A few good men at work, more needed

Kuljit Bains

Many Education Department employees, including teachers, are up in arms over how they are being “pushed around”. A lot of information such as poor school results and learning outcomes has come out over the past year. In the food sector, we have discovered over the past few months what mess lies behind the nutrition we provide our children. All this can be seen as a sign of failing governance, but that would be an incomplete picture. In the present context, it is the result of a shake-up caused by a few officers -- two to be precise -- which is causing a lot of dust to fly around.

Krishan Kumar as Secretary, School Education, and Kahan Singh Pannu as Commissioner, Food and Drug Administration, are two persons in the state government who are demonstrating what the will to do honest labour can achieve. By their lone presence in their respective departments, the two officers have made a demonstrable difference, at least in initiating change.

To an extent it is their innovation that has achieved results, but far more important than that has been a willingness to roll up the sleeves and do the dirty work of analysing data and working the files to find solutions within the given constraints. Krishan Kumar made the effort of studying the students’ performance, comparing it to resource deployment, and then moving the system to deliver. The process is currently on. Pannu has gone about showing the rulebook to food producers and sellers, besides chemists. There is a scamper by everyone in the trade today to get their documentation in order. Food testing labs that were either fudging reports or simply idling are suddenly abuzz, delivering a lot of revealing results. People are questioning quality at the shops.

But these are not the first assignments of the two in which they have caused a stir. Both have a history of ‘doing their job’ in every role they were given. All of this, of course, has been met with resistance too, from within the government, and outside. Abrupt postings, missions cut short, protests, pressures from superiors, et al, have been the norm. At no point, however, has either of them attracted the charge of unethical conduct, even if Pannu was once physically assaulted over specious allegations. Under his watch at the time, he had been instrumental in stopping a couple of scams in the Education Department.

Krishan Kumar was first noticed for his work on female foeticide as Nawanshahr Deputy Commissioner, when too he faced resistance from the implementing staff, as he is facing now. His first stint in education also had brought him trouble, enough for him to go on deputation to the Centre. Pannu has faced a few knocks himself, beginning with farmers who did not like his introduction of a fixed date for paddy sowing to save groundwater; or his exit after he busted many rackets in higher education as Vice-Chancellor of Punjab Technical University. His work as pollution board chief under the SAD government brought him in conflict with industrialists, and was unceremoniously shunted out. What sustained them, though, is the simple principle of sticking to the rules and working within the ambit of the law.

Yet, none of this may achieve much. For, at the end, they are mere individuals, who can and will be moved out of their roles sooner or later. Any significant and long-term result for the state can be visible only if their practices become part of the entire system. Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh has been bold in appointing the two officers in crucial sectors, perhaps even against resistance. But there surely are many more such officers available in the state. And he needs to spot them and put them to good use. One sector crying for such attention is health, with its multitude of deficient government facilities and overly corrupt private services.

The political gain in such an action is simple – instant positive response from voters. No common voter in the streets knows the secretaries heading various departments. They only know whether they are getting what they want or not, and who is at the top of the government – right now, it is Capt Amarinder Singh.