Reflections of Rajaram Bojji

The way our Government was hounding and humiliating the Armed Forces is so infuriating for any person with self-esteem ; but the patience and maturity with which our Armed Forces behaved is outstanding and one must be proud of having such leadership, in our Forces. The bureaucrats with inferiority complex constantly drummed in to the heads of political class that the only way to keep powerful dogs obedient is to tighten the leash and give a good whipping, so that who is boss is never for gotten and political class will enjoy the benefits of democracy unfettered. The fear psychosis was leveraged smartly by the bureaucrats, to take advantage of the insecure political system, to belittle the Armed Forces no end, and finally make them succumb to their own agendas. Adarsh case would not have happened but for this seductive machination of the bureaucracy and political class. The Supreme Court with the present Chief Justice has really taken historically momentous decisions, which perhaps, th...

It is truly impressive that normally quiet respected friends of mine are stirred to come out with their thoughts recently in mails to me. For a railway man an accident and determination of cause never ceases to provoke and invariably the battle lines are drawn department wise. Rarely truth is revealed. The technical fights are taken to the hollowed grounds of RDSO too, which is supposed to be a technical body, but there too, the same field attitudes prevail. Logical updating of Criteria for evaluating safety of track-vehicle interaction and safety certification process by RDSO for a new rolling stock got never done. The case of CRT wagon which got introduced despite poor oscillation trial results, one cannot forget. The way track engineers too fight not to budge from their poor track standards in earlier years, forced Tandon to introduce BOX-N, to"destroy" tracks, which he told me, with a wink at that time. Then track engineers went about introducing 90UTS rails. Confrontatio...

Even when we worked in the government, the inner urge to somehow circumvent the government to do things, we believe to be right and fair, is quite strong. There are some who confront head on, and the system simply throws him out as anti-bodies. There are some who get frustrated, and then resign to go out a do things , avoiding the government. Many IAS and IPS officers can be quoted as examples. But there is a third categoty, who continued in the government, used their smartness, camouflaged the things they want to do to fall within the acceptable limits of the government's perception, and did achieve results. Earnestness was not abandoned. The major difference is in private business, there are fewer peer members to be convinced and the over bearing dictatorial owner boss- once convinced , the earnest man gets through his proposals. The spreadsheet works here. But in the government, the peer group as well as the multi- tiered hierarchy, finally headed by a different class of people...

To Shri Dinesh Trivedi , Hon'ble Minister of Railway Rail Bhavan, New Delhi. Dear Sir, Rest assured I am not trying to congratulate you, to get any favour or attention from your high office. I served my nation to the best of my abilities and retired and refused to take up any commercial re-employment, except being a ( no salary) member of the Empowered Board of Government of India for delivering the ITER ( the first Fusion Reactor) in France, a multi national effort, for two years. Though it is unlikely my email would be put up to you, it is still my call of conscience that I should congratulate you for heading the august railway ministry, and share a few thoughts with you on this occasion. We railway men fall hopelessly in love with our railways. The emotional ties develop too strongly for us- may be because we serve 24/7 for over 35 years, unlike other services where, once they leave office , can go back to family and sleep peacefully. Welcome to the club Sir!! You too will now s...

What a wonderful out of the world experience it is to observe the true Royal behaviour of the Travancore royal family! For centuries they guarded the wealth much larger than that of Nizam, but never built own personal wealth as done by Nizam, but these royals protected the wealth from the British loot, and never aspired to take advantage of the wealth. Once I had the privilege of being in the same Temple, along with the royal family members. How simple unassuming but dignified they were, in simple dhoti and no showing off of gold. No signs of royal/rich ostentatious clothes even. Once their turn is over, they quietly walked away out of the temple, through a special connecting door in to their palace. FOr that half an hour or so, the temple remains exclusive --while public wait in the huge corridors with temple, watching the royal family doing their pooja. They are distinguished more because the public stood respectfully giving way to them. They do the first morning pooja. I was contras...

We bureaucrats for some reason are still unable to get out of our well conditioned mind set to keep the right of the government intact to hide files from public. While the process preceding the final government orders should be secret till the issue of orders, once the order is public, automatically the entire file noting and the documents which led to the competent authority to issue the order, should also lose the protection of secrecy. Every single government order issued to affect public interest, and is published , should have the supporting documents and noting of bureaucracy and the competent authority, made equally public as the order itself. Why a citizen should "appeal" to the "master" in the public servant, to get information under the RTI Act? Please think over. It is a matter of just an executive order which can be issued now, today. Present technology allows images of the 20 odd critical pages and the noting of the three levels of bureaucrats below t...