Click to play videoGhaziabad: It is fashionable to blame Indian bureaucrats for all the ills of India. But there are many bureaucrats in districts and small towns who work hard to fulfil their responsibilities.
One such officer is Ghaziabad District Magistrate (DM) Deepak Aggarwal, who visits every tehsil office in the district regularly and holds a weekly public court.
"This is like decentralisation of administration where we come to face to face with public in the rural area. I enjoy this obviously," says Deepak Aggarwal.
His work includes allotting compensation to the physically handicapped to assuring pensioners of new grants.
The DM and his team of Additional DMs, Naib Tehsildaars and other land, revenue and law and order officers from over three dozen public departments, are supposed to hear infinite queries, and more importantly, deliver immediate respite to the innumerable supplicants.
So does the system deliver? Surprisingly it does, sometimes even quicker than expected
"DM Sahib said it will be done in one hour but it didn't even take that long," says Kusum Devi, a resident of Modinagar.
Deepak Aggarwal, a Bihar boy who joined the UP cadre of the elite Indian Administrative Services (IAS) eight years ago, is among the 5,600 IAS officers in service, complete with a lal batti (red beacon light) on their Ambassador car.
But doesn't he miss the luxury of corporate boardrooms and fixed time schedules?
"We are public servant. So we can't have access control over the type of people that we meet is limited to a certain group. Our office is like a public office and any body can enter," says Deepak.
But he also knows his system needs urgent upgradation.
"There are a lot of file which move from one office to another in a collectorate. So at times it becomes very difficult to track where the file is," he admits
But the real tests of his abilities come in the heat and dust of villages where a half of the three million citizens of Ghaziabad live.
Gone are the days when the people would treat a DM like Mai Baap. In the age of Panchayati Raj and Right to Information, the masses are increasingly unforgiving
Some villagers point fingers at the DM and say, "The government will never change, they are all the same."
But many also admire the efforts of the young officer.
"He is making a good effort. I admire the efforts of the DM Sahib. I will write about it," says Ishwar Singh, resident of Sultanpur village.
Sardar Patel once called the IAS, the "steel frame" of India. Six decades later the standards may have fallen and some allege that the system is chronically ill.
But the point many miss is that the system has delivered justice and security in places where few others would take a chance. No wonder the lal batti Ambassadors continue to trudge along the road less taken.
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