I do not think he was allowed to do much in Assam. In fact Homen Borgohain wrote in one of his columns that when Ashok saikia came to Assam after an international stint in agriculture, no Assamese minister (including the Chief Minister Prafulla Mahanta) ever met him once, INCLUDING THE AGRICULTURE MINISTER, to enquire from him as to in what way Ashok Saikia's knowledge could be shared or utilised in Assam. They were not very comfortable with him being in the Assam bureaucracy and always maintained an armed length relationship with him.
In his first stint in Assam as an education commissioner, he did two things. As you know, education is one of the most corrupt department in the secretariat. After a teacher is appointed as per regulations, he has to be on probation for a period after which the teacher has to be regularized. This is where the corruption comes in. Teachers have to grease the palm of everyone in the department and it often takes decades before the regularization can take place. What Ashok Saikia did was to computerise the rolls of the teachers including the dates on their appointment. Now the computer would automatically throw up the names of the teachers who are due for regularisation and the education department staff would be held accountable in cases of delays. Obviously the education department staff in Dispur were alarmed. they went to the Minister, Jatin Mali, and told him not to allow the computerisation of the rolls. Thus, when the file to implement the computerisation of teachers rolls was sent to Jatin Mali, he just wrote that the matter should be kept pending for the time being. I had met Saikia a few days after that and I could see the distress in his face, especially because computerisation efforts were very intensive work. The second thing he tried to do was to be physically near the directorates. You see, the various Directorates in the Education department, whom we call DPIs (like Director of technical education, elementary education, college education etc) , were all located at Kahilipara while the Commissioner sits in Dispur. Thus any paper from the directorates to the Department used to take often a week to traverse the distance and there were cases where the papers were phocopied and leaked to the Press etc. Saikia therefore shifted his own office to kahilipara and I as Member Finance of ASEB helped him to get the electrical connection. This arrangement did not last long because after he left, the office was shifted back to Dispur because his successor felt it beneath his dignity to sit outside Dispur while all other commissioners sat in Dispur and it was and has ever since been business as usual. Shantikam ----- Original Message ----- From: ranjuhussein To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2008 1:54 PM Subject: [asom] Re: Ashok Saikia no more Sir I make a mistake. I was wanting to know what he did for Assam. Ranju Hussein --- Mrinal Singh Raja <mrinal_raja@ ...> wrote: Hi, Please read the below 2 links to get an idea about Ashok Saikia. http://www.indianexpress.com/story/255943.html http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/details.asp?id=dec3107/at04 Regards Mrinal ----- Original Message ---- From: ranjuhussein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, 3 January, 2008 3:05:49 AM Subject: [asom] Re: Ashok Saikia no more Sir, Can you tell what he did that other Assamese IAS should follow? Sorry I am ignorant! Ranju Hussein --- "Himendra Thakur" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: This is a shocking news. It is a great blow to the cause of the Assamese. I hope younger Assamese IAS Officers will come forward to take up the cudgels for the cause of the Assamese ---- that will be the best tribute to Ashok Saikia. Let us pray for the Peace of the Departed Soul. Let us --- his family and friends--- pray for strength to withstand the shock. With love to everybody, Himendra
