By Biswaraj Patnaik :

A very decent, upright and daring IAS officer took great pleasure in revealing a moving fact while amid his close friends and associates: “If ever there is a secret voting across the senior bureaucrats of Odisha to select an indisputably honest person in the community, Dr Taradatt would just walk over as the victor.

Even his worst critics and detractors would be forced by conscience to cast their votes in Taradatt’s favour primarily because he is 1 to 100 in the ‘integrity rate chart’. The next best ones would have to compete from the 101th position downwards.”

That’s Taradatt who has slugged like mad from day one of his IAS career. A Sanskrit scholar, he has also mastered the English language fairly well to floor many talkative English masters in minutes basically because of his fundamental clarity he acquires in any domain he is pushed into. As per his ideals, fun time is fine, but it is not only at clubs or formally known recreation facilities. One can always refresh oneself at work place and home by being creative, thereby replenishing all the exhausted energy and zeal to eat and sleep well to wake up with brighter ideas of serving the people.

The best quality about Taradatt is that he never says the other one is wrong. When the land sharks got active with their wicked designs to rob the simple and gullible landowners, Dr Taradatt Singh tightened the ropes around the rogue land dealers’ necks by organising and having passed a rule which made it mandatory for registering authorities to stall execution of sale deeds in case the seller or the authorised agent failed to furnish ROR or original Sale deed with consent from all the owners. All hell broke loose.

The most adversely affected land sharks, distressed would-be sellers, the touts and middlemen termed Dr Taradatt a ruthless villain. No one went deep into the matter but cried hoarse that Tara is mad and does not understand law. Several law-knowing persons met him and concluded in minutes that the people – friendly bureaucrat was badly misunderstood. Even judges mistook him for an arrogant fool only to realise later that he was a genuine friend of the masses who needed protection against land sharks in the garb of property dealers.

Between 2003 and 2012, every other unemployed guy or ambitious entrepreneur turned ‘property dealer’, mostly to capture land in and around Bhubaneswar from stupidly greedy landowners and sell them at ten times the prevailing price. The government authorities too became insensibly smart and raised the benchmark value of land beyond limits to earn stamp duty revenue and show off to the masters that Odisha was getting wealthier.

Thus by 2008, Bhubaneswar became one of the costliest places in India- land price soaring. No wonder, crime rate shot up incredibly, criminals from all over came around to set shop and run cartels and crime syndicates.

Today land – related organised crime has touched an all time high- nearly beyond control. Around that time, the mining boom had occured and the resultant mad private investment projects were being signed through MOUs. Money was flying across and most of the neo-rich were crazy to invest in land.

Dr Taradatt had known all this and, as a sharp-minded, watchful public official, he had seen the problems ahead. He brought in place a great rule but the people failed him including the legal community. The ROR mandate never existed as people believed .Fortunately for him, the state executive never came his way. He had made enough provisions for registration of sale deed without ROR. But even lawyers moved courts to have rules struck off while there was enough scope to have alienation done for money.

Of late, he was given the task of investigating the Discretionary Quota scam and did a most marvellous job. He shared his experience with only a very few he trusts. “I virtually wept while finishing the scam report because my best friends, mentors, colleagues as well as admirers were all going to suffer.” In the name of the Almighty, I brought myself to a completely dispassionate state to do an honest job. At the end, as commissioned to make a recommendation, I had to say,” all plot allocations stand cancelled.”

That’s Taradatt who has meanwhile been shunted out, all on a sudden, to a new domain where too he will excell in delivering public goods and relief. Interestingly, he is now the Director General of the Gopabandhu Academy that churns out administrators. For sure, Odisha will have a band of more sensitized and sanitised public officials than ever before under Dr Taradatt’s care and guidance. The most endearing quality about this unique top administrator is that he remains unmoved with the least expected changes that befall him.

‘Sthitapragnyata’ meaning ‘being indifferent to pain and pleasure’ is best demonstrated in him. It would be relevant to mention here that, despite being a member of the Bhubaneswar club by default, he, as the Finance Secretary, had slapped a huge penalty on the club management for evading sales taxes in some internal business transactions, for which the club functionaries remained sore with him for long.

Taradatt is now heading the widely known KBK project which has received immeasurable funding over the decades without corresponding improvement in the quality of life of the poor there, mostly tribals. Most certainly the people there will beam a wider smile from now on as they will feel the benefits for sure. Dr Datt’s strategy is to sanitise the system by cleansing the workforce at the outset and then put them on a time lined task, which most bureaucrats don’t care to do for they know the extra mile run doesn’t bring them much private benefit.

Taradatt, though one of the fittest to run for chief secretary of Odisha, may never get to the coveted chair for reasons best known to all around. He does not stoop low or engage in machinating or scheming activities to have benefits even if deserves all that. The Bhagvat Geeta drives him. Work has to be performed without worrying much about outcomes. But as God rewards in good time, Dr Taradatt has been rewarded already with the highest public respect. He is known as the cleanest bureaucrat who performs. There are equally clean colleagues who are shy or afraid of performing.

IAS officers, if serious about work, can do wonders for ailing societies anywhere in India. Unfortunately, most of them lose the enthusiasm and zeal picked at the Mussourie academy, once they rise to the rank of commissioners. No one knows why that happens. However the new generation cadres are an inspired lot without pretensions.