Election 2019

   A lot of my posts in the past have been about elections and here I am, in yet another round of the same thing! But looking across almost 10 year old posts now.. its like watching your life, yourself in a film.. or some kind of an experimental study of personality across time.. 

   The same things which confounded me ten years ago, excited me five years ago, borders on been-there-done-that today. Almost makes me feel like a grandparent of sorts in this business. And when you reach this stage, the things that excited you earlier, now seem juvenile or amateurish, like a child in a candy store. 

   But being in a new place, in many ways, slightly more challenging than the earlier ones, the things that take up maximum attention is so different. A small town with not many visitors was easy in the sense that you had to focus more on your own work and bother relatively less about who's coming and going and what they are doing while they are in your area.. This time the most challenging thing was exactly this.. 

   The three biggies were all here, and for extra kick, all within the same 24 hours! And of course, the very same day got packed with all the other action the stars could muster! 6 am, commissioning work started and at 8 am a tragic loss of life and politics over the body, 10 am some statutory work which received which was objected to by someone who had no business to (and had to be sorted out by higher people), then came the visits one after the other, and their attendant consequences - people fighting over hotels, payments, last minute changes, permissions, preventive actions and what not - not once but thrice over, for each visitor! As the day wore on, action got thicker with some seniors asking for immediate report on some road work and another bunch of people sitting in another corner of this place decided to block some super important ongoing work related to water supply by sitting in front of the JCB till their demands are met. 

   All this went on simultaneously for over 24 hours and I think I crossed a landmark in the study of personality across time. I will remember this day as the day when everything came down together, and I didn't lose it. The day when phone calls were non-stop on some issue or the other and I actually amazed myself at the calm I felt as I took each call and didnt take out my irritation of one on another. It was not any greatness but just a clear realisation that if I dont keep myself together, everyone else will mess up. 

   Maybe in many ways elections is the same thing everywhere, but in some ways, it is very different also. So this elections the takeaway for me is not so much the election preparation and its enormity (which is, btw, 2.5 times the last time),etc, but the accompanying sudden and unexpected dramas, and the mental strength needed to manage everything smoothly. For this alone, I will remember the elections of 2019 as an emergence of a different, older, calmer me, in times of crises. 

A job well done

One of the earliest posts in this blog was about elections. And how I detested the whole process and found it a waste of time and money. A slight correction. I still think its a huge waste of money when there are back to back elections and that we need to find a way to bunch them together the way it was done in Orissa a few days back. But apart from that, I have come to love this period.

I now realise that my dislike for it initially was due to my poor grasp over the language and I used to feel overwhelmed by the amount of reading of rules, circulars, letters that it required. But now, 5 years down the line, a bit better equipped linguistically, I had a bigger responsibility than previously to manage elections in about 6 times the area I previously had done. 

I have reached the conclusion that there is no task better organised than elections. Firstly, the rules of the game are crystal clear. No exceptions.While that seems so ordinary, the fact is, life in the day to day is not like that. Even if I want to keep it that way, there are many people above below and parallel who don't subscribe to that theory, for various reasons (a different debate altogether). This level playing field is absolutely wonderful because you can actually see how people change from this egoistic self obsessed attitude to one where they bow down to the rules. 

Secondly, this is the only task in which the staff remains disciplined. Unfortunately, one of the worst things about our society today is not corruption - that's the symptom. The root of it, is lack of self - discipline across the bureaucracy. Everything else stems from it. When a person thinks that however lower down in the hierarchy his post is, just because he is connected to x, y, z he can get away with blue murder, and actually often does - that's how everything that is wrong with us begins. There has to be a basic minimum of discipline towards our work, in our behaviour to our subordinates and superiors and a basic respect for the fact that the executive branch is separate from the political branch of governance. Anyhow, the point is, elections is the only time when that discipline surfaces, albeit due to fear of the Commission, but its a fear I most welcome. This creates a well oiled machinery working 24x7, days on end, but flawlessly.

Thirdly, things are unambiguous. I mean, you don't have much scope to interpret things differently and I for one, am in complete favour of that. I do realise that it isn't always possible to have iron clad rules for all departments, but I do think that any lee way that is given for interpretation has to be within a broader framework of clear cut rules otherwise it just causes problems and suspicions in the minds of people. However, in elections, this kind of clarity is most welcome. So, although it means that you have to read like a thousand letter everyday, its great  because anyone questions your decision, you can simply pull out the letter and wave it to them. And that silences all opposition!

At the end of the whole gruelling 2-3 months, when the job is done, the satisfaction.. its beyond words. I feel such pride in our team, our management and planning.. I cannot describe the sense of contentment.. I have a beatific smile on my face as I write about it!