S R Sankaran

 

S.R. Shankaran (1934-2010) inspired number of people in the development sector those who committed economic and social justice in the country.  He spent 51 years in the service of the poor and downtrodden people across the country. In 1959 he joined as Sub-collector of Ongole in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh. In the early 1960 he became Collector, in  1970’s he worked as Secretary  and Principle Secretary of Social Welfare  of Andhra Pradesh and in early 1980 he worked as Chief Secretary of Tripura state. 

S.R. Mr. Sankaran set standards of integrity and service to the most disadvantaged, for a whole generation of public officials. His courage and convictions inspired human rights activists. Despite his uncompromising opposition to violence, he was revered by Maoists as much as by Gandhians. And a lifetime of egalitarian compassion bound him to masses of India’s poorest people, disadvantaged by indigence, caste, gender and disability. Mr. Mr. Sankaran firmly believed that the foremost duty of the State was to uphold the dignity, rights and freedoms of India’s most oppressed people, and his life’s work demonstrated what a democratic government could indeed accomplish if it included persons like him. He drew up laws for land reforms, and pushed governments to implement
these. He conceived of the Tribal Sub-Plan and Special Component Plan, to compel governments to set aside significant proportions of the state budgets for the welfare of Scheduled Castes and Tribes.

 

He designed many programmes for justice and welfare of these most deprived communities, including establishing thousands of residential schools for the education of tribal boys and girls. He crafted laws for the release bonded workers. Among the many legends which have grown up around his life’s work, the story is often recounted of how a powerful Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh was furious when, as Secretary- Social Welfare, Mr. Sankaran organized campaigns to release bonded workers from generations of debt bondage. The Chief Minister announced in a cabinet meeting
that Mr. Sankaran was a trouble-maker, who went from village to village, held meetings with poorest people, instigated them by declaring that they had the right to be free, and mobilized them to rebel against a lifetime of bondage. Soft-spoken Mr. Sankaran retorted that this indeed was what he did, and this was his duty. This enraged the Chief Minister further, and he asserted in the cabinet meeting itself that such subversives had no place in his government. Mr. Sankaran replied in his customary low voice that he too did not want to work in his government, and proceeded on long leave.

Mr. Sankaran’s moral power was backed by his intellectual capabilities, administrative skills, unfailing memory of the rules, regulations, procedures, laws and several legislations. He was able to recall the detailed provisions of any Act from his memory with an unbelievable ease. His colleagues, superiors, political authorities depended on his advice, support and trusted him to an extent that they would endorse his meticulous notings without even going through them. For Mr. Sankaran, the formal positions that he held at various levels was a trust that the people and the nation reposed in him. He carried that trust with great sanctity. This, he did not only when he negotiated with different
national agencies, but also international institutions. For instance when he was to negotiate for a loan from Asian Development Bank for power, he refused to sign a MOU which insisted on prior approval of any law that Indian Government would enact on power. He signed only when they dropped this provision. Once he refused to meet a World Bank team as Secretary to Govt. of India, when they wanted to see him without prior intimation. When higher authorities advised him, he retorted that “Can an Indian officer walk into World Bank office without prior intimation?”

Once when the Indian Army entered Tripura without prior intimation to the State authorities, he said that it was violation of federal arrangement of power and the defense forces had to retreat under the pressure. This adamant Mr. Sankaran was the one into whose office any common man could walk into. He got a standing order issued to the security at Andhra Pradesh secretariat that any poor rural and innocent looking person coming for him should be allowed without insisting on any of the procedural rigmarole. When he was the District collector of Nellore, there was a telling incident that while a well off person was waiting for the collector, an agricultural laborer walked into his office to represent the matter and went out. The well off person questioned Mr. Sankaran’s decorum of
behaviour. Mr. Sankaran told him that waiting for him does not cost much, but for a daily wage laborer it means a loss of wage for the day, which means going without food for the entire family.  

There can be any number of such instances from his life and work. The firm and determined Mr. Sankaran was the same Mr. Sankaran who was so kind and compassionate. He carried his mission with courage of conviction and honesty of purpose. This conviction had roots in Indian Constitution and its egalitarian vision: the Indian State has been mandated to carry forward the vision and Mr. Sankaran believed as a civil servant that it was this task that he was to carry on. He was so clear in his goals that either the political power or vested interests could hardly obstruct his work and whenever they interfered he educated them, persuaded them, if necessary defied them holding that the
constitutional mandate was far superior to all the pragmatic political compulsions and other considerations. He demonstrated beyond any doubt that civil servant can carry on social purpose if only the legal rational authority backed by the requisite individual moral authority. Having served the Indian people through the State for almost three and half decades, he superannuated and sought no other positions of power. He chose to live in the state of Andhra Pradesh, which he served with great pride and dedication. In the early 1990s, when he returned to the state after serving as secretary Rural Development, Government of India, the Naxalite movement picked up further momentum and the State not being able to respond to the demands of the movement mounted up lawless violence to contain the movement resulting into spiral of violence and counter violence. Mr. Sankaran thought and believed that Naxal movement was a political question and they did represent the aspirations of the poor and deprived. It was his deep concern for the poor that propelled him to carry on another significant experiment of his life. 

This proved a fortuitous turning point in his life. The legendary Marxist Chief Minister of Tripura, Nripen Chakravarthy, invited him to shift to Tripura and serve there as Chief Secretary. Both austere bachelors, fiercely honest, had few worldly belongings, and even washed their own clothes. They formed a unique partnership, leading the state for six years. Few governments in India earned such a reputation of integrity, service and justice for the under-privileged. He was instrumental in resettling many daily wage construction workers in the southern part of the erstwhile Bihar, when he found that they were forcibly transported to Tripura by the unethical contractors and forced to work at low wages, under sub-human conditions.

Mr. Sankaran gained national fame when he was kidnapped by Naxalites from the jungles of Andhra Pradesh. After his retirement from government, he constituted a Concerned Citizens Committee, to mediate with government to end its human rights violations in its military-like offensive against the armed rebels, and its policy of ‘encounter’ killings of alleged Naxalites, which he condemned as ‘targeted extralegal executions’. Many tribal or dalit youth, or their loved ones, would desperately contact Mr. Sankaran when they were in danger of being eliminated in fake encounters, and
it was Mr. Sankaran’s mediation which saved several of them. He reminded government tirelessly that it was decades, indeed centuries, of injustice against tribal people — their brutal dispossession from their lands and forests — which was the true source of the insurgency in the jungles of the state.
But, Mr. Sankaran was equally unsparing in condemning the violence of the Naxalites, and their focus on ‘military actions rather than on the mobilization of people for social transformation’. He was convinced that this contributed to ‘further brutalize the society and lead to the shrinkage of democratic space for mobilization and direct participation of the people, impairing the very process of transformation that the movements claim to stand for’.

 

It was due to his unique moral stature that both government and the Maoists felt compelled to respond to his appeals, and defend to him their policies. It is another matter that neither altered their basic approaches to the conflict, and the unabated blood-letting by both sides of the conflict caused him great anguish. The efforts of this Committee dominated a decade of Mr. Sankaran’s life, and he grieved until his end that he could not free his people from the mutually reinforcing cycles of violence, and reclaim for them enduring peace and justice.

Another task to which he devoted a significant part of his time after he retired was to lead the ‘Safai Karmchari Andolan’, an exceptional campaign for ending the humiliating age-old practice of people of particular castes being forced to clean dry latrines with their bare hands, and carry human excreta in baskets on their heads. He regarded this to be the most dreadful manifestation of untouchability and caste. A decade of Mr. Sankaran’s leadership of the ‘Andolan’ led to the substantial decimation of this centuries-old evil in many parts of India. This was through a combination of judicial interventions, compelling accountability of public officials, and a non-violent mass campaign
for self-respect by people engaged in this vocation in which they burned their baskets and demolished dry latrines and as mentor to the Safai Karmachari Andolan, he saw the number of women manually cleaning excreta decline from 13 lakh to 3 lakh.

Mr. Sankaran set aside a significant portion of his salary, and his pension after he retired, to educate dalit children. He never spoke of this to anyone, but when he first suffered a heart attack, many young men competed to keep vigil at his bedside. We learnt later from this assortment of doctors, civil servants, engineers and teachers that whatever they achieved in their lives was due to Mr. Sankaran.

 

He never married, but clearly several loved and revered him like a father. He was an intensely ethical person, but never didactic or judgemental. He displayed an unexpected impish sense of
humor and mischief. After he retired from government, he lived in a small unpretentious and sparsely furnished apartment, which looked more like the home of a retired school teacher than a senior civil servant. Even the few pieces of furniture and gadgets in his house were forced on him by those who loved him. When he received his pension arrears, he was alarmed by this very modest swelling of his bank balance, and quickly distributed the money to street children’s homes, and an organization for disabled persons.

He also served as the commissioner of the Supreme Court -appointed panel on food security (2003). As one of the Commissioners appointed by the Supreme Court, he argued that how the State had the constitutional obligation to eliminate hunger and secure right to food to the people. In order to achieve this, he emphasized on labor power which is the only productive asset of the poor for securing a living? Further, he asserted that right to food and right to work are closely interlinked, as work is the main source of purchasing power. Therefore, minimum wage connotes a statutorily laid down wage which is needed to take care of the bare minimum needs for food and other necessities. In
this way his efforts has indirectly contributed to the formulation of NREGA.

The clash of interest between the poor and rich can be resolved either by a benevolent State Power or Revolution. But these two are alternative and clashing forces. Mr. SR wanted State to solve the problem of this clash of interest. He is a realist enough to understand that this does not always happen. Certainly not to the extent required. Hence, his silent sympathy, for the revolutionaries, who are the Last resort of the poor against exploitation. He is conscious of the inadequacies of the Social Activists and Revolutionaries, their processes and modalities. He wished and worked for
improvement on these fronts rather than dismissing the need for an alternative or check on the State Power. In that sense he is not a partisan but an umpire between the State power and the Revolutionary’s gun.

 

There are many custodians of interests of scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and marginalized groups viz; (i) Tribes Advisory Council in States with Scheduled Tribes, (ii &iii) National Commissions for SCs under Act 338 and National Commission for STs under 338, (iv) National Human Rights Commission, (v) the National Commission for Women, (vi) the National Commission for the Rights of Children (vii) National Commission for Minorities and (viii) National Commission for Safai Karmachari. There is neither clear focus nor dynamic coordination among all these venerable
institutions. Their studies, reports and recommendations languish without any interest whatsoever.

 

The Expert Group seriously urges consultation among all these bodies and launching of joint initiatives for concerted and compulsory action on their joint recommendations, which should become mandatory for Chief Ministers. There are counterpart commissions in the States. In addition, there is a standing Parliamentary Committee on SC & ST.

Mr. Sankaran’s life and work illuminated the lives of literally millions of India’s most dispossessed people with dignity, justice and hope. His compassion, simplicity and lifetime of public service will continue to light the way, both of those who work within government, and others who choose to struggle against it. His enduring legacy will be to demonstrate what true and authentic goodness in public and personal life can accomplish, to make this world a better, kinder place.