Government Department

We lived in Hyderabad between 1994 and 2005. Hyderabad of today was vastly different from that of 1994. In 1994, it was a dark city with frequent power cuts, water scarcity, damaged roads and no good park to mention. The city got a real break through during Chandra Babu’s tenor. Even his detractor would admit that he made the first real change.

First thing he did was expanding the then old Begumpet Airport into an International Airport, repairing the roads, creating parks, improving the water and power supply. When he overthrew NTR in 1995, many thought he has usurped the power by wrong means. But he has compensated the ill feelings through good performance and governance. He brought the IT industry to Hyderabad and for all the hypes, Hyderabad poses today, the real credit goes to Babu garu only.

This has happened sometime in 2003, when we were living in Hyderabad. During the last 7-8 years, my wife has picked up very good telugu. Very good means very good. She can even talk in telugu for hours. She infact started doing training programs on soft skills to corporates and government departments. AP Police and transport departments are few regular customers for her training programs.

One day, she was to give a talk to AP Transport employees at their training centre. The centre is about 30 kilometers from our residence. They were supposed to arrange to pick her and drop her back. At the anointed time, she received a call from transport office informing that they have sent a vehicle to pick her and the vehicle has already reached our place.

We were living in the second floor of an apartment. As with any other lady, she went through the routine make-up process and then went down to catch the vehicle. She went around the building, but could not find any vehicle of imaginable category. Those days, she didn’t have a mobile and hence she came back to our flat to call the transport office. Again, they reconfirmed that the vehicle is already at our place and even gave the vehicle number to identify.

She went down to search for the vehicle. To her surprise, a full big bus was standing there with the same registration number given by the department. When checked with the driver, he confirmed that that was the vehicle to take her to the training centre.

The question is why they sent a 60 seater bus to bring just one person. We thought that some one might have mis-communicated. Instead of sending a cab, they might have sent the bus. But when checked, it was found that they had sent the bus knowing fully well only. It was understood that to hire a cab, they need to take many people’s approval and a note has to move through various hierarchy. Instead, using an existing resource is simple and a lower level person can decide on this. That is a junior officer can decide on sending a bus to pick-up just one person, but to hire a cab, the approval of senior authorities is required.

This is the way, departments works across the states. Hope things might have changed now.