A devastating editorial appeared in a leading Odia daily on June 14 on Puri having been reduced to a horrible ‘filth city’ with every civic facility, amenity and system having been spoilt due to lack of political will and appropriate administration. It is true Puri went to dogs ever since the sea beach was a ‘free-for-all’ location for the worst hawking shops and stinking fish-fowl-flesh counters blocked the edge of the beach road. Strict vegetarian pilgrims and tourists have been suffering like in hell since decades. Then began the construction of the sewage system a decade ago and is likely to continue for another decade to finish. The rainwater drainage began in a hurry and got stuck midway. Meanwhile, Nabakalebar happened and extra grants flowed to Puri apart from AMRUT scheme money in crores of rupees. The once-golden beach has, meanwhile, turned a popular dirty beach and no one seems to have cared for nearly three decades.
So is the case with Cuttack and Baleswar with their own characteristic civic issues. The make-believe metros Bhubaneswar and Cuttack have corporators who are constantly engaged in making money and fame by gross abuse of power. Puri has remained in focus because of Hindu shrine and the just-okay beach without any bathing or fun facilities. Even the political parties flag off from here when election campaign begins as if the Hindu lord protects the entire universe. There has been bitter crticism of water flooding in the Grand Road with slightest rain. The Swargadwar, meaning gateway to heaven, has turned the perfect hell itself without fitting administrative control.
The woes of Puri today reminds knowing people of the legendary Suryadevara Ramachandra Rao, who, as the Municipal Commissioner of India’s dirtiest plague city Surat (where incidentally most Odias have migrated to make a living), created history by magically reversing the status of Surat in flat one year. Rao joined in May 1995, and just after a year Surat became the second cleanest city of the country next to Chandigarh. Rao prepared his roadmap meticulously, not with brooms and vacuum cleaners but with a vengeance most untypical of the country’s present-day IAS officers. Bureaucratically, it was a suicide posting. Rao had little option but to clean up the city on a war-footing. He made such cleanliness and encroachment rules that forced the toughest land mafia and property gangsters, promoters of slums and crime, chose to vanish from the scene. The few that dared stay back in business were crushed by Rao to dust. Thus, road encroachment was gone forever. Countless temples and mosques on public land crumbled within weeks. The biggest problem for Rao was constant pressure from politicians who were worried that the huge slum votes would go. Rao purposefully took on the rich and the mighty to send the right signal and achieve the objective. A powerful MlA, who moved around with gun-toting thugs, was among the first to be hit when his multistoried building was smashed to dust in a day only after a short notice.
Fortunately however, the ethical bureaucratic lot stood behind Rao like rock. The hatred he evoked among the vested interests was totally nullified by the respect and admiration he received from the residents and poor slum dwellers because he also organised relief wherever damage was caused to the poor. In just eighteen months, Rao became a demigod. Ordinary citizens would mob to get his autograph and pose for a photograph with him. His sheer presence made Suratis rush for the broom or bend down to retrieve a Pan Parag wrapper or a cellophane foil from the street. The Surat Municipal Corporation was ranked first in the State for highest recovery of taxes including octroi and also in tree plantation. The Indian National Trust for Architectural and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) declared Surat the second Indian cleanest city. A great risk-taking experimenter, Rao’s first task was to restore faith of citizens by making officials work with people. He coined a term “AC to DC”, asking officers to get out of their air-conditioned (AC) chambers to accomplish their daily chores (DC). Officers from the six zones would start work at 7 am to supervise sweepers on the streets. The colleagues began enjoying the adventure and gained field reality hardly known to them earlier. Rao knew a poor sweeper can’t ask a millionaire to remove the car parked over garbage or a hotel owner not to throw foodstuff on the roads. Hence, officers on the scene.
With all this, all defaulters amended themselves and pending taxes started flowing. Ten, smalltime shops, residential buildings, temples and mosques which had encroached on Government land started evaporating. Rao’s blatant disregard for financial and political power made him a hero among the local press which had earlier remained critical of the corporation’s failures. Most shops on the main arterial road voluntarily broke down encroachments to have wider roads. When the corporation put yellow lines demarcating encroachments, Rao was showered with petals, coins and written agreements permitting the demolition. Even the mosques and temples voluntarily pulled down their encroachments, mostly at their own cost. Rao’s approach was plain and simple to understand and follow. His made absolutely non-negotiation rules and made it loud and clear “shape up or ship out.”
Rao also rinsed the corporation’s own dirty linen. He signalled to the corrupt ones to vanish on their own or get thrown out. Several officers resigned without a word. Slum dwellers were gifted with ‘pay-and-use’ Sulabh toilets; shops had mandatory dustbins and litters in the streets were punishable. The dirtiest city became so clean as to contend for hosting the Miss World Pageant. The defamed ‘plague city’ is now a desired ‘pleasure city’ of India.
Incidentally, in Puri, a young Bollywood star like District Magistrate arrived around the Nabakalebar time only to ensure that the city assumes a clean, convenient pilgrim location by the time the big festival commenced. He had little time in hand. Several cynics kept imagining nothing hood has ever happened nor will. And a Marwari bureaucrat with insatiable craving to smell and touch money can never be an effective administrator. Aravind Agrawal, the 2007 batch IAS officer with a little prior Puri experience, has proven to be an exceptional bureaucrat. No one clearly knows how he recovered around ten acre of prime railway land encroached for over half a century. It’s now clean and a tidy parking and waiting place. The jail and hospital buildings were crushed to have a wider entry into the town. The inner city roads were widened with deadlines with strong penal clauses. SP Ashish Singh and the simple looking SDM did wonders. The shrine surrounding was widened overnight with 25 bulldozers pulling down structures and 50 dumpers clearing debris. Puri was ready in four months. Now, the DM is focused on de-silting the Musa river and acquiring two acre of surrounding land for the Swargadwar. Recently, he pulled down eight shops encroaching the Swargadwar entrance for three decades. lastly, removing encroachments from the notoriously known Pipili roads happened one fine day. Many so-called big bureaucrats had tried in vain to clear the Pipili road for long. Agrawal’s lieutenant SDM Madhusudan Das, yet another raging bull on the job, first crushed the BJD office encroachment on which stood shops bringing hassle-free revenue. That is the magic. Others fell in line without any show of might. Even an illegally-constructed ashram worth crores of rupees with countless followers was pulled down in a day. When queried about the magic Agrawal played, he said one sentence politely. An administrator has to ensure public relief comes first. One only needs to know how to bend laws; breaking laws would never be necessary. Even the top courts will appreciate that as the spirit of law is critical, the text only incidental. Maybe, a Rao of Surat is invisibly around.