Protocol to precede performance as Meghalaya goes Macaulay way
SHILLONG: Training for civil service officers, read MCS, has a new mantra in Meghalaya — a rigid adherence to a list of do’s and don’ts which when passed off as protocol is to be the benchmark of professional commitment, courtesy Meghalaya’s Chief Minister Mukul Sangma who cannot stomach language ‘unbecoming’ of his stature in official programmes.
Officialdom therefore is to a new parlance now, the language of protocol even though it will mean servility rather than service. Meghalaya is setting a new yardstick.
The Chief Minister is going all out to make the bureaucracy subservient to the political class, something which has never happened in any other state or the country ever since democracy set its roots.
Two minor ‘glitches’ during official programmes of the State Government in which Sangma had been the chief guest has thrown young and enthusiastic officers to face the wrath of their seniors and the political class.
Two separate incidents involving the Chief Minister in Khasi and Garo Hills has propelled the political class to crack the whip on the bureaucrats, particularly the young civil service officers, who are being made to tow their line.
The ‘humorous’ story of the Chief Minister’s ’embarrassment’ began late last year when a young magistrate in Khasi Hills ‘mistakenly’ asked the ‘honourable’ chief minister to stand up and accept his bouquet of flowers.
Peeved as he was with the welcome announcement by the young bureaucrat there was little he could do until another similar encounter in Garo Hills occurred in January, this year.
A young lady magistrate tasked with hosting the government programme in Williamnagar for the inauguration of the indoor stadium spoke the ‘unforgiving’ words of asking Mukul Sangma to rise and accept the gifts meant for him. “May I now request our Honourable Chief Minister to please stand and accept the bouquet of flowers,” is what the young lady magistrate is learnt to have announced at the indoor stadium inauguration programme which infuriated the chief guest so much that he blew a fuse and made a tantrum even going to the extent of publicly admonishing the officer and her boss.
Since then the Chief Minister has been mooting for ‘etiquette’ classes for the young and vibrant officials helping to once again resurrect the old legacy of the British Macaulay Project.
The latest group of MCS officers from the 2010 batch was made to attend an ‘indoctrination’ programme of the government at the Meghalaya Administrative and Training Institute (MATI), Shillong, for two straight days this week.
Senior bureaucrats ranging from East Khasi Hills Deputy Commissioner Sanjay Goyal to DIPR Director Himalaya Shangpliang did not forget to mince words to remind the young officers as to whom they needed to serve in the state.
It’s a different story altogether that none of the officers bit the political bait.
Though India is soon to celebrate its 67th year of Independence, this August, its colonial hangover is far from over. The Indian bureaucracy is a case in point. Created by Macaulay — the British imperialist to whom British historians has sung many paeans, the Indian administrative class which has in later years come to be called ‘Babudom’ sought to create a class of Indians who would despite their brown skins have a British intellect and seek to serve their white masters.
While the British have left, the servility of the ‘Indian babu’ has not. Only the white master has been replaced with the brown one (read the Indian politician).