By Anderson Rani
The fall of NEIGRIHMS started when an engineer was appointed the Deputy Director (Administration) against all odds and precedence. This was possible with the connivance of self-centered individuals who are at the helm of the Institute affairs. It is still not clear how the Section Officer of Purchase Department was appointed as the Liaison Officer to liaison with the Union Ministry of Health, Government of India. The fallout of this unprecedented appointment of Administrator without experience in administrative matters has turned the individuals into a ‘yes man’ not only of the Director but all the corrupt individuals who had advocated his cause.
As per the structural intent of this type of organisation, the Deputy Director is to check-mate the Director in terms of government rules and regulations but unfortunately in this case he becomes a “Chamcha.” When Prof A.G.Ahangar joined the institute as a Director, the first change that happened was the colour of the main gate from its original design to that of a box-shaped structure (original design still inside the box). The gate was painted “GREEN” not because of the environment but because of other reasons. Now after the present Director joined, the colour had changed to blue (not able to make out this time what the colour code means). With the support of the Health Minister of the state, the MP who belongs to the same Church as the Deputy Director gets to hold on to his post for 7 years! With his wit and manipulative talent he had been able to convince the present Director to designate him as a Superintendent Engineer though he is only an Executive Engineer. For those who don’t know, the Engineering Department of NEIGRIHMS has no hand in the buildings and ongoing construction in the campus. All these are done by Larsen & Toubro Ltd under the supervision of HSCC directly from the Ministry of Health Government of India, Delhi. The engineering department for all these many years only looks after repairs. Hence there is no justification to have a Superintendent Engineer for the type of activities they are executing.
It is a well known fact in this Institute the only activity that moves in full throttle is “PURCHASE” and hundreds of crores is being spent during the tenures of different directors. Anything which is more than 10 years old will be condemned, sold at a throwaway price and a new one will be bought. Whether the equipment has been used or not, after 10 years it will be replaced by a new one where most of the time the supplier of the new one takes back the old one in a process known as “buy back”. It is also a well known fact that if Departments request for anything that is of small value, they will not get it but if the value is huge then files are being cleared only in a day or two. For instance. this Institute has 7 Operation theatres (OT) whereas only 2 are being used in a day due to shortage of anaesthesiologists for many years. Another 8 OTs are being recently installed at a high cost with provision of state of the art equipment when the fact is that even the existing ones are not utilised. The amount of public money unnecessarily spent on acquiring equipment for the high end OTs amounts to several hundred crores!
Wise men usually surround themselves with wise and unbiased advisers but unfortunately in NEIGRIHMS all Directors including the present one are surrounded by self-centered, manipulative, corrupt individuals. Appointing incompetent people is not the only way to destroy an Institution but promoting juniors over seniors wherever there is a scope is another way in which institutions go to seed. When the present Director joined the Institute everyone thought something positive would happen when he said that he takes decisions “by the book” or we may say by the rules. But rules have two sides, the letter and the spirit. In these few months he has forgotten the spirit of the rules. Everything is now hijacked by the same people who had been working all these years just for their own interests.
For instance, out of all the senior faculty of the Institute the junior-most professor was appointed as Dean. Never before has a junior superseded his senior for the post. These types of appointments are made against all precedents with consequences adverse to the development of the Institution because the Dean is the head of academics and chairs many important decision-making committees.
All these years since the start of the College of Nursing in NEIGRIHMS, a local, senior and experienced lady ran the college but recently she is found to be too old to apply for the job of Principal in a position she had held for 15 years. In 2018 this post was advertised, where she also applied but for reasons best known to the concerned authorities the results were never declared. In terms of manipulating the recruitment rules to suit some, this Institute tops the list. Hence it ends up in a situation where the post of programmer, a Class-1 officer is manned by a person who has no idea whatsoever on what programming is all about. The Deputy Registrar is a graduate promoted from the post of a Lower Division Clerk (LDC). It is also understood that a junior faculty of the college is very optimistic of being elected with the backing of high officials but the pertinent question is : how will the work environment be when a senior person has to answer to a junior she had been guiding for so many years?
There’s one thing which the present Principal in-charge has which differentiates her from the rest. She does not allow herself to be used by anyone including the Director. A proper work environment/job satisfaction is very important for maximising the potential of individuals and the organisation as a whole. One of the main reasons for many faculties leaving the Institute is the toxic atmosphere where only sycophants (chamchas) prosper. It took 3 long years for the last Director to realise this fact. By then it was too late for him to fight back. I wish the incumbent Director would learn from history so that this Institute can be saved without any waste of time. There are many issues which a newly joined Director is not expected to know but for the person to act merely on hearsay will only add to the problems instead of finding solutions.
The central government had decided a few years back that recruitments for all group B and C employees will be done only with a written test and the merit list will become the final result. With this new arrangement, the section which handles this process is considered to be very important. Hence the top priority should be to maintain strict confidentiality. To the astonishment of many, there is an order to the effect that the question paper for the post of Store Keeper and Pharmacist (personnel under the direct control of Purchase Officer) should be from a certain organisation! Is this because the Examination Cell of NEIGRIHMS does not have competent people who will know where to get the question papers for a particular post or this is a way to manipulate the results of these two categories of posts? There’s a saying in this Institute that tenders for both services/works and goods are prefixed. Is this trend now contaminating recruitment also? The official who started this intrusion into exam procedures in NEIGRIHMS should be prosecuted as per rule and should be punished accordingly before posts are auctioned to the highest bidder. If anyone justifies this misconduct then they are definitely a part of this scheme “Posts for Sales.”
Oh the fate of NEIGRIMHS! How did we know that an Institute meant to deliver health care and healing would sink to such depths and there’s no one to blow the whistle!