Inconstant gardeners

The mutual fund industry pins its hopes on Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) Chairman U K Sinha to revive its sagging fortunes because of his earlier stint as chief of UTI AMC. The Sebi chief, however, thinks this trust could be misplaced because, as he said, “Everything you learn in one job may not be transported to the new job.” He illustrated this with an example of an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer in Bihar. Brought up in Delhi and oriented to big city life, the officer was appointed sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) of a very small town in Bihar where he was assigned a bungalow surrounded by three acres of land. The SDM discovered that the government had sanctioned only one gardener; after some calculations he concluded that he needed at least four. He sent a request to the government. Despite pressing for it for four years, the request wasn’t cleared. The SDM started wondering whether he did the right thing by joining the IAS given that a simple task like sanctioning four gardeners couldn’t be done. The SDM’s next posting was under-secretary in the department of finance in the state headquarters. After a couple of months, the same proposal came back to him. In his new job, he realised that the state has 70 sub-divisions so granting each SDM this request would entail a huge sum. Without thinking twice he rejected the proposal.