A silver lining in tribal India

Lalita Mosahari, a sixty something lady hailing from Daulaghat, a remote village in central Assam’s Karbi Anglong district arrives at the Public Facilitation Center (PFC) of the Deputy Commissioner’s office at this headquarter town Diphu, with her son Dev, boarding a bus early in the morning of March 25 to avail a caste certificate for her son.

The uncertainty of getting the certificate same day kept this tribal mother worried all the way. However, entering into the PFC, she was overwhelmed by assurance of the officials manning the centre that her certificate would be delivered within an hour, after the verification of related data is completed.

The swift response of the officials to her queries made Lalita, who is used to usual lethargic body language of government officials, awe-filled; as their approach this time was completely different from her earlier experiences.

In fact, for this illiterate tribal lady, it was quite difficult to visualize the flexibilities of Total Quality Management (TQM) system already in place at the DC office, which now views public’s satisfaction as a measure of the system’s performance.

Like Lalita, other visitors to the office too, may not be aware of the fact that Karbi Anglong has become the first ISO: 9001:2000 compliant districts in the north-east and the fourth district in the country after Latur, Jalgaon in Maharashtra and Krishna in Andhra Pradesh.

But for Dr M Angamuthu, deputy commissioner of the district, it has been quite challenging to guide the administration to be capable of attaining this enviable position.

Karbi Anglong is the biggest district in Assam has so far had only a negative portrayal with years of ethnic unrest, rise in extremist activities, high poverty index, and socio-economic deprivation. This was the first district to experience tribal autonomy in Assam. Constituted under the provisions of the
Sixth Schedule on June 23, 1952, the district, however, continued to be marred by the authority’s incompetence, state government’s indifference and rampant corruption at all levels.

A people’s facilitation centre

The ISO:9001:2000 certificate was handed over to Assam Chief
Minister Tarun Gogoi on March 24 by Rupam Baruah, Head, North East Operations of Det Norske Veritas (DNV)—the certifying organisation acting for International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).

"The ISO:9001:2001 is a standard for quality management system which ensures that the organisation practices TQM, involving management responsibility, customer focus, periodical review of all activities, provision of human and technical resources, proper work environment, monitoring, analysis and measurement and attempts at continuous improvement. It also ensures that these are thoroughly documented,” says Angamuthu.

The TQM project has been adopted in order to reduce burden of locals of the district who make their visits to the office for obtaining information, submitting applications and expediting them, meeting officials, obtaining copies of public records.

These visits entail loss of incomes, uncertainty regarding availability of the relevant official, record or information on the day of visit and discomfort and harassments at the hands of public servants.

Occupying centre-stage the TQM drive is ‘toning up the personnel administration’, fully equipping them to handle the pressures of ‘public grievances’ on a regular day-to-day basis, without having to maintain the growing heaps of files gathering dust. For this, the district administration has identified ‘e-governance’ through an IT enabled user friendly network, connected to all integrated development departments, to speed up responses.

Already ‘Citizen Centric’ services have been introduced in the DC office at the district headquarters in Diphu, 270 kilometres from Guwahati. Called the Public Facilitation Centre (PFC), the National Informatics Centre (NIC) helped with this work as part of e-governance project.

So far 8,000 computer-generated caste certificates have been issued through the PFC since its inception. The process has proved to be both cost and time effective as a caste certificate is now issued within half an hour (if one submit his or her application furnished with proper documents and pays Rs. 20 as processing fee).

Other important certificates are also issued within a given time frame, ranging from a day to two months, depending on the nature of the certificates. These include permanent residence certificate, legal heir certificate, senior citizen certificate, arms licenses, issue of no objection certificate for explosives, etc.

As part of this quality management system, Karbi Anglong is linked to the information super highway and the e-governance is expected to result in improved transparency, speedy information dissemination, higher administrative efficiency and improved public services in sectors including transportation, education, power, health, water, security and the state administration and municipal services, says Angamuthu.

Going beyond implementation of the project at the district headquarters at Diphu, the administration is planning to decentralise the whole system at the sub-division and block levels, with a view to provide almost all the services at the people’s door step.

The TQM project costing 30 lakhs, involved lot of renovation and repairing work, furnishing, installation of PCs, upgradation of the official website of the district administration, creation of automated employee database, computerisation of session court and general branch, installation of two ATMs, plantation work and setting up of a herbarium.

A backdrop of local conflict

Development activities by ensuring peoples’ participation at the initiative of administration is crucial, as the district has remained one of the most backward in the state, despite having unique opportunities of prosperity in terms of human resource developments. Even after over 55 years experience of tribal autonomy, the Assam Human Development Report 2003 identifies Karbi Anglong having “highest number of people in human poverty” in the state.

However, one of the biggest districts of the country with a total geographical area of 10,434 square kilometres, Karbi Anglong had only 37 square kilometres of urban area in 2001. The literacy rate is 58.83 and it ranked 19 in terms of literate districts in the state in 2001.

The poverty index has also been reflected in serious health indices. Till 2002-04, the immunisation coverage of the district was only 59.88%, with only 6.5 per cent full vaccination coverage, according to statistics provided by the district administration. The complete antenatal check up of pregnant mothers is only 27%, while the infant mortality rate is 68 per thousand - much higher than the national average. The maternal mortality rate of the district is 490, according to the officials.

The district witnessed several rounds of movements including the most vigorous mass political movement spearheaded by Autonomous State Demand Committee (ASDC) in 1986, demanding creation of an autonomous state under the article 244(A) of the Constitution of India.

The movement, culminated in signing of a memorandum of understanding with the government of India with enhanced power, under the Constitution of India (Sixth Schedule) Amended Act, 1995.

Like the earlier experiences of local movements, the entire district witnessed furious fratricidal and ethnic clashes among the people living here. A series of ethnic clashes between Karbis and Kukis in 2003 and between Karbis and Dimasas in 2005, claimed more than 200 lives, and led to displacement of 60,000 people from their original villages.

In 2007 too, insurgent activities took lives of 31 persons, mostly Hindi-speaking, and led to displacement of these people.

Apart from these ethnic clashes, however, massive extortion activities of rebel groups have made the district a volatile zone.
The district demographic profile include eight tribes namely Karbi, Bodo, Dimasa, Tiwa, Kuki, Khasi, Mizo, Hmar, Rengma and eight non-tribal communities with a total population of 8,13,311 (2001 census). Karbis with a total population of 3,30,953 are the majority.

The constant insurgent activities have tremendous negative impact on peace and development process on one hand, and building up of the human resource on the other.

Banking, diary processing and more, with a pro-people tilt

In the backdrop of all these negative development indices, getting ISO: 9001:2000 certificates have gone a long way in building up a new image of the district.

However, the district administration has realised that mere TQM at the headquarters was not going make much difference unless it is simultaneously backed by a series of development initiatives aimed at freeing the district from the poverty tag.

Sarik Teron, the village headman of Rongkangthir a severely conflict-hit Karbi village, too, can foresee promising days, as the village has been adopted by State Bank of India (SBI) as an “ideal village” of the district—another new concept of development formulated by the district administration.

“Under the ideal village concept, three tribal villages of each of the 11 blocks in the district will be adopted by a bank institution. Apart form providing electricity and safe drinking water, each of these families of such villages will have a bank account and at least one of the family members will be a member of a self-help group. The financial institutions will also guide these tribal people in finding sustainable alternative livelihoods,” the DC says.

The experience of Karbi Anglong Milk Union Ltd. (KAMUL) in Manja Block, 16 km off from the district headquarters is also seen as another effort by the district administration to supplement its achievement in TQM.

A joint venture of district veterinary department, dairy department, district administration and Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council authorities, the Rs. 37 lakh state of the art milk processing plant, installed in January 9, this year, produces 500 liters of milk per day involving 150 families, both tribal and non-tribal communities. The district administration has facilitated credit linkage to these families to avail loans up to Rs. 1,00,000.

“The main objective of the milk plant is to increase the consumption of milk among the tribal people living here, thereby improving their health status. Tribal people living here traditionally do not have the habit of milk consumption and the livestock and poultry they rear are mainly for meat consumption”, the DC adds.

Another important intervention of the district administration is the establishment of Ginger Growers Co-operative Market Federation (GINFED), in April 2007, and introduction of G-card, the first commodity based debit-cum-credit card to be issued in India, among its 3,000 shareholders to enable them to avail loans from financial institutions.

Till the formation of the GINFED the ginger growers of the district were at the mercy of the middlemen who often duped them by to forcing them to sell their produce at prices less than the production cost despite the fact that Karbi Anglong produces the best quality ginger which has a very high demand in the international market.

Angamuthu is hopeful that when the TQM is decentralised to sub-division and block levels as part of the ISO project then impact of these simultaneous changes would be felt by the people of this district for all these activities would together make them more empowered than now.

Ratna Bharali Talukdar is a freelance journalist based in Guwahati, Assam.