When adversities spawn opportunities

The rain in the capital put administration in disarray,but critics say the government worked it to its advantage

April 27, 2015 12:00 am | Updated 05:49 am IST

The Secretariat, seat of the State administration, seems to be susceptible to nature’s fury.

The summer rain that lashed the capital city last week (on Tuesday evening) had the potential to bring the administrative machinery to halt at least for two days.

The record room of the Secretariat was inundated and the next day the government had to strive hard to fish out documents for issuing fresh orders.

Caught in the chaos was the government decision to issue a notification on the formation of new municipalities. Insiders say that on finding it difficult to access the back files, the government was forced to defer the notification for a while. This was in spite of the urgency of the matter. Same was true in the case of many other orders.

But critics of the government say the sudden flooding of the record room was used by vested interests in the government and its flanks as an excuse to buy more time to make fresh additions to a list of municipalities that had already been cleared by the Cabinet and place the onus for the delay on nature’s fury.

It is also being cited as proof of the expediency of the political leadership to make use of all available opportunities to its advantage, the dimensions of which will become known only when the order on new municipalities comes out.

It is a ritual that government functionaries, political leaders, and civil and police officers in Kannur have to participate in almost every other month.

The ritual of all-party peace meetings chaired by Ministers and attended by people’s representatives, political leaders, officials of the district administration, and the police is for renewal of the commitment of the ‘parties concerned’ to ensuring peace in the district marred by political clashes and murder.

Everyone, from the Minister to the minutes writer, knows that the ‘resolve’ lasts only till the next ‘incident’ (read murder) takes place.

An all-party meeting convened by Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala and attended by his Cabinet colleagues K.C. Joseph and K.P. Mohanan at Kannur on April 23 could not be any different.

As usual, mediapersons were barred from covering the ‘ritual’, its logic being that the sparring and the posturing of leaders of the ‘parties concerned’ at the peace meeting, if reported, might further delay the arrival of peace.

The major part of the peace meetings, officials who regularly attend such peace initiatives confide, is the blame game in which the representatives of the rival parties lock horns over the cause of the ‘latest’ incident and the incidents that preceded it.

It will be followed, the officials say, by the next phase of the game in which the rival leaders hold the police solely responsible for the incidents. A police officer at a recent peace meeting lost his cool when he heard a leader giving vent to his ire at the police for ‘not acting’ to ensure that incidents of political violence did not recur.

The police officer stood up and said political violence in the district would end as soon as political workers decided not to resort to violence. As expected, none of the political leaders liked his plain speaking.

Too many cooks spoil the broth, it is said. What is happening at Edamalakkudy, the newly created tribal grama panchayat in the State, appears to prove this saying.

Since the panchayat was bifurcated from the Munnar grama panchayat on November 1, 2010, many welfare schemes were drawn up for the Muthuvan population there. However, anyone visiting the village now will see that none of these schemes have had any effect on the lives of the Muthuvans.

The absence of a single implementing agency has taken a toll on the schemes. At work in the panchayat are the Forest and SC/ST Departments and the Edamalakkudy grama panchayat, each going its way.

A case in point is a Rs.10-crore project announced by Minister for Scheduled Tribe Development P.K. Jayalakshmi after her visit to the village months ago. The amount has not materialised so far, says a Forest Department official.

Worse, the Forest Department and the grama panchayat had issued solar lights to the families but the measure has only annoyed the people because the solar lamps vary in quality.

Former Idukki Sub-Collector M.G. Rajamanikyam was particular that there should be coordination between the three agencies while implementing development schemes in Edamalakkudy.

He had also insisted on agencies holding at least one meeting every month. However, there has been only one such meeting. There is no dearth of funds for Edamalakkudy but if the implementing agencies go their different ways Edamalakkudy will also go the tragic Attappady way, where malnutrition and neonatal deaths are the order of the day, says a forest official

(With inputs from

N.J. Nair (Thiruvananthapuram), Mohamed Nazeer (Kannur), and

Giji K. Raman (Idukki))

The rain in capital last week was used to buy more time to make fresh additions to a list of municipalities which had been cleared by Cabinet

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