*The Pandian Syndrome*

 *The Pandian Syndrome*

By Dr Manoj Dash, Bhubaneswar, 13 June 2024

On June 12, 2024, while looking randomly at X (formerly twitter), I stumbled upon a post by a retired Odia IAS officer who often expresses his views on X. His post stated that a retired IAS officer friend of his during a recent conversation suggested that ‘Pandian Syndrome’ should be made a case study in the IAS training academy which would benefit young IAS officers who are just beginning their career. The retired IAS officer who has posted this on X also stated that he agreed to his former colleague’s suggestion. In my view his post raised two basic questions. What does he mean by ‘Pandian Syndrome’? How exactly are young IAS trainees going to benefit from a case study that narrates the ‘Pandian Syndrome’? Let’s try to delve deeper into these two questions.

Being a rank outsider, my guess about ‘Pandian Syndrome’ is, it is a situation in which an interloper made an attempt to usurp power by resorting to desperate means but failed in his endeavour. As a young IAS officer, V K Pandian worked very hard in his different postings in Odisha. Then he got the opportunity to work as the Private Secretary to the Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. He spent twelve years in this position! Why did he spent those many years in that post? Who allowed him to manage that position for so long? Why wasn’t he transferred to another post? These are some questions which would probably never have the correct answers. Officials in the government especially in the all India services get transferred regularly. This is done with various purposes. One of those is to prevent officials from developing private interest in public affairs. This policy wasn’t made applicable in the case of V K Pandian and the then CM must have allowed him to continue on his personal discretion. Now it is common knowledge that this led to a very peculiar situation in Odisha’s bureaucratic and political domains.

When Mr V K Pandian became eligible to become an officer of the Secretary level in the Government of Odisha (GoO), a department called 5T was created and he was made the Secretary of this Department. 5T stood for Teamwork, Transparency, Technology, Time, and Transformation. These attributes have always been a usual part of good governance and in managing public affairs. However, 5T Department gave unrestrained power to its Secretary and he was often referred to in the public as 5T Secretary to Chief Minister. This Department made it possible for its Secretary to oversee the functions and activities of every other department. He started visiting sites that related to sports, agriculture, irrigation, roads, bridges, temples and hospitals. Nothing credible was left by him for others to do. He became omnipotent and omnipresent in Odisha’s government and public affairs.

He also put a cosy team of senior Babus that managed important Departments of the Government and many of them continued in one position for a number of years. All these Babus did political management of BJD while doing their official work. One of these Babus was his own spouse who managed the Mission Shakti which was later upgraded to a full-fledged Department. She directly managed the self help groups that became the prime vehicle of gathering votes for the BJD throughout the state. Many of these Babus also became fund collectors of the ruling party! A few of them – senior and junior – were from his native state of Tamil Nadu. They actively cooperated with him without any reservations and as a team these Babus dared to take complete control of the administration of the state through a political-bureaucratic coup that seemed legitimate but turned out to be a big misadventure!

Then Pandian took over another function which was in the exclusive domain the Chief Minister. For whatever reason – laziness or ill health or reluctance – the Chief Minister didn’t want to go to different districts as frequently as he should have done. This gave an opportunity to Pandian to visit all the districts to collect grievance letters from people which could have been easily done by any field level officer such as a BDO or a District Collector.

His incessant visits to various locations throughout the state raised a huge political storm and an intense debate among public, media and politicians. Many politicians and senior journalists criticised his moves vehemently. Senior politicians and Ministers of the ruling party BJD were seen very pleased to receive him at different locations and organise logistics for his visits. These politicians – Ministers and MLAs – were not even given an opportunity to speak on many occasions in their own constituencies or on the functions of the Ministry they were looking after. Covert surveys were commissioned by Pandian or by his team (which included senior government officers) on his behalf. Privately recruited investigators went to the locations he visited and collected data from people whether they are appreciating Pandian’s visits and whether voters would accept if Pandian assumes a bigger political role in future.

Because of constant and intense public scrutiny, Pandian had to resign from IAS towards the end of 2023 and he immediately joined the BJD. He not only became the Chief Strategist of the ruling party, he was also made 5T Chairman with the rank of a Cabinet Minister. His frequency of visits to different places sharply increased and he went on unleashing a slew of programmes and schemes in a desperate attempt to raise his popularity and acceptability among the people of Odisha. During elections, wherever Naveen Patnaik went for campaigning, nobody else was seen on the stage with Naveen except Pandian. He used to consume most of the stage time speaking to people and Naveen Patnaik was seen speaking very less and whatever he spoke was also prompted by V K Pandian. It gave an impression to people that Naveen Patnaik has voluntarily ceded his own control to Pandian! Several clarifications were issued by Naveen Patnaik later but nobody seemed to believe in his appeals which came very late. Pandian was allowed by Naveen Patnaik to become so ubiquitous that people no longer believed in Naveen’s clarifications. The trust and love of people of Odisha that Naveen had earned over two and half decades of his public life went down in flames in a matter of few weeks!

V K Pandian made a big blunder in measuring Odia people by judging them from the behaviour of BJD ministers and politicians. Because a few had earlier spoken out and were thrown out of the party, all the frontline BJD politicians meekly surrendered before Pandian. That gave him the leverage to have a greater say in the affairs of the party. Just because politicians of BJD had no spine, Pandian thought that Odias in general would also be lacking in spine. This misjudgement caused the downfall of Pandian, Naveen Patnaik and the BJD. The BJP which often received crucial support in the Parliament not only won 20 out of the 21 Parliamentary Constituencies in Odisha but also mustered a simple majority for itself in the State Assembly in the 2024 elections. A regional party maintaining so close a relationship with an ever power hungry BJP was a bad strategy from the beginning. BJD’s stale and periodic shrill that BJP is not caring for the development of Odisha just became a sore and irrelevant noise during the recently concluded elections which nobody was prepared to believe in. The ‘Pandian Syndrome’ came to an end instead of soaring further which V K Pandian tried his best to achieve.

What could young IAS officers possibly learn from this? One can look at it from two angles. One, ambitious young IAS officers who would like to become more powerful than what the system allows them to become, can learn from Pandian’s mistakes and not repeat those when they get an opportunity to corner or usurp power. Two, IAS officers who would like to do their job by the rulebook or who are not as secretively ambitious as Pandian can always learn from his story as to how not to become a Pandian during their career in the IAS. They should not be interested in remaining static in a particular role even when their political bosses would ask them to continue. They should be more interested in contributing to their own learning and to the development of a state or the nation by taking up different roles and responsibilities. One hopes, the young IAS officers would opt for the second option! That would ensure that the ‘Pandian Syndrome’ is never repeated in the future course of India.