Me, and my pattawala

In the Indian bureaucracy, the position of a peon – or “pattawala” as we call them in Gujarat – stands out for its uniqueness. The peon in any government office is the unofficial receptionist, bouncer, gopher and information provider. Who else will tell you which officer sits where and who has been transferred and to where. A cup of chai with them can turn into some jolly good office-gossip time.

I have spent a year working for the government out of a suitcase — in waiting rooms with my laptop, in the conference room if it was too hot and I needed the air conditioning, and sometimes in the secretary’s chamber if he was generous enough. I finally got my own office last week, and yes, having your own office in the government means having your own pattawala. Mine is called Dharmendrabhai, in his 50s, and hard of hearing, nevertheless possessive and ensuring that he does his utmost to keep me happy. Normally, between an officer and his/her peon, there is a love-hate relationship, i.e. either he loves you or hates you! Luckily in my case, Dharmendra kaka falls in the former category, at least as of now!

A typical peon is a longstanding government employee, frequently over 50, with all the knowledge of the government’s workings that lengthy experience can bring. That is invaluable especially if one is a consultant, as I am, rather than someone recruited through one of the many government exams and has a better idea of how letters are to be signed and where to submit what documents. Here, a peon can guide one through the warren of government offices and throw in some useful insider information, too.

However, all is not rosy, when it comes to the IPS, or the Indian Peon Service as many of my colleagues in the government jest. In my experience, they tend to suffer from the same malaise as the rest of the government: They can only be hired, and not fired! And yes, that too by not someone directly above them, but by a different administration department altogether making the recruitment and reporting process lengthy, as is the case with almost all government recruitment, be it of teachers or other officers.

So a lot of officers struggle with their peons, if they are getting paid almost 20,000 rupees a month thanks to the Sixth Pay Commission, there is no way they are going to clean an office or bring tea without being repeatedly prompted. Add to this there being recruitment of contractual workers. In institutions that are, by nature, hierarchical, I perhaps should not have been surprised to find that peons have their own peons. Contractual workers are hired to fill vacancies in the department because depending on the finance available, there are only so many peons departments can request the nodal department to recruit.  Of course since many officers tend to be in meetings or travel often and since every senior officer has his/her own peon, a lot of them don’t have much to do while the officer is out. (Which explains a common scene in government offices – the peon dozing off on the chair!)

Arriving in a government office can be like a foreigner’s first visit to India: You are struck by the number of people loitering as soon as you land! The group of peons, the contractual workers, occasionally peons from other departments visiting for tea.  But take a look at the office premises, and if you get a chance, tour the kitchens, and you realize how little gets done. Peons, like most officers, are hired through a common administration system, and thus can only be transferred by them. Removing them of course is not an option; it is as difficult as firing an Indian Administrative Service officer without the former having the kind of immunity the IAS officers enjoy.

It pains me to see so much infrastructure in the government not being maintained  and so many salaries being paid for absolute inefficiency and the poor young contractual peon running around while his older permanent counterparts down hundreds of paper cups of soup from the government office vending machine. Of course, it seems more obvious with the peons because we don’t peek into the government offices to see the many lower-rung babus playing solitaire (and some senior ones too!) or constantly reading one of the many free dailies that the government offices get, like ‘Crime News’ in our office. These are just symptoms of a system we have designed where staff cuts or salary cuts are unheard of, and a merest hint of cleaning the system up would be met by a lot of unionized dharnas.

I guess it has to start with our entire system, where we refuse to hold anyone accountable, and go on adding them to our muster rolls – Gujarat has 5 lakh government employees, Maharashtra, 14 lakh, I wonder how many in all would be there in India, and how many right at this hour, would be dozing off or making some poor fellow wait for a little attestation, or a signature on some document and getting sadistic pleasure out of that little power they have.

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