Mystery of clean stairs
Staircases of the Secretariat now dazzlingly clean is making their users-both visitors and officers-grope for the reason behind the veritable ‘miracle’. They were long used to using the gutka- stained and dust-carpeted staircases. When they ceased to even dream that things would look up in their lifetime their glee knew no bounds when on one fine morning they found them shining in the sunshine.
The regeneration of the stairs naturally goaded them to wonder over the reason that could explain the inexplicable. Whenever the officers broached the matter of the staircases being filthy things were explained away, citing the fact that they were made of cement and not of marble. One fellow who has been working in the Secretariat since the time the building became the administrative headquarters of Uttarakhand said that the builders opted for the cemented floors, assuming that things would be taken care of by the caretakers. But what happened later was that neither the caretakers took care of things nor the officers made them to do the needful. Now, the stair having morphed from its dusty and gutka-stained former self to its present glittering form has triggered a buzz in the alleys of the edifice that finally a worthy having spine and zeal is controlling things in the Secretariat. They are praising him to the skies, saying he has conjured up the miracle by sheer dint of his determination. Things like manpower and resource remaining the same, determination can make differences, the beaming users of the stair say.
CSR-seer waste
The much-vaunted corporate social responsibility (CSR) is being reduced to a laughing stock. It is meant for the captains of the industries to give succor to the down-trodden. But what is happening is that the funds released under the scheme is going down the drains.
A bank has distributed stainless chairs and water dispensers in the Secretariat under CSR. The quality of the chairs was so bad that most of them were dumped in the godown meant for scarps. It seems the bank selected the Secretariat for its favor to please someone who mattered.
This aside, the CSR-spawned generosity of the bank is utterly misplaced. The Secretariat, the most important and pampered building of the state, figured in the bank’s priority list by way of CSR while a girls’ school located near it was given a short shrift. Had they cared to pour down its fine milk of kindness on the hapless girls by way of renovating the school building or donating water purifiers the bank would have drawn gratitude of those benefited.