Enforcing lockdown rules has become a premise for entitled bureaucrats and police officials to harass ordinary Indian citizens on flimsy grounds. Despite High Court orders warning the police against the use of batons and laathis on ‘lockdown violators’, innumerable citizens across the nation continue to be victimized by an overzealous and inhumane ‘system’. In a video that has now gone viral on social media, Surajpur district magistrate & collector Ranbir Sharma decided that harassing, slapping, and destroying the smartphone of a 23-year-old man was the right way to go about ensuring that the public follows lockdown guidelines in Chhattisgarh.
The viral video shows the youth – who was riding a two-wheeler – being intercepted by the district magistrate & collector and police personnel for venturing out amid a complete lockdown. As is evident from the now-viral 3-minute video, the youth showed some documents to the DM upon being stopped by his team. Thereafter, the DM snatches the mobile phone from the youth’s hand and throws it on the ground. The IAS officer then slaps the youngster and directs security personnel to hit him. Security personnel rush towards the youngster and hit him with batons multiple times. The youth was reportedly out during lockdown to get vaccinated.
https://twitter.com/SushantBSinha/status/1396149357699682307
The youth is also ‘punished’ for his travesty and is asked to do sit-ups while holding his ears like a school student. The video of brazen bureaucratic overreach has shocked the nation, and a massive social media campaign to get the IAS officer in question sacked has been waged. Due to the tremendous public pressure, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel on Sunday ‘transferred’ the magistrate & collector.
The problem is that the DM is seen as the "malik" (i.e. lord)….. even this boy uses the term. https://t.co/pEYQHyu1jx
— Sanjeev Sanyal (@sanjeevsanyal) May 23, 2021
However, the youth who was slapped by the DM, talks about his helplessness, and says that after being slapped by “Maalik” of the district, whom should he complain to?
This mindset of seeing DM as the “Maalik” of the district shows that a large number of our rural population sees the administration with a colonial hangover and the district magistrate is considered “Maalik” of the particular district.
The DM has no specific role in the modern administrative setup, and, most importantly, s/he is an IAS officer with no specific role. For education, most of the districts have Shiksha Adhikari (educational officer/commissioner); for health, every district has a Chief Medical officer (CMO); for policing, there is a whole administrative set up with a police officer leading the district, and similarly, for other roles, there are other officers.
And the DM serves no specific purpose except for supervising all other officers of the state. Given the fact that the work of most of the officers can be supervised by higher authorities, there is no need for a DM in a modern administrative set-up.
So, for this mindset of mai-baap sarkar (a government that intervenes in everything and can breach the rights of the people) to end, the post of the District Magistrate must end. The Union government is already implementing reforms in UPSC and one such reform should be the scrapping of this post.