With 5T secretary V.K. Pandian personally pushing forward the Mo Sarkar initiative, public services in Odisha are all set to improve at a fast clip
Siddhartha Tripathy
Pankaj Patel, the Chief District Medical Officer (CDMO) in charge of Sundargarh district, did not quite know what hit him on the thirteenth of last month. The Odisha government placed him under suspension with immediate effect that day on grounds of dereliction of duty. If it was any consolation, he was not the only one facing the music; Sundargarh District Collector Nikhil Pavan Kalyan was also slapped with a show-cause notice for lapses in implementation of the Mo Sarkar initiative in the district headquarters hospital (DHH).
But Patel had it coming. When Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s long-time private secretary V.K. Pandian, now also serving as Secretary to CM Transformation and Initiatives (5T), visited the Sundargarh DHH earlier in the day to review its healthcare facilities and infrastructure, some patients told him that they were being referred to private labs for getting some basic medical tests done even though such facilities were available in the hospital. According to sources close to this matter, Pandian also learnt there that although patients had already complained earlier to Patel and Kalyan about the issue and lack of other amenities at the hospital, no remedial step had been taken.
Such inaction was in serious contravention of Mo Sarkar, which is based on the Gandhian philosophy of giving people a voice in governance and was hence officially launched last month on the 150th birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation. The initiative is also an integral part of the 5T model of governance that the five-time Chief Minister had recently ushered in to speed up Odisha’s all-round progress through transparency, teamwork, technology, time and transformation.
Given that Pandian had been successfully ensuring the effective, timely and on-the-ground implementation of all the major policies and schemes of the Odisha government ever since he became Naveen’s PS eight years ago, his additional appointment as secretary of the recently created 5T department came as little surprise. However, what he has done in his new role so far has impressed the entire state.
Within a week after taking charge of the 5T department, the 2000-batch IAS officer began making whirlwind tours across the state, often accompanied by other senior bureaucrats such as Chief Secretary Asit Kumar Tripathy and Chief Advisor at Chief Minister’s Office, R. Balakrishnan. Most of these tours were surprise visits to government offices, hospitals and Aahar centres (where the Rs 5 meals scheme for the poor is executed) in far-flung districts, such as Malkangiri, Koraput, Nabarangpur, Nuapada, Rayagada, Kalahandi, Kandhamala, Boudh and Sundargarh, where Pandian and his team reviewed the facilities, services and infrastructure available to the locals.
So far only been heard of and read about as the Chief Minister’s right-hand man, and as one of the most powerful officials in the state who even influenced policymaking, Pandian was finally visible.
Dressed in a formal white shirt, the unassuming bureaucrat was seen interacting directly with ordinary members of the public on many occasions last month. Whether it be while speaking to (and hearing out) patients in various government hospitals, or having lunch with villagers at an Aahar centre in Boudh, or visiting the Regional Transport Office in Kalahandi, the 5T secretary was found to be attentively and meticulously collecting feedback all the time throughout his tour visits.
However, the senior bureaucrat was not necessarily doing anything much out of character.
Right from the beginning of his administrative career, Pandian has been proactively working towards resolving the problems of the weaker sections of the society.
During his stint as sub-collector of Kalahandi district, Pandian stopped the long-standing exploitation of the poor farmers by unscrupulous millers by ensuring that the former received the minimum support price for their produce.
Then when he was Mayurbhanj collector, Pandian received a national award for making it the “Best District in Rehabilitation of the Disabled”. Not many bureaucrats have the distinction of earning the Hellen Kellar Award for services to the disabled.
Later, as collector of Ganjam, the home constituency of Naveen, Pandian received a national award for his endeavours to properly rehabilitate HIV-positive people in the district. One of his prime legacies there is the publicly funded shelter home for AIDS orphans that he had set up on a priority basis. Another one is the amendment of an archaic land law from the British times, which helped some 800,000 families in southern Odisha finally regain their land rights after centuries.
By this time, Pandian had also been recipient of two national awards for his exemplary implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). He was the first officer to effect the disbursement of wages through the banking system long before the process became mainstream and mandatory, what with his overarching objective of saving the poor people’s earnings from systemic corruption.
Therefore, with somebody like Pandian now helming the 5T department and overseeing the implementation of Mo Sarkar the way he has been over the past month, a rising number of people and political observers in Odisha are hopeful that the standard of public services in the state is all set to scale new heights in the coming days.
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