It’s an affliction, a well documented one perhaps, that we young IAS officers set out to straighten the world with our honest ideas, ferocity and zeal.
Time, it was said, and reiterated so by Old-timers at numerous gatherings and meets, would eventually mellow down this ferocity, ending up in an officer either becoming pliant, disinterested or becoming totally compromised by the "System".
Steeped in conservatism, anonymity and needless status quo-ism, these elders would constantly remind us of our role akin to Emperor’s eunuchs, who would have enormous prowess in decision making, albeit behind thickly veiled curtains.
So it naturally was, that when I took over the post of a "Chief Officer" , a sort of abridged less-presumptuous word than a “Commissioner”, much in line with Goan ways, of Margao, that I would be hopeful of setting things straight.
Being a civic body of the largest city in the state it had a budget of 140 crores for a population of 1.1 lakhs. It had around 49000 house tax payers, more in theory than practice as arrears had piled up to 11 odd crores.
Margao Muncipality had a fierce reputation for corruption, chaotic systems of service delivery, downright hooliganism by councillors, an indifferent and lethargic staff etc.
It was least preferred of the postings even amongst the usually "PLIANT" Goan officers.
The merry men, or the councillors, twenty in total, I was told, largely came from respectable sections of society such as Gambling den owners, Bar owners, Petty Contractors, pimps and the like.
My outgoing predecessor would hand over the charge in a packed room full of councillors, stooges, public, almost shivering with fear, and in an semi-abducted state of affairs.
The man would later, as we drove together to Panjim, espouse ecstatically having gotten rid of this posting, and reminisced with delight how his efforts to that end finally bore out.
I would later be appraised that this officer was honest, but lacked the spine and the nerve to stand up against the almost criminal Councillors and the trade unions.
Never to be perturbed, I nonchalantly took over the charge, and could immediately sense an air of despondency and craving amongst councillors.
The usual milling of crowds and general abduction of the chief officer by public and the councillors immediately stopped, perhaps overtly or covertly so, and councillors seemed to desist to enter my cabin initially. The would naturally try to "feel out" the officer and gather intelligence before they would make any move, a standard routine in the annals of government Departments.
I would spend the initial few days fending off the traffic into my cabin with assurances that things would be set right soon, and that having joined recently would need time to study the system before taking action.
Massive piles of files left behind by my predecessor didn't make a clean sight, so I ordered them to be physically removed from my cabin and be tucked away before I could make sense of things.
Public seemed to buy my argument of being a novice and would melt away , partly in anticipation of better things to come, but I knew that I would have to get cracking soon lest the resentment led to generalized rioting soon.
A few councillors would start initially sneaking in to meet me, thanking stars and God for sending an IAS officer to this blessed place, who’d in time rescue this institution and along the way, hopefully, set right that particular councillor, whom he/she disliked for altruistic reasons.
Naturally they weren't serious, as politicians have evolved into a species who would even effortlessly lie to themselves.
Almost immediately, I was one day gherao-ed by swarm of 100 odd people, from one of our markets.
Mostly they barged into the cabin, and indulged in needless sloganeering. Turned out, these markets were owned by us, and we leased these out to select group of people , and was since a hotbed for lawlessness, general flouting of norms,subletting and the like.
They were strictly controlled by mafia-esque market union, who would extract protection money from hapless vendors and would allow them to illegally squat in the markets. The net result being, the original market was habited by shops which were multiples of that legally sanctioned/envisioned by us, and were further buttressed by swarms of illegal vendors sitting under the sun.
This occasional "dharna" over real or imagined issues with the civic body, was intended for demonstrative effect of the numbers they could muster, a veiled warning to the chief officer lest he ventured into cleaning up thier area.
Almost on cue, Councillors quickly called for a small meeting after dharna, and surrounded me to discuss trivial issues, but it was really intended to gauge whether and how much shaken I was after the dharna.
One particular councillor was notorious for lliasoning with these mafia market unions, and calling them over with people to "humble" the Chief Officer every now and then.
I was told they derived almost a sadistic pleasure out of Chief officers being humiliated by these market unions, and would even snigger, giggle away the whole show. I was stirred, but not shaken, and I’d let them know that.
However, in time I managed to consult these unions and understood that the markets were source of livelihoods to hundreds of poor immigrants and the like. Also, supreme court in its recent Maharastra hawkers union case has set the general tone towards more sympathetic treatment of hawkers.
Therefore, I managed to make peace with these market unions, and worked cooperatively towards issues such as fire safety, general hygiene etc.
Eventually, all these dharnas or rallies totally stopped, to almost zero levels from once in 15 days during earlier days, as per reports of my subordinates. The market leaders realized by good intent, and even refused to stage demonstrations later on behest of councillors when they were later cornered.
They even fought with them sometimes to let me at peace!
Then, there was the General body meeting. This was the most dreaded of events that could befall upon any administrative officer, including the chief officer. Basically, the idea would less of legislative discussion, and more of indulging in free and frank orgy of litany, profanities on any staff member who had managed to act legally in face of councillors requests.
The physical location of all the staff would be dead centre, and would be surrounded , as if in a symbolic way, by the councillors.
And decibel levels were purposefully kept high, with occasional threatening body language, intended to threaten and coerce the staff to fall in line.
Fist general body meeting passed off without much aggression, as I was barely 5 days old, and was more intended to intimidate other staff to demonstrate the consequences to me in future.
I sometimes wondered to myself whether 2 years of Police training had made me any better at handling these situations. But I managed to stick to the dictum, that if you are not brave at least put up a face, and no one would ever know.
I assured, rather naively, that we could work together and build a better administration, and that we had no other choice.
Meanwhile, MMC had also, incidentally, kept out a chamber/room reserved for Press in its 150 year old building.
Whilst this was to intially keep them in good humor, this was also a recipe for over exposure to MMC's follies.
A story or two about MMC was regular bread and butter for any reporter worth his name.
News of garbage right in the corridors of MMC, MMC renting trucks on hire needlessly, general lawlessness, apathy in service delivery etc. were regular features in all newspapers before I joined.
Nevertheless, in an analytical problem solving fashion typical of us engineers, which perhaps manifested in me more than others, I did set out to systematically chart out problems and find their solutions.
A familiar routine of meetings of officers of different sections were called, and briefings taken. My tone would be unrelenting and downright rude, a vestige of bygone era of police training, declaring in no uncertain terms that corruption would not be tolerated.
It only had limited effect.
The most intimidating of these "sections" were, to no one’s surprise, the "Technical" section. These were hardened municipal engineers, with almost as many suspensions and departmental enquiries between them as buttons on their shirts. Stubborn, vainly degenerate, almost mafia-esque, each of these 7 odd engineers would look at a Chief officer like a paedophile would at an innocent kid.
Meanwhile, since time was running out, I had to deliver and show that I meant business, and usher in Systemic changes which went beyond the persona of the chief officer.
These changes, I hoped, in long run would internalize and routine-ize the staff to act in a certain way, and would ultimately provide faster delivery of services and cut down corruption.
Later my attention would turn, specifically , to these problems:
1. The burgeoning arrears of House tax. ( which meant many people saw no incentive in paying up their house tax)
2. The lack of responsiveness of staff.
3. Piles of files greeting my own cabin, which indicated general inefficiency of my own office.
4. Tortuous and graft ridden Construction licensing system, which led to no fewer than 50 desks of engineers. And it was no surprise that it was managed only through touts and middlemen.
5. malaise of lethargy and a particular disease of missing files afflicting all the sections. Any unsuspecting citizen would suddenly be handed over the grim news that his file had gone missing, generally to set straight over zealous and "activist" person.
6. A General impudence with which "daily Wagers" , mostly favourites of councillors, were recruited to do our Door to Door collection so MSW. We paid almost 18 lakhs to them every month.
7. maddeningly snail paced delivery of essential services, like birth and deaths registration, corrections, house tax transfer etc. due to unnecessary centralization of powers by chief officers.
8. The general licentiousness and lawlessness with which elected representatives held the institution for milking their honey.Downright "capture" of files, fudging of accounts, illegal recruitment of their stooges, cuts in big licenses amounting to lakhs, works which only took place on paper,employment of Council workers as domestic maids, threats in event of non payment etc, were regular features in their resume.
These problems, eventually, were solved soon, with a mix of smart thinking and execution.
I stuck to age old management principles of Delegation, and pareto principle and the like.
Point-wise, these were the solutions I devised and executed, during the first 3 months.
1. When I took over, GSUDA sponsored SHG scheme based on MSW rules 2010 was tottering. No agreement with any Self Help Group was signed and Government was really keen on this getting through. The idea was to make Door to Door garbage collection self sustainable, by enabling collection of user fees by Self Help groups instead of paid “Daily wagers”, as was being done by the council at the time. I managed, by persuasion and clever motivation, to convince all the daily wagers to constitute themselves into SHGs, assign themselves president etc, and also open bank accounts. Next step was to offload around 250 workers from our payroll to a sustainable form of SHGs for our Door to Door collection of waste.
Basically Self Help groups have signed agreements with us to collect MSW from the 49000 odd homes in Margao, and also to sustain them only on the user fees collected from the waste generators.
This saved us 18 lakhs per month! As well as making the DTD totally accountable to people. DMA and GSUDA have hugely appreciated this, and want to project us as Showpiece for this model in Goa.
This has never been attempted in Goa, and all other municipalities are using paid workers to the same Job. This system has been working well for almost 4 months. All wards are covered!
2. New computerised system of generating notices for arrears recovery, replacing graft ridden inefficient system of manual collection of arrears.
The idea was to send 30000 notices, not even conceivable with earlier manual process, and to gently cajole, remind populous of the dues.
It worked, and set the cash bells ringing for MMC.
This led to whopping 3 crores of collection of arrears within 4 months, a huge amount, considering real available funds for MMC to be in order of 25 crores for entire year!
3. We Installed a Single window system for both trade and Construction licenses system, replacing a tortuous and highly graft ridden licensing system, which earlier had no less than 50 steps and tables to pass through!
Now, these licenses are issued, after such mandatory statutory checks as may be necessary, within deadlines set by Goa Service guarantee acts.
Here, the basic idea was to replace 50 Step-based Earlier Manual License process, into an interactive, SMS based , and transparent system.
Through this system a sense of public service delivery has finally set in at MMC.
The system is capped off, finally, by the door delivery of license by trusted India Post, thus completing the cycle! This dissuades any Touts/Middlemen to participate in licensing process.
4. We Introduced a TOLL Free no, 18002333242, which will patiently listen to peoples complaints, track files on their behalf, and update accordingly. In case of minor complaints, they even make sure its closed!. This runs on software which was created by me in my leisure time. It sends SMS to the complainants and tracks each complaint like a LOG BOOK, with entries for each update with time.
Earlier, hapless citizen had to run to and fro for every small muse, as no one even listened, or cared!
5. Missing files were a popular excuse back then and tracking each file was a horrible experience for citizen. He had to deal with ever busy clerks, run around whole complex, and finally know that his file was pending for months end at some desk.
With the Introduction of File Management system, there is accountability for every file now, and status is seen at any desk in a second.
However, the real innovation here was putting the FMS for essential services files ONLINE. So basically any applicant can see the LOG of file movement of his file sitting at home! This will help much of traffic coming in to MMC needlessly.
6.Piles of files greeted Chief officer chamber before, and people , at any time, swarmed like bees haplessly trying to get thier case through from Chief officer.
Therefore, after first clearing all the backlog, plan of action was devised.
Useless steps in almost every process were eliminated, such as CO's approval for every birth and deaths procedure, like correction etc. All these were instead delegated to sub registrar, as per rule, so that people generally benefited and she could issue the same within a day.
Similarly, for every house tax transfer, files used to come, needlessly, to Chief Officer. These functions were instead delegated to ATO so that minor things like them could be disposed effortlessly. Also needless steps in almost all sections were eliminated, like Admin files going to Chairperson, for which there was no legal sanction.
7. One of the most popular ways of extortion by the councillors was extracting a commission at the time of collecting cheques by the suppliers, vendors, contractors and the like.
Essentially, The accounts section processed the payment after sanction by the Chief officer, and then made out a cheque to the beneficiary. This cheque would be countersigned by chairperson before being issued. Complaints were received thick and fast as to how chairperson would hang on to cheques until “party” pleaded and was promised a cut.
Similar allegations befell cashier, who would demand the same in gentler tones.
The system was quickly dispensed with, and ECS payment was introduced. However this wasn't the killer app. The novelty was in integrating Bill payment with file management system duly verifiable online.
So if anyone hung on to payment for any reason, the log would be visible online and would form evidence.
This drastically cut down frantic visits of contractors, suppliers, general public who’d receive payments. Instead, they could now monitor their payment online, and comfortably receive the same in their accounts sitting at home!
Meanwhile the Press,it was rumoured in the corridors of MMC, was highly compromised and that a few reporters being regulars at councillors’ bars would not hesitate to put unsavoury allegations at their hosts' behest, mostly in the RUMOURS columns of their papers.
However, most of the press, I would find later, were neutral and extremely independent. Their role in appreciating and standing up for the truth must acknowledged and is worthy of their title to one of the "pillars" of the society.
Sure enough, there was soon a barrage of Good press from other papers, who wasted no time to hail our good governance initiatives as “magical”, “unprecedented” and the like.
Steeped in conservatism, anonymity and needless status quo-ism, these elders would constantly remind us of our role akin to Emperor’s eunuchs, who would have enormous prowess in decision making, albeit behind thickly veiled curtains.
So it naturally was, that when I took over the post of a "Chief Officer" , a sort of abridged less-presumptuous word than a “Commissioner”, much in line with Goan ways, of Margao, that I would be hopeful of setting things straight.
Being a civic body of the largest city in the state it had a budget of 140 crores for a population of 1.1 lakhs. It had around 49000 house tax payers, more in theory than practice as arrears had piled up to 11 odd crores.
Margao Muncipality had a fierce reputation for corruption, chaotic systems of service delivery, downright hooliganism by councillors, an indifferent and lethargic staff etc.
It was least preferred of the postings even amongst the usually "PLIANT" Goan officers.
The merry men, or the councillors, twenty in total, I was told, largely came from respectable sections of society such as Gambling den owners, Bar owners, Petty Contractors, pimps and the like.
My outgoing predecessor would hand over the charge in a packed room full of councillors, stooges, public, almost shivering with fear, and in an semi-abducted state of affairs.
The man would later, as we drove together to Panjim, espouse ecstatically having gotten rid of this posting, and reminisced with delight how his efforts to that end finally bore out.
I would later be appraised that this officer was honest, but lacked the spine and the nerve to stand up against the almost criminal Councillors and the trade unions.
Never to be perturbed, I nonchalantly took over the charge, and could immediately sense an air of despondency and craving amongst councillors.
The usual milling of crowds and general abduction of the chief officer by public and the councillors immediately stopped, perhaps overtly or covertly so, and councillors seemed to desist to enter my cabin initially. The would naturally try to "feel out" the officer and gather intelligence before they would make any move, a standard routine in the annals of government Departments.
I would spend the initial few days fending off the traffic into my cabin with assurances that things would be set right soon, and that having joined recently would need time to study the system before taking action.
Massive piles of files left behind by my predecessor didn't make a clean sight, so I ordered them to be physically removed from my cabin and be tucked away before I could make sense of things.
Public seemed to buy my argument of being a novice and would melt away , partly in anticipation of better things to come, but I knew that I would have to get cracking soon lest the resentment led to generalized rioting soon.
A few councillors would start initially sneaking in to meet me, thanking stars and God for sending an IAS officer to this blessed place, who’d in time rescue this institution and along the way, hopefully, set right that particular councillor, whom he/she disliked for altruistic reasons.
Naturally they weren't serious, as politicians have evolved into a species who would even effortlessly lie to themselves.
Almost immediately, I was one day gherao-ed by swarm of 100 odd people, from one of our markets.
Mostly they barged into the cabin, and indulged in needless sloganeering. Turned out, these markets were owned by us, and we leased these out to select group of people , and was since a hotbed for lawlessness, general flouting of norms,subletting and the like.
They were strictly controlled by mafia-esque market union, who would extract protection money from hapless vendors and would allow them to illegally squat in the markets. The net result being, the original market was habited by shops which were multiples of that legally sanctioned/envisioned by us, and were further buttressed by swarms of illegal vendors sitting under the sun.
This occasional "dharna" over real or imagined issues with the civic body, was intended for demonstrative effect of the numbers they could muster, a veiled warning to the chief officer lest he ventured into cleaning up thier area.
Almost on cue, Councillors quickly called for a small meeting after dharna, and surrounded me to discuss trivial issues, but it was really intended to gauge whether and how much shaken I was after the dharna.
One particular councillor was notorious for lliasoning with these mafia market unions, and calling them over with people to "humble" the Chief Officer every now and then.
I was told they derived almost a sadistic pleasure out of Chief officers being humiliated by these market unions, and would even snigger, giggle away the whole show. I was stirred, but not shaken, and I’d let them know that.
However, in time I managed to consult these unions and understood that the markets were source of livelihoods to hundreds of poor immigrants and the like. Also, supreme court in its recent Maharastra hawkers union case has set the general tone towards more sympathetic treatment of hawkers.
Therefore, I managed to make peace with these market unions, and worked cooperatively towards issues such as fire safety, general hygiene etc.
Eventually, all these dharnas or rallies totally stopped, to almost zero levels from once in 15 days during earlier days, as per reports of my subordinates. The market leaders realized by good intent, and even refused to stage demonstrations later on behest of councillors when they were later cornered.
They even fought with them sometimes to let me at peace!
Then, there was the General body meeting. This was the most dreaded of events that could befall upon any administrative officer, including the chief officer. Basically, the idea would less of legislative discussion, and more of indulging in free and frank orgy of litany, profanities on any staff member who had managed to act legally in face of councillors requests.
The physical location of all the staff would be dead centre, and would be surrounded , as if in a symbolic way, by the councillors.
And decibel levels were purposefully kept high, with occasional threatening body language, intended to threaten and coerce the staff to fall in line.
Fist general body meeting passed off without much aggression, as I was barely 5 days old, and was more intended to intimidate other staff to demonstrate the consequences to me in future.
I sometimes wondered to myself whether 2 years of Police training had made me any better at handling these situations. But I managed to stick to the dictum, that if you are not brave at least put up a face, and no one would ever know.
I assured, rather naively, that we could work together and build a better administration, and that we had no other choice.
Meanwhile, MMC had also, incidentally, kept out a chamber/room reserved for Press in its 150 year old building.
Whilst this was to intially keep them in good humor, this was also a recipe for over exposure to MMC's follies.
A story or two about MMC was regular bread and butter for any reporter worth his name.
News of garbage right in the corridors of MMC, MMC renting trucks on hire needlessly, general lawlessness, apathy in service delivery etc. were regular features in all newspapers before I joined.
Nevertheless, in an analytical problem solving fashion typical of us engineers, which perhaps manifested in me more than others, I did set out to systematically chart out problems and find their solutions.
A familiar routine of meetings of officers of different sections were called, and briefings taken. My tone would be unrelenting and downright rude, a vestige of bygone era of police training, declaring in no uncertain terms that corruption would not be tolerated.
It only had limited effect.
The most intimidating of these "sections" were, to no one’s surprise, the "Technical" section. These were hardened municipal engineers, with almost as many suspensions and departmental enquiries between them as buttons on their shirts. Stubborn, vainly degenerate, almost mafia-esque, each of these 7 odd engineers would look at a Chief officer like a paedophile would at an innocent kid.
Meanwhile, since time was running out, I had to deliver and show that I meant business, and usher in Systemic changes which went beyond the persona of the chief officer.
These changes, I hoped, in long run would internalize and routine-ize the staff to act in a certain way, and would ultimately provide faster delivery of services and cut down corruption.
Later my attention would turn, specifically , to these problems:
1. The burgeoning arrears of House tax. ( which meant many people saw no incentive in paying up their house tax)
2. The lack of responsiveness of staff.
3. Piles of files greeting my own cabin, which indicated general inefficiency of my own office.
4. Tortuous and graft ridden Construction licensing system, which led to no fewer than 50 desks of engineers. And it was no surprise that it was managed only through touts and middlemen.
5. malaise of lethargy and a particular disease of missing files afflicting all the sections. Any unsuspecting citizen would suddenly be handed over the grim news that his file had gone missing, generally to set straight over zealous and "activist" person.
6. A General impudence with which "daily Wagers" , mostly favourites of councillors, were recruited to do our Door to Door collection so MSW. We paid almost 18 lakhs to them every month.
7. maddeningly snail paced delivery of essential services, like birth and deaths registration, corrections, house tax transfer etc. due to unnecessary centralization of powers by chief officers.
8. The general licentiousness and lawlessness with which elected representatives held the institution for milking their honey.Downright "capture" of files, fudging of accounts, illegal recruitment of their stooges, cuts in big licenses amounting to lakhs, works which only took place on paper,employment of Council workers as domestic maids, threats in event of non payment etc, were regular features in their resume.
These problems, eventually, were solved soon, with a mix of smart thinking and execution.
I stuck to age old management principles of Delegation, and pareto principle and the like.
Point-wise, these were the solutions I devised and executed, during the first 3 months.
1. When I took over, GSUDA sponsored SHG scheme based on MSW rules 2010 was tottering. No agreement with any Self Help Group was signed and Government was really keen on this getting through. The idea was to make Door to Door garbage collection self sustainable, by enabling collection of user fees by Self Help groups instead of paid “Daily wagers”, as was being done by the council at the time. I managed, by persuasion and clever motivation, to convince all the daily wagers to constitute themselves into SHGs, assign themselves president etc, and also open bank accounts. Next step was to offload around 250 workers from our payroll to a sustainable form of SHGs for our Door to Door collection of waste.
Basically Self Help groups have signed agreements with us to collect MSW from the 49000 odd homes in Margao, and also to sustain them only on the user fees collected from the waste generators.
This saved us 18 lakhs per month! As well as making the DTD totally accountable to people. DMA and GSUDA have hugely appreciated this, and want to project us as Showpiece for this model in Goa.
This has never been attempted in Goa, and all other municipalities are using paid workers to the same Job. This system has been working well for almost 4 months. All wards are covered!
2. New computerised system of generating notices for arrears recovery, replacing graft ridden inefficient system of manual collection of arrears.
The idea was to send 30000 notices, not even conceivable with earlier manual process, and to gently cajole, remind populous of the dues.
It worked, and set the cash bells ringing for MMC.
This led to whopping 3 crores of collection of arrears within 4 months, a huge amount, considering real available funds for MMC to be in order of 25 crores for entire year!
3. We Installed a Single window system for both trade and Construction licenses system, replacing a tortuous and highly graft ridden licensing system, which earlier had no less than 50 steps and tables to pass through!
Now, these licenses are issued, after such mandatory statutory checks as may be necessary, within deadlines set by Goa Service guarantee acts.
Here, the basic idea was to replace 50 Step-based Earlier Manual License process, into an interactive, SMS based , and transparent system.
Through this system a sense of public service delivery has finally set in at MMC.
The system is capped off, finally, by the door delivery of license by trusted India Post, thus completing the cycle! This dissuades any Touts/Middlemen to participate in licensing process.
4. We Introduced a TOLL Free no, 18002333242, which will patiently listen to peoples complaints, track files on their behalf, and update accordingly. In case of minor complaints, they even make sure its closed!. This runs on software which was created by me in my leisure time. It sends SMS to the complainants and tracks each complaint like a LOG BOOK, with entries for each update with time.
Earlier, hapless citizen had to run to and fro for every small muse, as no one even listened, or cared!
5. Missing files were a popular excuse back then and tracking each file was a horrible experience for citizen. He had to deal with ever busy clerks, run around whole complex, and finally know that his file was pending for months end at some desk.
With the Introduction of File Management system, there is accountability for every file now, and status is seen at any desk in a second.
However, the real innovation here was putting the FMS for essential services files ONLINE. So basically any applicant can see the LOG of file movement of his file sitting at home! This will help much of traffic coming in to MMC needlessly.
6.Piles of files greeted Chief officer chamber before, and people , at any time, swarmed like bees haplessly trying to get thier case through from Chief officer.
Therefore, after first clearing all the backlog, plan of action was devised.
Useless steps in almost every process were eliminated, such as CO's approval for every birth and deaths procedure, like correction etc. All these were instead delegated to sub registrar, as per rule, so that people generally benefited and she could issue the same within a day.
Similarly, for every house tax transfer, files used to come, needlessly, to Chief Officer. These functions were instead delegated to ATO so that minor things like them could be disposed effortlessly. Also needless steps in almost all sections were eliminated, like Admin files going to Chairperson, for which there was no legal sanction.
7. One of the most popular ways of extortion by the councillors was extracting a commission at the time of collecting cheques by the suppliers, vendors, contractors and the like.
Essentially, The accounts section processed the payment after sanction by the Chief officer, and then made out a cheque to the beneficiary. This cheque would be countersigned by chairperson before being issued. Complaints were received thick and fast as to how chairperson would hang on to cheques until “party” pleaded and was promised a cut.
Similar allegations befell cashier, who would demand the same in gentler tones.
The system was quickly dispensed with, and ECS payment was introduced. However this wasn't the killer app. The novelty was in integrating Bill payment with file management system duly verifiable online.
So if anyone hung on to payment for any reason, the log would be visible online and would form evidence.
This drastically cut down frantic visits of contractors, suppliers, general public who’d receive payments. Instead, they could now monitor their payment online, and comfortably receive the same in their accounts sitting at home!
Meanwhile the Press,it was rumoured in the corridors of MMC, was highly compromised and that a few reporters being regulars at councillors’ bars would not hesitate to put unsavoury allegations at their hosts' behest, mostly in the RUMOURS columns of their papers.
However, most of the press, I would find later, were neutral and extremely independent. Their role in appreciating and standing up for the truth must acknowledged and is worthy of their title to one of the "pillars" of the society.
Sure enough, there was soon a barrage of Good press from other papers, who wasted no time to hail our good governance initiatives as “magical”, “unprecedented” and the like.
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Eventually, these would be the heydays of my posting here, a source of immense satisfaction at a personal level.
It was at a huge personal cost. My weekends were spent contemplating about ways processes could be streamlined, computer programmes be written etc.
Blank sheets were used by me to write algorithms etc.
I eventually developed , on my own , software for Toll free no's, Construction license and the trade license software.
I wasnt even receiving my salary from the Goa Goverment as of yet.
If this isn't Service to the nation, I'd like to imagine what is.
However, I gathered enemies thick and fast, and my measures would set up a completely different battle as would be seen in my part 2 of Blog!!!!
Jai Hind.
It was at a huge personal cost. My weekends were spent contemplating about ways processes could be streamlined, computer programmes be written etc.
Blank sheets were used by me to write algorithms etc.
I eventually developed , on my own , software for Toll free no's, Construction license and the trade license software.
I wasnt even receiving my salary from the Goa Goverment as of yet.
If this isn't Service to the nation, I'd like to imagine what is.
However, I gathered enemies thick and fast, and my measures would set up a completely different battle as would be seen in my part 2 of Blog!!!!
Jai Hind.
