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Inspired Folks

4 September 2007 - 4:20am — tsubba
Raju Narayanaswamy One subtle twist in a local district collector’s official probe report and T U Kuruvila, Kerala’s land scam-tainted public works minister, could probably have hung on in office — not felled the way he was, today. But the Collector was Raju Narayanaswamy. And that is saying a lot in Kerala. This middle class Iyer from Changanassery, known for taking on political and other heavies like few IAS officers would dare, has remained a pariah for most parties in Kerala’s two political halves. The brushes soon came to a point where he took on his father-in-law, a big-time contractor, who wanted to block off a public road to a poor neighbourhood of Scheduled Castes to wall up land for himself. “I requested my father-in-law not to misuse my position as the local Sub-Collector, but he wouldn’t listen. I invoked the Criminal Procedure Code and served orders on him, called in the police and carried out the demolition,” recounts the man who once led a raid on the home of one of Kerala’s politically influential liquor barons who wouldn’t pay up the Rs 11 crore that he owed the government in taxes, and seized his belongings. A minister rang up, asking him to lay off and return the seized stuff, Narayanaswamy refused and was on the political hitlist yet again. Controversies, and trouble, have always been with Narayanaswamy, the topper of the 1991 IAS batch — he topped the SSC exams as well — and a topper at IIT Chennai’s computer science department who turned down an MIT scholarship to enter the Civil Service. Nine years ago, he bulldozed the sides of an important Thrissur road to widen it, hitting businesses with clout who pulled strings to perpetually harass him. Five years ago, he had a run-in with a prominent north Kerala minister in Kasargod. Narayanaswamy refused to recommend sanction as the local District Collector, to turn a hospital that the minister owned into a private medical college, without prescribed infrastructure. Narayanaswamy says his run-ins are only because he can’t help being “stubborn” when things turn “unjustifiable.” Like when he refused permission to a real-estate businessman to fill up a large paddy farm — it would have deluged some 50 poor village homes nearby with waste from the adjacent government hospital. And when he refused to sanction payment for a badly built earthen bund costing several crores meant to help poor farmers — he was proved right when the bund dissolved and vanished in the rains. He was made to go on forced leave as managing director of the state Marketing Federation (MARKETFED) after refusing to play ball with the chairman, a senior politician. He was shunted to sinecure assignments, even posted to work under junior officers. When Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan wanted encroachers in Munnar driven out, Narayanaswamy was one of the CM’s three handpicked men. Even senior CPM leaders objected to his choice but VS stood his ground. The Kuruvila affair is the latest. The Minister’s children had taken Rs 6.5 crore from an NRI businessman promising to sell him some prime land, soon suspected to be encroached. The sale did not happen, the NRI went public while Kuruvila maintained everything was above board. Narayanaswamy probed the land the Minister’s children were to sell: he reported that a good part of the land they purveyed was government land, some suspectedly benami. Kuruvila could only agree to quit.
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Bharatlal Meena - Apna Desh

tsubba - 17 Sep 2007 - 4:04am
Apna Desh, a revolutionary village self-help concept, born out of the ingenuity of senior IAS officer Bharatlal Meena, Managing Director of the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited and Chairman of the ESCOMS, has found a firm foothold in several districts of the state. Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Meena said the concept has been accepted by the committees in eight districts. In five other districts committees have been formed and are active in their respective areas. The active committees are in Mysore, Dakshin Kannada, Gadag, Bijapur and Bagalkot districts, while groups in Bangalore rural district have also generated interest. In Dakshin Kannada, the Jana Shikshana Trust has adopted two villages for the pilot project Naringana, and in Buntwal taluk it is called Ira. Both are working fine, Mr. Meena added. He outlined the concept of the Apna Desh: its basic philosophy being promotion of a sense of `community ownership’ of all public places like roads, street lights, drinking water facilities, cleanliness and hygiene, schools and other facilities. The people should show a higher degree of responsibility towards these structures and manage them themselves. However, the officials and government funding will always be there to help the people. Common good The sense of ownership makes people more responsible towards their village. This concept can work efficiently at the micro level where the group can work towards a self-driven society. Since there is no money generated from outside agencies, the committees need to mobilise funds. When such an environment is created, all administrative and official hurdles towards development could easily be surmounted. People will also shun the ‘not in my backyard’ attitude and rush to the common good of the villages. Spread the word In bringing this concept to life in areas where it has not been tried so far, the NGOs, the people and their representatives in panchayats should work as one body and perhaps create a `Village development council’ in every village, which should work as a shadow panchayat, Mr. Meena said. In the words of convenor of Jana Shakti Trust, Sheena Shetty: “A spirit of mutual cooperation is embedded in Apna Desh. It gives so much freedom and independence to the people to improve their villages with the help of democratic institutions and government machinery.”

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