Why Bureaucrats Hesitate to Act | Roopa D Moudgil IPS | TEDxDSCEWomen

when people meet me generally they are curious to know what it takes to be a police officer what are the challenges are these challenges any different for a woman top cop in a predominantly male dominated police force and so on in the next 16 minutes I will unravel some of these challenges if not all when people enter the Indian Police Service the IPS they are starry-eyed and they have seen him like idealism in mind but as days rolled by and they become part of the system their idealism waxes and wanes and the first sign of this is when the officer begins to think in terms of what his political boss warns rather than what the law demands my first run the war with a politician was way back in August 2004 I was in my first independent charge as the police head of any district I was posted in Harvard district I was just a month old in that post the local court had issued a non-bailable warrant against the then chief minister of Madhya Pradesh executing non-bailable warrant meant arresting her eventually this incident led her to resign from the post of chief minister but for me trust me though this incident involved a person as high profile as the chief minister of a state this has been the easiest challenge till date in India we have a deep-rooted Menace of VIP culture the VIPs particularly the politicians are given special treatment of various kinds one such being policeman given as gunmen to politicians now in most of the situation's most of the cases even when there is no real threat even when there is no specific threat gunmen are given as status symbols and the more the gunmen the higher the state it is perceived and it's not an exaggeration at all that many a time most of these gunmen are used as boys to run Iran's I was posted as the Deputy Commissioner of Police Bengaluru City armed reserve and my job was to supervise man management personnel deployment and therefore I took stock of the situation as to where my boys had been deployed and to my utter shock I found that a number of politicians the public representatives the MLAs MPs MLCs and so on had kept the gun men in excess of the authorized number they were supposed to keep now I made a list there were 82 politicians who had kept about two hundred and sixteen gunmen in excess of the number they were entitled I started withdrawing them the first resistance came from my own boss who reprimanded me in front of my subordinate officers yet undeterred I completed the task I withdrew till the last excess gun man came back to the unit in the same stroke I also removed withdrew eight brand-new suvs kept by the then ex Chief Minister of Karnataka the man had stepped down from the post of chief minister yet the vehicles had continued to be with him I withdrew the vehicles but I often wondered why my predecessors had not acted what prevented them from setting things right I later learned that these are called the dirty jobs they are unpleasant tasks inviting the wrath of the politicians and nobody wants to do them not very long ago I was posted as d IG prisons Bengaluru I was there in that post for barely 17 working days barring all the Sundays and holidays and during that time I witnessed similar special treatment being given to a convict this convict was very powerful she had been the close aide of the ex chief minister of tamil nadu who died recently the convict herself was slated to be the chief minister some time ago in that state now the Supreme Court had convicted her under corruption act for possessing disproportionate assets beyond had known sources of income flouting the Honorable supreme court's orders the jail officials had given special facilities to her as quid pro coal so I reported this irregularity and soon after this report a number of people asked me was your act a well thought out one or something done at the spur of the moment frankly speaking I did not think of the consequences there was no need to because I was clear in my mind that had acted in a manner most transparent and accountable which every public servant is expected to now after this report I was slapped a defamation suit notice so what is the take home if you stir hornet's nest be prepared for all kinds of oddities and notices in a similar such instance 11 years ago I received a similar notice but that time it was privilege motion notice by a legislator in 2006 I was posted as the district police head of be the district there were riots in toluca of be the district called hum 'nobody there were Primus prima facie reports that the local member of Legislative Council MLC had incited the riots and therefore I gave a go-ahead to the station house officer of the police station to register case against the MLC and to take further action no sooner than I did this not only was I transferred but that apart privilege motion notice was slapped on me now the law is very clear rules are very clear if a public representative is booked or named in the fyr as accused beat the MLA or mlc or MP he cannot claim it as his privilege there can't be any privilege motion against the person who does it yet unjustifiably I was slapped the notice I was made to appear before the privilege committee of the state legislature a number of times and it dragged on for several years yes and now what is the take home what is the lesson that the politician is driving home in this he is trying to teach the lesson to a bureaucrat if you take me head-on this is what is going to be meted out to you he is creating a fear psychosis in the mind of not just that particular individual bureaucrat but in the whole clan of bureaucrats and if the bureaucrats gets scared and succumbs the politician succeeds in his purpose trust me not many officers are willing to face such notices because for acts done in official capacity these kind of notices create a lot of personal discomfiture they take away personal time energy peace of mind and of course money if you have to fight it out in the court of law and therefore nobody wants to face them but in my personal opinion just like every occupation has its own occupational hazards these notices be to the privileged notice or the contempt notice or the or any other kind of notice defamation notice whichever they are the occupational hazards which have to be faced boldly by the bureaucrat now coming to the challenges that I faced as a woman in male-dominated police force the peril is that the woman officer could be ignored taken for granted taken lightly her instructions can be thrown to air at times I had one such shocking experience in the other district in 2008 I was heading gutter district police force in March 2008 in Nirguna Toluca of gathered district there was a powerful politician who had been a minister earlier he addressed his a gathering of his followers and made an inciting speech that made his followers to set the blaze on fire three government bustles soon after his speech now gum and buses mean public property bought out of taxpayers money I instructed my subordinate the second-in-command of the rank of dy SP to arrest the politician as he was prima facie guilty of abatement of the offense and there was video graft evidence of his speech now to my utter shock not only my subordinate resisted refused but also kept on arguing relentlessly and kept lying to me that the politician had already left the town I too did not budge I had reached the police station in the morning and I kept sitting throughout the day so it became evening it became night the clock struck 9:00 at night 9:15 9:30 10:00 and finally when the police staff saw that I am not budging out they somehow managed to get the politician to the polish police station and then I instructed the station house officer of the police station to carry on the Arras procedures legally and to hand him over to the judicial custody which was carried out now upon the subordinate who had been captain who had been lying to me I took upon an inquiry and found that he was in constant touch with that politician overfall though he had been lying to me that he was nowhere to be found to this effect I sent a report against the subordinate the DSP to the government as well as the Election Commission of India because by that time election machinery was in place and the government suspended him and he remained in suspension for more than a year now the challenges could be of a very different kind yaagh curry was created as the newest district of Karnataka and I was the first police head of the district they were teething problems let alone there being no office building let alone there being no official residential quarter there was not even striking force so if there is a law not a problem or peace disturbance what does one do without striking force hence I adopted a strategy in the initial few days even in the smallest of the smallest instances of peace disturbance I took strictest action without any leniency against the law breakers and that sent down a message that if you take law into your hands you will not be spared and this worked wonders my next three years of yadagiri tenure were quite peaceful but we are clearly posting posed different challenges even to my family members as I said there was no official residential quarter there was not even a private one available but incidentally my husband had an additional post he was in charge of that additional post in that district and that post had an official quarter but that residence was in a village and the village was called Rima and goody I started staying there and very next to the residence was a school my daughter literally started her formal education in that village school she sat on the floor as there were no benches and she completed three years of her education there in a school with no facilities whatsoever including the toilet now not many police officers IPS officers like to work in such places which are called backward nondescript remote and in what in their own words they would call lacking in lights and in such a place I spent more than three years of my service including the period of my prime youth they so challenge is therefore a manifold yet if the officer is willing to take risks if the office has nothing to hide if he is clear in mind that he has acted lawfully and is fair if he does not cling on to politicians for Berg's cushy postings and so on and last but not the least if he has kept his backs back ready to move out any time if transferred then such an officer he or she becomes a force to reckon with I after taking head-on the mighty and powerful on several occasions if I'm alive and kicking and able to tell you where a TEDTalk before y'all you can imagine the robust protection and the law available to the bureaucrats for acts done in official capacity and therefore I find many of the fears of bureaucrats to be unfounded and baseless now you might see that there is it's a commonplace knowledge that the MLAs the MPs the ml sees these posts are created under the Constitution of India but one must not forget that it is under the same Constitution the all-india services the is the IPS are created and article 311 of the Constitution gives complete protection to the bureaucrats for acts then in official capacity and it is available to every officer in the country including the state services so the day the bureaucrats are able to come out of the phobia of transfers the phobia of politicians we will have the best bureaucracy in the world Karl Marx once said bureaucracy is an iron cage but I find that our bureaucrats have chained themselves they are the ones holding the chains the day they break away from these self-imposed chains the day they start exercising their real powers we will see a new India thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 3,060,438

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Social Science, Achievement, Career, Cause, Change, Community, Government, Motivation, Self-help, Women, Women in business, Women's Rights, Work

Id: hQ4SYgOiGs4

Length: 15min 54sec (954 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 03 2018