Bureaucracy with a difference

I am in a fix. Which of the state bureaucracies can I term as the ‘Bureaucracy with a difference’? The West Bengal bureaucracy or the Orissa bureaucracy? I encountered with extremely different experiences while approaching the bureaucracies of these two states for understanding the two government’s respective attitudes towards Special Economic Zone and getting access to the government policies and orders regarding the same. While I faced a stumbling block in just meeting the secretaries of concerned departments in West Bengal, leave alone getting any official document from them, in Orissa I was treated quite honourably and given all the information and documents I wanted from the government authorities. Among the two diametrically opposite approaches towards a researcher on a controversial subject like SEZ, which one is more common in the Indian states and which can be termed an attitude with a difference? The judgement might emerge at the end of our multi-state study on SEZ in India. Here let me elaborate the experiences.

As I started my work on SEZ in West Bengal in March 2008, I tried to meet the Industry and Commerce minister of the state to get a first hand understanding of the state government’s attitude on the subject that created so much controversy in the state in the recent period. For this purpose I visited the state secretariat, known as Writers’ Building since the colonial days, and met the Personal Assistant of the minister sometime in late March with a letter from CSH requesting an appointment with the minister to facilitate my understanding on the subject. The PA to the minister asked me to leave the letter with him and he would fix an appointment and inform me of the date of visit. So I waited for two weeks expecting an answer that never came. Then I called the PA over phone and enquired. He replied that the letter had been placed on the minister’s table, but the minister had not yet responded. The minister, being a senior leader of the party as well, was so busy all the time, and it was quite difficult to eke out time from his busy schedule, he remarked. I requested him to personally talk to the minister and fix the appointment as and when possible. But I did not get any response. From that time onwards I went on calling the PA over phone, and every time he responded with similar answers, like ‘the sir is busy now with the campaigning of panchayat election’ or ‘with central committee meeting’ or ‘attending the Assembly session’. Finally, I understood that the minister was not probably interested to meet me on this subject. I know that state ministers normally meet different people outside his routine official works, but the appointments are generally monitored according to the interest of the ruling party. This has been my experience of the long 30 years rule of the Left Front in the state. So I felt that it would be in vain to try to meet the minister and better I should try to meet the secretaries of the concerned departments.

So I got letters prepared from CSH addressing the secretaries of the Industry and Commerce, Finance, Labour and Environment departments of the state government seeking appointments with and cooperation from them in the matter of our SEZ project. But this time also the experience was quite the same as I encountered while trying to meet the minister. I personally went to the Writers’ Building and gave the letters to the PAs of the respective secretaries and asked them to fix appointments according to the secretaries’ conveniences. The PAs assured me to place the letters to the secretaries and inform me the dates of appointment whenever they got the same. But I was never informed of any date and went on calling the PAs time and again to receive the same answers that the sir was busy and they would inform me whenever ‘the sir’ would find time etc. Finally, one of the department secretaries responded with a letter sent to the CSH office in Delhi betraying probably the government’s attitude towards the research enquiries on SEZ.

As the bureaucracy in West Bengal is strictly controlled by its political bosses, I feel that the apathy to meet any query on SEZ generates from the unwillingness of the ruling party to face critical questions on the subject. SEZ has become a politically sensitive issue in the state since the occurrences in Nandigram when a large number of the state intelligentsia turned hostile to the government on the issue of establishment of SEZ there and the opposition parties reaped heavy gains in the subsequent panchayat elections all over the state. The main ruling party i.e. the CPI (M)’s position on the issue has been unenviable as it has come out to oppose SEZ at the all-India level and implement the same in the state. So the CPI (M) leaders and departments controlled by the party tried to evade any meeting on the subject with apprehensions that such interviews might be embarrassing for the state government. On the contrary, when I met the leadership of smaller Left Front partners, they were very candid in expressing their attitudes on SEZ. But alas, all these key departments are under the control of the main ruling party and hence, not ready to cooperate in our research on SEZ.

In the case of Orissa, things had been very easy going after I understood the way of approach. Here, I did not try to meet any minister and got letters from CSH seeking appointments with the concerned secretaries instead. First I went to meet the general secretary of the ruling party BJD and requested him to provide me with the telephone numbers of the department secretaries I would like to meet. He provided me the same. Then before the next trip to the state, I contacted the different departments over phone from Kolkata explaining the PAs of the secretaries about my intention in seeking the appointments. They told me to fax the letters to their departments and they would fix appointments. I immediately faxed the letters and within a few days, I got appointments from the secretaries of Industry and Labour departments. The secretary of the Forest and Environment department asked to me to meet the Director of Environment who would be the competent person to answer the queries on this subject. So I got an appointment with the Director of Environment. Only I could not meet the Finance secretary as he was out of station at that time.

While we went to meet the Industry secretary, we found that a number of people from business and industry were waiting to meet him even before we reached the secretariat. But the secretary called us according to the pre-fixed appointment and patiently answered all the questions. Further, he ordered to provide us all necessary documents on SEZ. The Labour secretary had arrived from Delhi just one hour earlier when we went to meet him. His assistant told us that sir had lot of pending files to clear and might not be able to meet us on that day. But the Labour secretary did not turn down our request and met us, exchanged pleasantries and answered all the queries put forward by us.

Hence, the experiences in the two states had been quite different and needed some explanation. The attitude of the West Bengal bureaucracy is determined by their political bosses and, we can say, the bureaucracy itself is probably politicized at least to some extent. Several times complaints were raised from different quarters (sometimes even by the deprived officers themselves) that placements and promotions at the higher level of the administration were strictly done according to the officers’ allegiance to the main ruling party. It has become an open secret in the state that all important decisions of the government are taken after consultation with the Alimuddin Street, the location of the CPI (M) headquarters. The Chief Minister has a daily routine to attend the party headquarter in spite of his busy schedule.

In Orissa, the case is quite different. Unlike West Bengal, the party is not powerful here. The CM rarely visit the party headquarter. The party and the administration run independent of each other, which is not the case in West Bengal. So the bureaucracy in Orissa (both the Labour secretary and the Director of Environment dept.) even expressed their reservation to the government’s policy on providing special facilities to industries in SEZ. This probably one cannot just imagine in West Bengal.