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Lax civic babus caught in spinning wheel web
When rules and missives fail to discipline lax employees, rope in Mahatma Gandhi. That’s what municipal commissioner of Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation Ajay Shanker Pandey did, reports Peeyush Khandelwal.
When rules and missives fail to discipline lax employees, rope in Mahatma Gandhi.
That’s what municipal commissioner of Ghaziabad municipal corporation Ajay Shanker Pandey did when he ordered health officer Dr. K.K. Tyagi to spin the charkha as punishment for failing to speed work on a drain near Meerut Road.
Instead of going to his second floor office in the Municipal Corporation building, Tyagi now walks to the ‘self-realisation’ chamber on the fifth floor.
The ‘self-realisation’ room, Pandey says, is based on the Gandhian philosophy of discipline and self-realisation.
“After the Chauri Chaura incident (February 1922), Gandhiji withdrew the non- cooperation movement. He urged his followers to spin the charkha to mend their ways,” Pandey said. “So we have started a ‘self-realisation’ chamber here to help our erring employees mend their ways.”
The move seems to have had the right effect.
“I have realised my mistake and wish to become more focussed,” Tyagi said.
Sanitary inspector B.P. Sharma was served a show-cause notice last week. He has been to the room already and told HT: “I want to realise my mistake and see that it does not get repeated.”
Twelve employees attended the session on the first day. The doors of the room are also open for staffers with clean records. “Other have also been urged to spend time here to simplify their thoughts,” Narendra Nazir, the room in-charge, said.
To train the civic body babus on the ways of the charkha, an experienced hand from Sant Kabir Nagar district of eastern Uttar Pradesh has been roped in.
