The arrest of an NGO leader for breaching security and trying to enter the Main Secretariat building is rather bizarre. The lady claims she was trying to get an audience from media personnel for the parents of a rape victim. The Media Centre is located inside the main Secretariat building. It is not the Press Club where members of the public can have free access and share their views and grievances. The Media Centre is where journalists send their stories from. It is a sacrosanct space, not a public one. This should be communicated to the public by media persons themselves. The NGO leader should have gone to the Press Club instead of barging into the Media Centre.
But this is not to say that the idea of a bio-metric card that is fingerprint sensitive to enter the portals of governance in a democracy is not an ill-conceived idea. Everyday hundreds of people who wish to come and see a minister for a number of reasons are put to great discomfiture. The idea of a security-proof secretariat must have come from those who cannot handle pressure groups and activists of various kinds who have in the past barged into minister’s rooms, including the Chief Minister’s. It’s true that in the national government every visitor has to go through the rigmarole of proving that he/she is not a security threat. But we are talking here about a tribal society that has no experience of dealing with a sophisticated and borrowed system of security as practiced in the western world.
While ministers and bureaucrats may argue that visitors actually distract them from their work schedule and as a result, clearance of important files is delayed, this can be overcome by setting strict visiting hours for the public. Of course there should be an assistance desk which would sort out matters and see if every request merits to be entertained. Some issues need not be handled by the minister but by someone authorized to do so. It is seen that many visitors do not understand the etiquette of meeting with a VIP. They should take minimum time to get their points across. But many tend to beat around the bush and turn the meeting into a gossip session. Our people require to be educated on this! Moreover, our elected representatives are not there to deal with personal matters in their offices. They are there to work in the interest of the State and its entire population.