A year as IAS Probationer(2020-21) (Part1)

All those who dream of becoming a civil servant are mostly aware about the year long training in Mussoorie. But there is another part, which is less known and yet it is the starting point of a trainee’s work as an officer. After Phase 1 training in LBSNAA , all the IAS officer trainees are sent to their respective State cadres for one year of district training. We are posted as an Assistant Collector and the task is to learn about the job with hands-on experience.

Despite of growing up in Bhopal, I hadn’t travelled much of the length and breadth of my state. Now the opportunity had come to not just travel but know the state and people in depth. I was allotted the district Dindori for my training. As soon as the order from the State Government came, I called the Collector of my district and informed him about the date of my arrival. Next, on call I apprehensively asked his Steno, will a guest house be available for my stay ? He comfortingly replied, “You come Madam, we will arrange everything.” No matter how happy I was to be going to the district, I was both nervous and a bit anxious. This was because I now had to make my journey independently as a probationer officer in the field and I knew it was going to be challenging. Due to Covid pandemic in May 2020, all flights and trains were suspended and so we took the Road route from Mussoorie to Jabalpur. Me and my batchmates from Madhya Pradesh took a long journey of 1000 kms via bus and cars and finally reached our separate destinations.

Dindori, a district located in the south eastern part of Madhya Pradesh bordering Chhattisgarh is a small district with 7 lakh population and gifted with nature’s bounty of forests, rivers and waterfalls. It is a predominantly tribal and hence a Scheduled district inhabited by the Baiga, Gond and Sahariya tribal communities. Interestingly, the district doesn't have any railway station so the only way to reach it is via a 2 and half hour scenic road journey from Jabalpur. The following morning, my driver welcomed me at the Guest house in Jabalpur and loaded my luggage in a White Bolero vehicle allotted to me. My anxiety reduced a bit with the conversation I had with him on the trip to Dindori. I became more excited and enjoyed the road journey dotted with beautiful hills, forested landscape and remarkable Eucalyptus plantation alongside the road. Having reached the Rest house, I then went to call on My District Collector and introduced myself to Sir. He gave me a basic background about the district and informed me about the structure of my training.

After a week of quarantine and testing negative for COVID, I began my regular routine at work. I was allotted a small chamber in the Collectorate and in my first meeting, Sir encouraged me to look at the state of District Hospital. District Training has to do a lot with the assignments one gets from the District Collector. The course of training, though outlined by the academy, is very much decided by him/ her. And hence, I started visiting the hospital daily.

Dindori did not have any other private hospitals and so the entire load of health services fell on this institution. With continuous visits for 2 weeks, I learnt about hospital administration, its management and also met the doctors and patients. I realised the sorry state of affairs in terms of malnutrition in the district. I’ll always remember one such instance when I went to Karanjia, a development block about 68 kms from the headquarters. I went to the Community Health Centre for a routine inspection where the Medical Officer briefed me about a case of newly born twins who were underweight. If not taken to the district hospital to the Sick and Newborn Care Unit ( SNCU), their chances of survival were thin. But the issue was not lack of ambulance or services, the issue was the mother not willing to go. I was curious yet surprised and spoke to the mother. She told me her husband was a driver and was stuck in Chhattisgarh due to travel limitations. She had come with her mother, brother and sister-in-law. They refused to come along with her and demanded a written guarantee that nothing will happen to the kids. So here was a condition, it was the question of her children’s life but she reasoned with me, “ I have never been to Dindori, how can I take my kids and go ??” That was a pinching question. The road that I travelled daily to explore the district, that woman had never taken in her life. Her fear of the unknown and suspicion of how she will stay, was overpowering her. It took almost an hour for me to convince her and her mother-in- law to visit the district headquarters where children will be taken care of. “We would lose our daily wages”, said the sister-in-law and moved aside. I wrote my number on a piece of paper and hoped that it would reassure her to go and call me in case she needed anything. Finally, we succeeded and the two kids were taken to SNCU in the next hour. The next day, I visited the hospital and found that they had jaundice but were taken care of well. Seeing the smile on that mother’s face made my day but it also left me with a lot of questions.

My work took me to several Anganwadi centres which are the implementation points of nutrition and early education interventions. In probation, we are also expected to do a study in the field. I chose the relation of an unconditional cash transfer scheme with the nutritional parameters of women and children as my topic. In the course of study, I met a lot of tribal people, talked to them and saw their food and living habits. It was an altogether unique experience. Nestled in deep tall Sal forests, by the streamside, the tribal way of living was very simple. All of the hands, legs and face of ‘the Baiga’ woman would be adorned with beautiful tattoos. I would often wonder, how we have come so far away from the indegenious way of living or how far away we have come from nature. We are so disconnected from our natural resources these days, we often start living in unsustainable ways. A small poem written on Baiga would be apt to paint a picture of what I experienced with them.

Dindori district is rich in its tribal heritage and cultural traditions. One such folk art is that of the Gond Paintings, named after the tribal community Gonds who are traditionally involved in making these paintings. Gond paintings are famous for deriving their inspiration from tribal folk stories and detailing with bright colours. It was a place in Block Karanjia named Patangarh, where the Gond Painting was first transferred from the walls of houses to paper and then shared as an art form. It was Late Shri Jangarh Shyam, a Padma Shri Awardee who is credited with introducing the art form to the world and making it widely known. At this creative village, members from each family are involved in making these amazing Gond paintings. I worked briefly with a local NGO named PRADAN to bring together the community for production and sales of the paintings. It is the dedication and hard work of the artists that has kept the traditional tribal heritage alive.

District training is about knowing the work of each department ranging from Revenue, Food, Public works, Education, Women and Child Development etc. One must know about their major schemes, funds, functions and functionaries at the grassroots level. To gain an in-depth perspective, I was given the charge of a CEO Janpad who is tasked with rural development of a block. Schemes like PM Awas, Swachh Bharat, MGNREGA and Social Security pensions are the major implementation priorities. Interesting thing about assuming this office was, at the initial level, I had no clue about the work to be done. Without knowing what to do myself, I couldn’t get the work done !! most of my subordinates were males almost double my age. As an officer, you are supposed to lead a team of subordinates from Day-1 and motivate them to properly implement the government schemes. And so I initially sat for discussions with various sections and visited the Gram Panchayats. The CEO ZP sir guided me at every step and I observed closely his working style, how he takes meetings, talks to subordinates and gets work done. Later, I started taking reviews myself of my subordinate staff consisting of more than 250 people who worked under the overall supervision of the Block office. I was given another month of CEO janpad charge for a different block named Samnapur where I learnt more about other schemes and work. This also gave an opportunity to interact with many political representatives of the area who would convey their concerns regarding the quality of work at one village or the other. Taking help from these inputs, one can direct our focus to such areas which might need our attention like poorly performing subordinate staff or poor condition of infrastructure in far flung areas.

Due to the pandemic situation, regular schools were closed and for continuing learning, the MP government launched the Har Ghar Vidyalaya Programme in which a home was transformed into a cluster classroom and teachers would go there and teach. With my school friend doing her PhD, I visited many such teaching centres. What we found by looking closely is the struggle the teachers face in teaching the existing curriculum to students in desired language. The tribal student was mostly a first generation learner and spoke her tribal dialect at home, a different dialect on the village street and was expected to learn Hindi or English in School. An NGO was thus working on Mother tongue based Multilingual Education which would ensure basic learning in the mother tongue of the child as studies have proven this to be a better learning technique. Many such difficult questions of policy and implementation were faced on a daily basis in the field.

After the interesting experiences during the day, I was lucky to have a set of seniors to share my experiences and gain insights. My Collector Sir gave me different assignments to know about departments in detail and discussed with me about my learnings from the district. My CEO sir rightly said, most of your learning will be in these discussions which you will have with seniors. He corrected me when required and shared experience from his days as a young probationer officer. The warmth of Madam and Sir made me feel that I can also learn and become capable of working better. They felt like family to me in a place distant from my home.

(to be continued )