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WOMAN
OF 2013 (1)
IS IT TO BE DIFFERENT? Is it
because there are enough ‘Man of the Year’ salutations going around? Is it
a token attempt to note — and correct — the country’s gender imbalance?
None of the above. There’s a much larger and distinctive reason for ET
Magazine choosing to honour the Woman of 2013.
It’s because 2013 was like no other for womankind
in India. It was a year in which a two-century-old bank — the State Bank of
India — finally got a woman as its chairperson. It was a year in which a
28-year-young IAS officer decided to crack down on a mafia that was
illegally mining sand. It was a year in which a boxer who won an Olympic
medal in 2012 captured the nation’s imagination without winning any more
medals but by just being Mary Kom — and telling the world how she emerged
Unbreakable (the title of a recently published autobiography of Mary).
It was also a year in which women took a step
forward without fear to come out against men who hounded them, attacked
them, violated them, and exploited them. In 2013 they came out against a
hitherto awe-inspiring editor, godman and judge amongst others. By doing so
they have ensured that many more average Janes will do the same from here
on.
We didn’t draw up a subjective listing, and pick
out a winner. Rather, we created a long list of 20 women achievers, put it
online on The Economic Times website and gave users a chance to vote for
their Woman of 2013. A little over 5,000 participated in the poll that
remained online for a week till Christmas, with Durga Shakti Nagpal winning
the most votes by far. You would be inclined to agree with those who see
her as the No. 1 change agent of 2013.
#1 Durga Shakti Nagpal, 28
Still Drawing her Lines in the
Sand
Circa
1975. M Ramachandran, a strapping young subdivisional magistrate in Jhansi
district of Uttar Pradesh, was getting accustomed to an unusual night life.
Along with police officials and those from the mining sector, Ramachandran
would venture out in a jeep in the dark of night to catch illegal sand
miners along the Betwa river. “After dinner, we used to go out and
apprehend the trucks that did not carry the MM-11 forms,” recalls the IAS
officer who went on to become chief secretary in Uttarakhand and then Union
urban development secretary. The MM-11 forms, colloquially called rawana,
were transit permits granted to leaseholders. However, not all the trucks
operated by the sand mafia would have these forms filled up, and some that
did would record a lower quantity than they were carrying, thereby avoiding
payment to the government.
“For the past four decades, the same pattern has
continued. But the only change is that illegal sand miners have now become
more assertive because of their political clout,” says Ramachandran. “Gone
are the days when MLAs took appointment before meeting the collector,” he
adds, hinting at the growing political influence at the district and
sub-division levels.
Cracking the Whip
Then, in the summer of 2013, something changed. Durga Shakti Nagpal, a
28-year-old sub-divisional magistrate of Greater Noida, threw the political
class into a tizzy when she came down hard on illegal sand miners,
arresting them, imposing hefty fines and confiscating their machinery. It
was quite a shocker for the sand mafia operating in the highly ‘lucrative’
Yamuna and Hindon river belts in the vicinity of Delhi, who for decades had
enjoyed political clout and smartly handled young bureaucrats on the
ground.
Nagpal decided to buck the trend. But the Agra-born
IAS soon realized that fighting the sand mafia was not a cakewalk. In a
month, she was suspended from her duties on the pretext of breaking a wall
of a religious place, an allegation which Ravikant Singh, her former boss
and the then Gautam Budh Nagar district magistrate, rubbished in his report
to the chief secretary.
The witch-hunt on Nagpal proved to be an
opportunity for civil servants across services and cadres who had for
decades succumbed to transfers, and accepted them as an inevitable
punishment, to rally together. Political parties including the Congress and
the BJP too joined the outrage against the Samajwadi Party-led state
government’s dogmatic assertion that Nagpal was wrong and her suspension
right.
Nagpal for her part was determined to fight the
good fight. “I had the firm faith that the issue would be sorted out and I
would be vindicated,” said Nagpal in her first media interaction after the
row erupted last July. And she doesn’t regret any bit of it. “Why should I
regret when I did nothing wrong?” adds Nagpal who has been posted as a
joint district magistrate in Kanpur Dehat after her suspension was revoked
in September. As the dehat (rural) suffix suggests, the district is not as
significant politically and business-wise as her earlier district in the
neighbourhood of Delhi, which contributes one fourth of UP’s total
revenues.
When ET Magazine asked Nagpal whether she would
show the same courage in future as she had demonstrated in taking on the
powerful sand mining lobby, she answered: “Of course yes.” And then she gives
a message to young Indians, which may have appeared a truism but for the
context: “Be bold in action and firm on vision”.
Tales of Transfer
Nagpal pursued engineering before appearing for the civil service
examination; she got selected as an IAS in 2009. She calls her father, a
retired Indian Defence Estates Services officer, “her strength in life”,
and says she dreamt of becoming a civil servant since her childhood. “Civil
service gives a huge opportunity to serve the people,” another statement that
one may be tempted to take for granted but can’t given the nexus between
politicians and criminals.
Nagpal was initially allotted the Punjab cadre but
got a transfer to UP after her marriage to Abhishek Singh, a UP cadre IAS
of 2011 batch. Singh is now posted as a joint magistrate in Jhansi
district.
Whilst transfers are a way of life for most babus
for their apparent “errant” ways, in the case of Nagpal, the state
government went a step further and suspended her. Most bureaucrats ET
Magazine spoke to aver that bureaucrats who take on corruption duly end up
getting transferred, but suspensions are rare. Sample this: Union
secretary-ranked IAS officer VP Baligar wanted to reverse the caste system
in the temple town of Mysore when he was a deputy commissioner there 25
years ago. He wanted to appoint a schedule caste person as a priest in
Jwalamukhi temple, which is a part of the Chamundi Hills temples. As the
deputy commissioner, Baligar was the chairperson of the temple trust. When
a priest’s position fell vacant, he surprised everyone by issuing an
advertisement with a note saying that scheduled caste/scheduled tribe
candidates could be given preference. Finally a Dalit was appointed as
a priest in the temple, duly resulting in massive protests among various
stakeholders and the public at large. Baligar says he is an atheist, but on
day one of the priest taking charge, he along with a few police officers
stood on the line to accept prasad from the Dalit priest. Even as he was
gearing up to engineer more social change in Mysore, the inevitable
transfer order landed on his table.
The Lady’s Not For Turning
But the transfer wouldn’t have deterred Baligar. “If you are ready for
any transfer and don’t crave for a plump posting, you can change the
system,” he says, quoting his guru PS Appu who was director of Lal Bahadur
Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie; Baligar along with
his 1980 batch IAS officers had then learnt their first lessons on
administration.
Nagpal is cut from the same cloth — she says it
does not matter whether she is in Noida or Kanpur Dehat. What matters is
that she is busier than ever. “Where is the time to pursue my hobby,” she
quips. She would love to spend more time reading and listening to “good music”,
but for now it is civil service in the truest sense of the word that keeps
her busy. And that may not be “good music” for those breaking the rules.
:: Shantanu Nandan Sharma ETM
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