The Broken Dream

Well, let us start with a bit of his biographical sketch. It had indeed been a tough ride so far, but he believed that every perspiring step had not been without big-big revelations. ‘The greatness lies not only in achieving lofty targets, but in dodging the failure as well,’ he found himself convincing during those moments that pinched him with the realisation that he has nothing to show as a proof of his tireless efforts. He had been doing it so long that the contradictory thorns dividing success and failure had melted and he tried his best to believe in the Bhagwat Gita sermon that only karma, the selfless work, is supreme.

Everybody believed he had all that requires to become a civil servant, so driven by this belief, he just gave the peak years of his life preparing for the civil services. Civil services, the much coveted government job whose exam syllabus is so comprehensive, formulated under the supposition that it will enable the prospective civil servants to know something of everything, that most of the aspirants are seen tiring out their souls like the Bihari labourers in the fields. It is basically a battle to test ones stamina, of testing the brain’s brawny prowess. In one year of exam schedule, running through the prelims, mains and interviews, it catapults a tired bunch of almost intellectually spent aspirants to take the responsibility of implementing the policies formulated by semi-literate or even illiterate full-thugs, semi-rascals, quarter-criminals,  half-rapists, three-quarter-mafia. Afterwards these young educated males and females expertly learn how to keep their lives normal by becoming part of the ‘system’.

Like a bull pulling a heavily laden cart, almost mindlessly, uncomplainingly, taking it as the only option, with the head bent down, he also kept on moving on the path. By cramming as many things as possible he got interviewed once. The real dilemma but started when he came to face the bitter truth of having spent all his four chances, allowed to the general category candidates, in comparison to the double number of chances available to the reserved category, which finds these panicked young talented souls hating the candidates from the reserved castes for being pampered like this. However, this final fall in the Indian Civil Services was not before a praiseworthy interview call that saved him from the severe jolt of self doubt. In the coveted interview he got 110/300. He knew he had not done wonders like someone who got 250/300. This candidate surely must have broken all limits of human personality performance to get such a high score. But the affably puffed up persona of Mr P K Banerjee, the former defense secretary of India and the interview board chairperson, had other thoughts about his personality. The chairperson smirked, enjoyed each and every moment of his being in the coveted chair, laughed too much, and that perpetual enjoyment and froggy grin intimated the already scared guts of the village urchin.

All judgements apart, it brings to the forefront the main problem in the Indian recruitment system: unquestionable authority in the hands of the interview panel. Unfortunately it is more misused than getting good administrative officers. He was a village frog. With sheer labour he got 1082 marks in the written examination, a decent qualifiable score. Oofs, what range they have in the interview marks--110 to 250. It has all the potential to make or break anybody’s fate. How the hell one will cover up 140 marks?! Nursing his wounded spirit and in philanthropic ways presuming himself to be an intellectual in making, he even suggested the remedies to himself, ‘This all marks possible power in the hands of the interview panel is the chief cause of corruption and facilitation. Let it be made mandatory that the interview board cannot give less percentage marks than the candidate’s percentage in the written part. It will weed out most of the possibilities of misuse of chairs and shadowy recommendations.’ But who considers such unsolicited suggestions from unrecognised common heads.

The Provincial Civil Services (PCS) was available to keep the flame of the undying passion still alive. He belonged to Haryana. As all of us well understand, our choice of the PCS is just limited to the home state, because the way state public service commissions (SPSCs) function it is the open most secret in India. Well, in India most of the corruption breeds from the safe corridors of constitutionality. State public service commissions function as personal fiefdoms of the ruling party. The Chief Minster handpicks his cronies as office bearers to carry out his instructions without ever questioning anything in any regard.

It was Mr. Chautala’s government when he put up his well polished claim for the state civil services. Easily he crossed the hurdles to reach the interview stage with very high marks. But the all-sweeping powers of the interview panel saw him being rejected with just 28 marks out of 75. The chairperson and his cahoots seemed all eager to quash his confidence, possibly they had already prepared the final list, and his name not being there now it was the fruitless endeavour for him to seek out the best out of himself, and more fruitful for the interview board to bring the worst as some justification for himself to be rejected. But he was at his best that day and gave his supper-best. Still does one have any proof of performing good or bad in the interview except the word of mouth which is no proof in the eyes of the law? Just like he could say that he performed better than his 28 marks, the scholarly politician Mr. T C Bangar (who later became full time politician from Mr Chautala’s party) could very easily say he performed even worse than the marks that we gave him. In the eyes of the law the latter will be taken as more correct given his better stature in making this assessment. In the same batch, there were cases where candidates got as high as 70 marks.

Anyway, he learnt a few political lessons, so during the next recruitment, he knew exactly well how to go through the interview stage. But believe it or not, it did not involve any money going out of his already famished pockets. So, all cheers! He went comfortably home with an SDM rank and the future all bright. Everybody knew that nobody deserved to have his/her say in any type of favour done to him, because he thoroughly deserved the post. The destiny was but darkly chuckling because he was one of the 102 candidates of the ‘deer’ fame pitted against the ‘lions’ as we saw in Lion and Deer of the Social Jungle.

However, like Mr. Chautala proposed, Sonia’s Wazir, Mr. Hooda, in Haryana disposed with equal relish. Before he could join, the central government had the chief election commissioner of India dashing down to Chandigarh, announcing state assembly elections, putting all appointments on hold under the election code of conduct. And during this time, the type of wanton drama played by the Governor, state principle secretary and everybody else, it does not even deserve to be narrated to the civilized beings like the readers because it will further erode their trust in such high chairs. The Congress came to power in the state. Elsewhere in India, Sonia Gandhi had already started pulling strings from behind the curtain: the sage of the great Italian puppeteer and the made-to-dance economist Prime Minister.

His appointment denied and after entering the precincts of Punjab and Haryana high court he realised what a powerful entity the state is. It is a big behemoth. The way proceedings were monopolised in the court it made him feel helpless and victimised by the same state that was constitutionally obliged to protect his rights as a law-abiding Indian citizen. But here he was paddling like a skinny dog, trying with his meagre financial resources—the candidates continuously pooled money to get the best advocates for their case—to beat the mighty power and reach of the state. Is judiciary fair? He always had doubts. But with each day, the realisation dawned how fascistically the system of justice works. Who appoints the judges in the first place? Directly indirectly the politicians hold the strings of the puppets dancing on the judicial stage. Each day for a talented unemployed youth is torturous. Here after spending hundreds of thousands all they got was a few minutes stay in the house of justice. For two years the Lord of Justice did not even open its ears to their ever increasing clamour for justice. And then the verdict came, it had all the loopholes to make them sit out of employment for as long as possible. They went to the Supreme Court, lost without much noise, safely and silently. He had no hesitation in harbouring seditious thoughts that like the state high courts are playing puppets to the state governments, the citadel in Delhi is also always under the influence of the central government. After all who appoints and promotes the judges at all levels. It’s just a well oiled machinery of mutual benefits, that’s all…nothing else.

Mr. Chautala had been wrong in installing his stooges in the HPSC before being voted out of power, because many board members were made to resign just in the middle of their term and new faces installed in fresh chairs to sit for the next six years while the other government ruled. So when Mr. Hooda came to power he found a board full of the members with terms for the next 6 years. One unconstitutionality gave rise to another. The new iron lady of India easily got the ever-convenient Lady President to issue a notification suspending all the HPSC members. Meanwhile, while all these stronger wheels clanked on the high road of power, ego and what not, the candidates’ poor heads rolled in the tar and clinker of the pot-holed dusty common road.

The Congress said Mr. Chautala had manipulated the selection process. However, the ever vigilant state vigilance team looking into the case did not find the tangible proofs of the earlier government’s misdoing even after best of its efforts and they just continued eating more and more time. His soul silently asked them what you have been doing all these five years. For one wrong of Mr. Chautala you have ended up doing tens. In both supreme and high courts, the government of Haryana gave the plea that it had not any vacancy to accommodate the new batch. But see what they did. In a suitable month of the same year, they put up the notification for fresh recruitment. Wasn’t it the contravention of their own pledge to the court that they do not have any vacancies? Who cares, because the state cannot be wrong! The batchmates went to get a stay on the fresh recruitment because it was contrary to what the government had pledged in the court that there were no vacancies. And if at all there were vacancies then this duly selected batch should be given priority and allowed to join because the government had failed to present any proofs of malpractices in the recruitment process. But the great legal luminary—having the infinitely open-ended space to write anything suitable for whatever ends he might deem fit—just smartly said no, the government can do as it likes.

Now Mr Khattar from the BJP is at the helm of the affairs. Three governments; three majestic eras in the political history of three political parties; and just one dark endless night in the lives of hardworking candidates who are now moving towards middle age with a broken dream. The new Chief Minister can just walk over the issue, claiming he or his government are not a party to the issue. Moreover, there must be so many in his party almost dying to get their wards selected as PCS officers feeling left out and cheated for so long. The government also must be itching to put some lame duck members in the HPSC to work as their recruitment facilitators.

Now, having robbed of a decade of his penance for the civil services cause, he slogs out in the private sector. His pain is unbearable because as an educated and law-abided citizen of this country he always had this notion—born of his bookish knowledge—that state is there to protect his interests and courts are there to save his skin from the larger forces. He but stands robbed of this fundamental belief. It’s not just a matter of losing a job; it is the matter of losing one’s identity as an empowered citizen of an independent country. Now when he slogs out in most crowded buses, where getting a foothold is as precious as getting bonus from the government, he certainly doesn’t feel like an average country-loving Indian. He feels like an emigrant in his own land. He refuses his office colleagues when they try to put the tricolored flag on his desk on the occasion of Indian Independence Day. He even feels sorry about it. However it is his tiny revenge against his own state. Somehow, when terrorists strike against the state in any part of India, against all his wishes and rebukes by sanity, he finds himself groping for the causes why they are doing this, not being able to condemn it as an outright act of blatant violence.

Sorry, but it’s as natural as this. Just wanted to say something about him. Thanks if you have borne the trouble of bearing with this little story brow-beating the cause of a common Indian! All in all it’s just a terribly manipulated democracy in India, manipulated by our own stronger brothers and sisters. Like him I also feel that we might be just puppets dancing on the make-believe stage while the real game is behind the scene.