impose anything upon the people with huge financial power.

As I had discussed above, in a year of poor crop or huge demand from across the borders, the tendency of the foodgrain is to fly out of the Government system. Thus, in the beginning of the processing season, Government through its food department enters into agreement with the individual millers for the quantity of rice they will have to sell to the Government based upon their production capacity. In case if they don’t enter into agreement, the Levy rice can be collected by the officials for Government based upon the percent of rice produced by the mill. The percentage of levy varies from state to state while 50% is an approximation for the median.

In a bad crop production year, I had to pass tough time to monitor the quantity of rice that was being processed by the millers and had to strictly enforce the collection of levy, though we could cross the target for the district in the end, and were probably the only district to do so.

The amount of rice produced by a mill can roughly be estimated if the accurate amount of paddy procured is known, as different state governments accept about 63% to 67% of rice production from the paddy used. Once the rice has been processed, it is delivered as per the agreement to the Food department for further use by them. This could be local distribution in the deficient districts or for transportation to the FCI godowns in the surplus states and districts, from where the FCI will dispatch it to the other parts of the country.

The food department of that state and the districts for which it is meant will keep an eye on the allotment received and the arrival of the rakes of the foodgrain. The grain is unloaded at the sidings and sub-allotments made to the districts. As usual the early bird…….., i.e. the alert districts are able to draw the allotment in their areas first. The foodgrain is stored in the Government or other godowns and then the district controller makes the allotment order for the various schemes, based on which the district level distributors collect their quota of allotments. From their godowns the MR dealers (ration shop owners) collect the food grain and inform the public of the receipt of the allotment (if they really do).

I will discuss the places where at times I faced serious problems and loopholes in ensuring the collection and distribution of the foodgrain in some other post.