• Kaku Ram was there to reclaim his name, which the election commission had changed to ‘Nathu Ram’ in his voter identity card, triggering a unique set of problems.
  
  
• Sambha Lohar was there to get ‘patta’ for a patch of land in the village he had lived in for a decade but could not call his own.
  
  
• Achla Garacia was there, too: His pension on account of his disability had stopped coming into his bank account and he wanted to know why.
  
  
• Hirki Bai, Amra Ghataji, Navuri Bai had walked three kilometres to get their widow pensions.

How could they all not be there? After all, the ‘sarkar’ was coming to their doorsteps, as they had heard, to provide relief to them instantly.

The venue was a daylong camp at the Chandela panchayat headquarters, in Abu Road block, and most villagers — who had earlier knocked on the doors of the very same officials for months, some for years, in vain — rushed to the panchayat headquarters to get their longstanding grievances redressed.

“Imagine, I can get something done in a day! And that too at my own panchayat headquarters!” exclaimed Shafiq Muhammad, a farmer who had come to get a loan of '1 lakh under state government’s ‘Vishwas Yojna’.

The camp, held on January 11, was part of a drive by the Rajasthan government under which it sent its officials to villages to provide government services — issuing certificates like caste, residence, birth, death, and other documents, including land rights (patta), MNREGS job cards, among others at villagers’ doorsteps.

Called ‘Prashasan gaon ke sang’, a brainchild of Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot, the drive started on January 10 and would conclude on February 28. As part of the drive, senior officials of 21 government departments — including revenue, medical and health, education, water resources, public health and engineering department (PHED), cooperatives, ayurveda, labour, forest and environment, among others — have been asked to camp at every village panchayat headquarters for a day each.

The news about the scheduled drive had sent a sliver of excitement across every panchayat in Abu Road block, with people eagerly waiting for their turn.
“We want to get our pending work done when the officials have been forced to come to us — to do what they should have done as their duty on any other day,” said Baburam Cheni, 30, a farmer from Neechlakhejda village.  

So on January 11, the day the district administration was to camp at Chandela panchayat, they had all come. Hundreds of Chandela residents, including Kaku, Sambha, Shafiq and others, had gathered at the primary school, where the camp was organised, since 9 am.

The game begins

As the camp started at 10 am, there was a huge rush of people with grievances as varied as colours on the huge tent put up for the drive. Inside the tent, at the far end, sat Jitendra Kumar Soni, the sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) of Abu Road, with a big poster proclaiming ‘Prashasan Gaon Ke Sang’ put up behind him.

Soni, by virtue of being the seniormost official in the block, is supervisor of all camps to be held at panchayat headquarters all over Abu Road. Seated at the centre of a table, microphone in his hand, Soni oversaw the work of the 21 other officials seated around him, each table adorned with banners and posters from the respective department, telling the villagers the work that could be done during the ‘abhiyan’.

The women and child development department’s posters, for instance, listed the services it offered in the camp: identification of malnourished children in the area and getting them registered; identification of under-construction/dilapidated anganwadi centres and getting a proposal passed for their completion; selection of anganwadi workers on the spot; and redress of any complaint against irregularities at anganwadi centres, among others.

The posters put up by the other departments were equally detailed and informative.

Time for tales, pat crisis management

However, while all departments displayed their wares, there was no enquiry counter to guide people to the right table. So at the sight of the microphone-wielding SDM, most people rushed to him. An IAS officer of 2010 batch Jitendra Kumar Soni, however, did not look fazed — in fact, he appeared excited at the prospect of dispensing instant relief.

Named “Nathu” in his voter’s identity card, Kaku Ram was the first to face the SDM.

Listening to the story of his dual identity, the young SDM ordered him to get his brothers or relative to the camp. “Your name would be changed if they (his kin) attest to what you are saying,” he told Kaku.

Soon, Kaku’s brothers arrived and based on their statement on an affidavit Kaku reclaimed his original name.

“This is a success story for today’s camp: Nathu turns Kaku,” an excited SDM said in an apparent attempt to suggest a headline to the members of the media contingent present on the occasion.

“If not for the camp, he would have had to spend so much (time and money) chasing officials and hiring lawyers,” Soni said, before turning to Kaku Ram: “What do you say, Kaku?”

Ecstatic at having reclaimed his name, Kaku was more than happy to oblige the SDM: “Yes, yes! If not for this camp I would have had to shell out a lot of money in hiring a lawyer for the affidavit. Chasing other government officials would have been another monumental task. But since every government department is present here, my job has been done in a jiffy!”

Like Kaku-turned-Nathu-turned-Kaku again, the camp at Chandela saw several other success stories. Sambha Luhar, for instance, got a ‘patta’ for a small patch of land he owns, while Shafiq got sanction letter for a loan and Achla Ram his pension.

At a camp in Uplakhejda, a panchayat in the bhakhar (hilly) region of the block, the following day, January 12, the rush was much more, signifying the neglect the area had undergone from the administration.   

“The more the rush in a camp in a certain panchayat, the more inefficient its administration had been over the years — right from the panchayat up to the block level. It shows the administration had been sleeping all these years,” said Kalicharan Garacia, an activist from Uplakhejda, a 100 percent tribal area.

Success story redrafted

Uplakhejda is one of the largest panchayats with six revenue villages under its jurisdiction, and thus thousands had come, some from even far-flung villages, to get their work done.  

SDM Soni, who arrived late at this camp, was his usual excited self — in fact much more excited than he was at the Chandela camp, his excitement directly proportional to the size of the crowd. Looking at the surging numbers, he took the microphone and declared: “Sab ka kaam ho jayega. Kripya sabhi baith jayein aur ek ek kar ke aayien (everyone’s work will be done. Please come one by one).”

The glint in the eyes of the young SDM at the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of so many could not be missed. Only if babus working under him shared the same enthusiasm, things would have been so different, one felt.

By 3 pm the crowd had grown bigger. Since the work started at noon, only after the SDM arrived, two crucial hours had been lost. And with chaos reigning in those initial couple of hours, with people not certain which counter to approach for what work, the lack of governance at the camp was clear: officials sat behind their desks with the same insolence and indifference as you see when visiting their offices.

“We are here at their panchayat, at their home; let them find out which counter they should go to,” a panchayat secretary said indifferently.

As the SDM sat down looking for another success story, a hundred others outside the camp became restless: the camp would shut shop at 5 pm. “What if my work is not done today?” Mautali Arja Ram, an elderly woman from Buja village, who had come to get widow pension, asked.

“You could try another camp at another panchayat, or come again next when a similar abhiyan kicks off,” said a gram sewak behind the panchayati raj desk. 

Behind him was a poster that read: Gaon ki samasyaon ka mauke par samadhan (solving local problems on the spot). Irony.