Sample – 1: Government Records about Kodumudi Union

When we decided to do a research and designed the first step to understand the society, we decided the government machinery should also come under our module of research. The Main reason for including the govt. Machinery also into the research module is because of our methodology ‘material dialectics’. Nothing should be read in isolation. The society is continuously influenced by govt. policies and schemes and the govt. policies and schemes also reflects (in fact should reflect) the peoples needs and aspirations. when we read the society we also read the associated change in the society; infact nothing can be read as a static entity in our methodology. Govt. machinery being one of the chief tool of such change, that has to be read. Also, we wanted to see whether such changes are planned, follows any logic or just institutional without any spirit.

We first went to the Block development office, kodumudi union and met the Assistant Block development officer there. First Let me sum up, what were the Questions asked by us, then I will give you the rationality behind the Questions along with the answers got (if any) from the officer in charge.

The important Questions which were asked were,

1. Do you maintain the people’s profile, like their job profiles, economic statistics etc?
2. What is the economic structure of the village concerned and the employment structure of the corresponding people?
3. How many land labourers, farmers, carpenters, barbers, small merchants, big merchants, intermediaries etc are present in the village?
4. What are the jobs of the people during different periods of the year?
5. What the peasants do when there is no work in their field?
6. What the labourers do when they have no agricultural work?
7. Do people migrate from our place to other place during any particular period of the year?
8. Do any set of people from some other district migrate to our place during any particular time of the year?
9. Do the village has any bonded labourers?
10. How many child laborers are there in the village?
11. How many children work without going to school?
12. How many beggars, differently-abled persons, sex workers, transgenders, destitutes are there in the village?
13. Does in any form Untouchability is practiced in the villages concerned?
14. Did the region witness any recent caste clashes?

I have listed only some important questions which were asked to the officer. Actually we asked more than 50 questions to the officer. First of all we have to commend the patience of the ABDO for listening to all our questions. He was a nice personality in the individual capacity. But in the official capacity, we have to say he aptly represented the office concerned, ie “ an empty vessel.”

Other than very few questions like caste fights etc. None of the questions was answered by the ABDO. He said that the office do not maintain these records and asked us the rationality of those questions. The rationality is the concept of development should be human development rather than just infrastructure development. We accept the importance of infrastructure and its potential to develop the human community, but wanted to see whether the concept of human development, the ultimate goal of development has penetrated to administrative wing in a simplified form. The Block development office, which function as the sole grass root department to implement the govt. policies should also have mechanism to provide the statistics of the grass root for effective policy formulations. Policy cannot be framed on vacuum. If you do not know how many people migrate to your place, in a particular of time how would you will provide civil amenities for their harmonious living? Even if the collector wants to promote a innovative idea of development it has to precede with datas. The ABDO said, we don’t work in that logic, we are just agents of the govt. machinery to implement some centralised govt. policies. He guided us that we could get some of these details from labour office, Erode and local police stations. He asked us to meet the agricultural officer to get details on agriculture. We met all the concerned persons of the above said departments and also many other department offices. Either they were very busy to contact or did not have any details we asked for. The Labor office in Erode, did not have even a smallest Labour details of the district. We were shocked to see that, but still they defended by saying “we are just agents to implement govt. policies, we are not statistical organisations to maintain those statistics”. One officer even argued that “what you are saying is census. We are just govt. office”. We disagreed and said census gives you exact details for some of the questions, but each office should have some approximate details for Implementing policies. Like, we can have the number of beggars in the village or union sorted into different categories VIZ category A ≤ 3 persons, category B ≤ 7 persons etc. This will be helpful to get the over all picture of the block and will be useful for govt. policies. The Labour officer asked us to refer the Human development report of TN, Economy survey of TN if published. He also said he is not actually aware of any such thing being published consistently every year as the union govt. does.

The Agricultural office also did not have any such details. we asked them about the prevailing rate of wages for weeding, planting etc. We also asked about the wholesale rates (market) and other intermediate rates of food items. They did not have any such recorded details and just gave the approximate rates from their own knowledge(at least they gave that)

Ok. Now lets sum up the govt. officer’s point of view. They are just public servants. They serve the public as told by their govt. executive (ministers of Govt. of TN). The govt. executes its policies and programs, which are framed not by administrative means but by political means. Political institutions functions in all the levels till the grass roots (Panchayats and Municipalities). They formulate the required policies of the people and is reflected as programs administered through these govt. officers. Hence, policies are made democratically they say, instead by administrative way. ok, even though there are many fundamental flaws in that argument, we accept it for the time being and lets see how the political institutions function in the next post.