Thursday, June 9, 2016

Bribe, laxity and incompetence define offices in Uttar Pradesh


Azamgarh is the Lok Sabha constituency of the Samajwadi Supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav. His son Akhilesh Yadav is the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. There are many ministers in the cabinet of Shri Akhilesh Yadav who hail from the district. However, if you go to Azamgarh, you will not find anything that gives you the feel of any VIP constituency. Go to the District Hospital and witness the horrible condition of the patients. There are many class-1 dispensaries in the district with reasonably good buildings sans doctors and other medical equipment. Private doctors are literally rolling in money. People are being fleeced by the private doctors and the owners of the shanty Hospitals day in and day out because there is no choice left for them. The government finds itself thoroughly incapable of having any control over its own hospitals.

I was in Azamgarh last week for three days and had to go to the many offices for a small personal work. In normal course, I should not have been harassed to go to the offices yet the Babus made me run for two days. I went to the PWD office to take the compensation of my land, which was acquired by the state government for construction of the approach road in 2013. I must have written half a dozen letters to different District Magistrates and Executive Engineers of the PWD from time to time for the sake of the payment of petty amount of compensation but every time I got the evasive reply from them. During this visit I first met the present District Magistrate, Suhas L.Y., who is a well behaved Kannadiga. He is a very young, dashing officer indeed and is not more than 35 years. He was very warm and courteous to me and assured me that the compensation would be given in the shortest possible time. He agreed with me that the Administration should have taken my bank account number and identity proof and instead of giving the cheque, the money could have been directly transferred to the bank account. This method should have been adopted in the cases of all land owners, whose lands have been acquired. This is certainly very logical but in government offices, logic hardly works. The D.M. asked his OSD to contact the concerned Executive Engineer, who was in the state capital Lucknow on that day. The energetic District Magistrate then told me to meet the Executive Engineer the next day and get the compensation amount then and there as his instructions would have been conveyed to him by then.

As advised by District Magistrate I went to the office of the Executive Engineer Mr. K. Gore. He was not in the office, then somebody suggested me to go to his residence, which is barely 25 meters away from his office. The Executive Engineer was cordial and he assured me to cooperate to the fullest possible. However, he also told me that the payment of compensation would require some paper work, which in fact is a lot of paper work. Thereafter started my travails. I was asked to go along with an Amin, who took me from one office room to other, from one Engineer to the other.

After three hours of hectic running from one place to the other, I thought that the amount would be handed over to me but in the end I was told by the Executive Engineer to reach to the office of the Tehsil Sub Registrar next day to relinquish the land in favour of the department to receive the cheque in lieu thereof. I was also asked to bring two witnesses with their photographs and identity cards. Tehsil building is 18 kms away from my village and nearly 35 kms from the District headquarters of Azamgarh. I had no choice but to go to the Tehsil office at Burhanpur. There are many deed writers, who sit in Tehsil building, whose introduction to the new technology is confined to only mobile phones and photocopiers. One of them wrote deed of my land in long hands, witnesses were made to sign, their photographs were taken, fingerprints of the buyer and sellers were also obtained at many places in the register.

Deed writing in long hands takes nearly one and half hours but if the computers are allowed to be used, it can be done in 7 or 8 minutes. After nearly four hours of strain the cheque for Rs. 85000/- was given to me. The anomaly in the rate of the compensation is clearly visible. Those who had taken the compensation in 2013 before the Land Acquisition Bill was passed they also got the same amount, which I was given three years thereafter in 2016. I was told that if the compensation had been given to me as per new rates, I could have got nearly Rs. 45 lakhs. But there is no use in arguing with the employees in the district administration. In fact, there is no government worth name in Uttar Pradesh. It is the writ of Revenue officials, Police and Babus of various departments runs in the entire state. They listen to you only when you are a politician or an influential moneyed man, otherwise you have to suffer at their hands and pay them bribe for the movement of files. A euphemistic word ‘speed money’ is used for bribes.


The offices of the Sub-Registrar in the Tehsils across the state of Uttar Pradesh reek with the corruption, laxity and incompetence. Their non-cooperation to both buyers and sellers is seen to be believed. While the buyers will be asked to cough up the money to do the work the sellers are be treated with disdain. This deplorable condition prevails in almost all offices. But in Police Stations, Hospitals, Courts, PWD offices, Sales Tax Offices and Sub Registrar Offices, the condition is very appalling. I have not been able to understand while the technology is not being used, which is bound to bring efficiency, and rid the offices from corruption to a large extent. Technology will also considerably save time, money and harassment of the public. Computerisation has been adopted with half-hearted approach in all offices. The employees working in the government offices come and go at their own sweet wills. While the condition of roads has certainly improved in the present regime of Akhilesh Yadav, the law and order situation has touched its nadir. Electricity supply is very erratic. Sometimes the electricity is supplied in the day time and sometimes in the night. People have no alternative but suffer in silence. 

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