Salute the Civil Servant

Salutes to you Sir ...

"District collector, U.

Sagayam of Madurai, Tamil

Nadu - By refusing to take

bribes, the Madurai collector

has earned 18 transfers in 20

years, a modest house and

bank balance and lots of

respect"

Three years ago, as district

collector of Namakkal, Tamil

Nadu, U. Sagayam voluntarily

declared his assets: a bank

balance of Rs 7,172 and a

house in Madurai worth Rs 9

lakh. Once, when his baby

daughter, Yalini, who had

breathing problems, was

suddenly taken ill, he did not

have the Rs 5,000 needed for

admitting her to a private

hospital. At that time he was

deputy commissioner (excise)

in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu,

and there were 650 liquor

licences to be given out. The

going bribe for each was

rumoured to be Rs 10,000.

(He needs a special mention

here because the assets of

an IAS officer-couple in

Madhya Pradesh were valued

at Rs 360 crore. They had 25

flats in three cities)

'Reject bribes, hold your

head high', says a board

hanging above Sagayam’s

chair in his modest office.

That’s the code he lives by,

even if politicians are

incensed they cannot bend

him their way—he’s been

transferred 18 times in the

last 20 years—and has made

enemies of both superiors

and subordinates. “I know I

sit under a dangerous slogan

and probably alienate

people,” he says. “But I have

been the same Sagayam

from Day 1. Standing up

against corruption is not for

a season. Nor is it a fad. It’s

forever”, he says.

On a hot summer afternoon,

on Madurai’s busy main

road, the district collector,

U. Sagayam, saw a young

man talking on a cellphone

while riding a motorbike. He

asked his driver to wave the

man down, got down from

his car and meted out

instant punishment: plant 10

saplings within 24 hours.

Somewhat unconventional

justice, some might say. But

that’s how Sagayam works.

He also took on a mighty

soft-drink mnc when a

consumer showed him a

bottle with dirt floating in it.

He sealed the bottling unit

and banned the sale of the

soft drink in the city. In

Chennai, he locked horns

with a restaurant chain and

recovered four acres valued

at some Rs 200 crore.

Sagayam’s masters degrees

in social work and law come

in useful in his role as an

administrator. He knows the

rulebooks in detail and is not

afraid of using them,

however powerful the

opponent. No wonder then

that Sagayam’s career is

marked with the scars of

countless battles.

Sagayam’s wife Vimala has

stood by him all these years

but she was rattled by some

of the threats during the

elections. “He always says if

you are right, nobody can

hurt you,” she says. “But

sometimes it becomes

difficult.”

Sagayam says he learnt

honesty on his mother’s

knees.

Poverty experience- Not a story, this is what really happened.

Late last year, two young men decided to live a month of their lives on the income of an average poor Indian. One of them, Tushar, the son of a police officer in Haryana, studied at the University of Pennsylvania and worked for three years as an investment banker in the US and Singapore. The other, Matt, migrated as a teenager to the States with his parents, and studied in MIT. Both decided at different points to return to India, joined the UID Project in Bengaluru, came to share a flat, and became close friends.

The idea suddenly struck them one day. Both had returned to India in the vague hope that they could be of use to their country. But they knew the people of this land so little. Tushar suggested one evening,"Let us try to understand an average Indian, by living on an average income". His friend Matt was immediately captured by the idea. They began a journey which would change them forever.

To begin with, what was the average income of an Indian? They calculated that India's Mean National Income was Rs. 4,500 a month, or Rs. 150 a day. Globally people spend about a third of their incomes on rent. Excluding rent, they decided to spend Rs. 100 each a day. They realized that this did not make them poor, only average. Seventy-five per cent Indians live on less than this average.

The young men moved into the tiny apartment of their domestic help, much to her bemusement. What changed for them was that they spent a large part of their day planning and organizing their food. Eating out was out of the question; even dhabas were too expensive. Milk and yoghurt were expensive and therefore used sparingly, meat was out of bounds, as were processed food like bread. No ghee or butter, only a little refined oil. Both are passionate cooks with healthy appetites. They found soy nuggets a wonder food affordable and high on proteins, and worked on many recipes. Parle G biscuits again were cheap: 25 paise for 27 calories! They innovated a dessert of fried banana on biscuits. It was their treat each day.

Restricted life

Living on Rs.100 made the circle of their life much smaller. They found that they could not afford to travel by bus more than five km in a day. If they needed to go further, they could only walk. They could afford electricity only five or six hours a day, therefore sparingly used lights and fans. They needed also to charge their mobiles and computers. One Lifebuoy soap cut into two. They passed by shops, gazing at things they could not buy. They could not afford the movies, and hoped they would not fall ill.

However, the bigger challenge remained. Could they live on Rs. 32, the official poverty line, which had become controversial after India's Planning Commission informed the Supreme Court that this was the poverty line for cities (for villages it was even lower, at Rs. 26 per person per day)?

Harrowing experience

For this, they decided to go to Matt's ancestral village Karucachal in Kerala, and live on Rs. 26. They ate parboiled rice, a tuber and banana and drank black tea: a balanced diet was impossible on the Rs. 18 a day which their briefly adopted poverty' permitted. They found themselves thinking of food the whole day. They walked long distances, and saved money even on soap to wash their clothes. They could not afford communication, by mobile and internet. It would have been a disaster if they fell ill. For the two 26-year-olds, the experience of official poverty' was harrowing.

Yet, when their experiment ended with Deepavali, they wrote to their friends: Wish we could tell you that we are happy to have our normal' lives back. Wish we could say that our sumptuous celebratory feast two nights ago was as satisfying as we had been hoping for throughout our experiment. It probably was one of the best meals we've ever had, packed with massive amounts of love from our hosts. However, each bite was a sad reminder of the harsh reality that there are 400 million people in our country for whom such a meal will remain a dream for quite some time. That we can move on to our comfortable life, but they remain in the battlefield of survival a life of tough choices and tall constraints. A life where freedom means little and hunger is plenty...

Plenty of questions

It disturbs us to spend money on most of the things that we now consider excesses. Do we really need that hair product or that branded cologne? Is dining out at expensive restaurants necessary for a happy weekend? At a larger level, do we deserve all the riches we have around us? Is it just plain luck that we were born into circumstances that allowed us to build a life of comfort? What makes the other half any less deserving of many of these material possessions, (which many of us consider essential) or, more importantly, tools for self-development (education) or self-preservation (healthcare)?

We don't know the answers to these questions. But we do know the feeling of guilt that is with us now. Guilt that is compounded by the love and generosity we got from people who live on the other side, despite their tough lives. We may have treated them as strangers all our lives, but they surely didn't treat us as that way...

So what did these two friends learn from their brief encounter with poverty? That hunger can make you angry. That a food law which guarantees adequate nutrition to all is essential. That poverty does not allow you to realise even modest dreams. And above all in Matt's words that empathy is essential for democracy.