Almost a personal Water-loo

 

A little after the Pincon bit, I fell grandiosely out of favour and was given a non-existent assignment. Three months into the posting, I was given some work and I held a meeting in this regard. The same evening, when I was going back home, I received a call informing that my assignment had changed. Again. In terms of pecking order of DGPs, the top of the tree is the Head of the Police Force, the numero uno, the primus inter pares, the He-Who-Is-Above-All. Then there are assorted DGPs like DG, CID, DG, IB and so on. Then there is nothing. About 10 feet below nothing is the post of Director General of Civil Defence. Which is where I landed up.

 

I had read about “disguised unemployment” in Economics. I had never expected to come across an overwhelming example of it, that too in a Police assignment. However, that was a bit of all right since I had long given up any hope or expectation of changing the world. What I had not been prepared for was the rank insubordination that prevailed. It was “disgusting unemployment.”

 

There is a wing called Water Wing Civil Defence (WWCD). Much of West Bengal is flood-prone and, on the face of it, this wing was created to assist in rescue and relief of the water-stranded population during the monsoons and otherwise. What I learnt was that this wing was created not so much to provide relief and succour but to please the constituents of a particular Minister in the hoary past through enabling him to give employment to his constituents. As such, the recruitment into the wing was purely through the whims of this one Minister and most of the personnel belonged to one single district in West Bengal, the erstwhile Minister’s constituency. Their allegiance was to that particular minister even after he was long gone and to nobody else, certainly not to rules. They were recruited without any recruitment rules. There was no formal training. Their job was not defined.

 

A large chunk of them were positioned at HQ. There were two other units for them in Kolkata, both in extremely shabby and dangerous conditions. No one maintained any kind of office hours. In case of need, they would be called from their houses hundreds of miles away. The whole purpose of emergency relief was negated in the process. During monsoons, small teams with boats were deployed at the districts. I learnt that they used to set out, stay for a few days and then hand over the boats to the local volunteers and go back home.

 

One day, on the way to a meeting at about 12 noon, I thought I’d check their attendance and marked the people who were not in office as absent. When I came back to the office, I found the Commandant practically under gherao and the staff shouting filthy expletives because of the affront. The group was led by a person in a backwards baseball cap. Gradually, I learnt that this guy (of a rank below that of a Constable) was the de facto boss of the Wing – the actual Commandant was just an optional extra.

 

Mr Baseball-cap was about to retire but it was almost a given that he was going to get a three-year extension. I decided not to forward his application for the extension. Every day, there was a deputation by the union regarding this. I politely told them that this was not a matter for the union as no collective welfare was involved and the extension was for an ex-employee. They took it up with their Central committee who sought an appointment and I refused, again on the same ground. Despite that, the big leader of their Central committee landed up in my office with a big group and threatened to barge in. I told the orderlies that if that came to pass, I will start a case against them and the orderlies for criminal trespass. After an hour-long stand-off, he went away.

 

On the day of his farewell, I heard that Mr. Baseball-cap refused to accept the garlands because he was coming back the next day. However, days rolled into months; he moved heaven and earth but nothing happened. That was one small victory.

 

The next monsoon deployment, I mixed the WWCD chaps with those of another unit, WBCEF (West Bengal Civil Emergency Force) at each point of deployment. 55 personnel who never used to get deployed for these duties were also deployed. There was complete revolt. The reason was, these two units were at loggerheads. Whenever any personnel of one unit didn’t report or disappeared, the chaps from the other unit were too keen to report. One guy walked in like a Don and asked me how dare I post him for the duty when no one had dared to do so for 26 years. They refused to even cooperate with typing the orders, let alone receiving them. If the deployment didn’t take place, it would have been a personal water-loo for me and they were banking on that.

 

As a part of digitisation drive, I had arranged for email ids of each and every personnel and for that official id, the phone no. had been supplied. I pasted the movement orders at prominent places in the office and emailed/ WhatsApped the order to each person.

 

The force had to move. However, within weeks, they wrote a letter to me with outrageous demands, in effect cancelling the whole monsoon deployment. Other demands included their full discretion on who will be deployed for monsoon duty, no shifting of the force to new premises in Kalyani, no checking of attendance and so on. I was fed up. I called them for a meeting and asked them to verbalise their demands. They reiterated what they had written. I told them I had counter demands. These were as follows: 

·       No disruptive action en masse

·       No irrational demands

·       Everyone to attend office on time

·       All deployments will be checked and absentees suspended on the spot

·       Decorum to be maintained in any communication so such letters were banned

·       Immediate shifting of their office

They threatened to gherao and started mobilising the personnel. I pulled out the resignation letter from my drawer and handed it to my PA for onward transmission. I also signed the charge report handing over charge to the next seniormost person and went home. I told the family what I had done and they were very happy, probably because of their concern about my health. This was a Friday. The office personnel didn’t send my resignation letter on that day and decided to wait till Monday. On Saturday, I kept thinking about it and decided that I should at least go out with a bang.

I rang up the Commissioner of Police and requisitioned a strong Police arrangement because there might be serious problems in my office on Monday. He asked for a formal requisition which I WhatApped to him. We had worked closely in the past as colleagues in a district and SPs of adjacent districts and he obliged. I prepared all the office orders for immediate shifting of all the three offices of the Wing lock, stock and barrel to the new location on Monday. On Sunday night, I issued the orders under “confidential” heading and deployed senior officers to the three offices from 9 AM the next day and the loading of material and shifting started. By the time the union leaders rolled in around 11 AM, they were shocked to find their thrones and their dens disappeared. They were agitated and wanted to indulge in physical fight but seeing the strength of the Police arrangement, didn’t dare. They rushed to the leaders, to the Minister and to media but didn’t get any purchase. Within the day, the shifting was complete. Later I learnt that the Commissioner of Police had given instructions that in case I was attacked, the force should first do the lathi charge and then inform him.

Even at the new place, the personnel continued to try being disruptive. When I closely enquired, I found that 50 % of them, including their big leader, didn’t know how to swim. And these were the people who were supposed to save people from drowning! When I pointed out that their jobs were not tenable, they finally caved in. I arranged for a special watermanship training for them as a reciprocal gesture.

In a long Policing career spanning 33 years, I faced agitating mobs, arrows, bullets, attacks by miscreants, serious political pressures and so on but the worst was probably reserved for the last.

When the HQ office premises previously occupied by the Water Wing was cleaned up, 123 empty liquor bottles were found. Apparently, after office hours, the “Don” (who had never been deployed for any duty for 26 years) used to hold court and, in exchange for certain favours, used to dispense out duties and deployments to fellow personnel.