AAP a middle-class fantasy: IAS officer

Chhattisgarh IAS officer Alex Paul Menon, whom Naxals had to free abruptly after abducting him, slammed the Arvind Kejriwal’s anti-corruption plank, calling it “a middle class fantasy”. In an open letter, Mr Menon states that corruption can not be fought with measures like “darbar and sting (operation)”. Mr Menon illustrates with an example wherein he shares his experience of unearthing a mid-day meal scam in Dhamtari district of the state, after which he had to put in place a system, which required a lot of time to build in with automation and doing away with manual works.
In “an open letter to all the rabble-rousers who feel corruption can be done away with darbar and sting ops”, Mr Menon states that “we have been hearing shrilled voices against corruption, who never tried to do a thorough analysis of the system, loopholes, modus operandi”.
Mr Menon had last hit the headlines when he was abducted by the Maoists in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh but was later abruptly freed. The officer mentions that he uncovered a mid-day meal scam in Dhamtari district, which involved the members of self-help groups (SHGs), school teachers, government officials and public distribution shops (PDS). “A painful internal audit running into three months exposed scams, which was to the tune of `12 lakh a block. It took us another six months to put in place a thorough system consisting of initial cleanup of four years of mess and starting afresh, uniform proforma for data collection, a computerised data entry to compile and make calculations, creating a workflow and timelines, business process re-engineering and doing away with citizen-government interface,” Mr Menon elaborates on how the corruption was eliminated.
The Dhamtari model was later adopted by the chief minister Raman Singh for the whole Chhattisgarh and was also nominated to the Centre under governance innovation category.
Mr Menon reasons why he calls the anti-corruption plank a “middle class fantasy” by stating that it encourages bribes due to its paying capacity when it needs. Incidentally, Mr Kejriwal is asking Delhiites on Radio FM to sting officials seeking bribes and tells that this way Delhi would become the first corruption free state.