AICEIA Chennai Boycotts Central Excise Day - Superintendents' Assn Chennai offers support

Time to introspect

By R Manimohan

In our youth, when we joined Government Service in the Central Excise Department as an Inspector of Central Excise, we were told by the then IRS officer  that we were the SPINE of the Department.We were proud. Because, we had been taught earlier in our schools and colleges that it is the spine that differentiates between the vertebrates and the invertebrates; that it is the erect spine which differentiates the homo sapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom.We were proud because we were asked to don a ‘Uniform’.  We were proud because it looked like the uniform of the Police officers.
We were proud because our senior officials in the department told us that an Inspector of Central Excise was equivalent to a Circle Inspector of Police, in rank.We were proud because we were told that only this class of Executives, in the entire Country, were empowered to wear uniform, wield weapons, collect revenue and also conduct quasi-judicial functions – all at once.We were proud because we were told that we were Chartered Accountants, Lawyers, Police, (and yet beyond the encumbrance attached to the police), Chemists, Judges, Statisticians, Sleuths, and a variety of various other things all rolled into one.
We were proud that no other super hero of our times had donned so many roles in a single movie.We were so proud that we had entered the heaven of a service

.…….

As days went by, years passed on and decades had been spent, we now realize:

That the SPINE DOESNT GROW;That the Spine is the one which bears the entire brunt;That the spine which is a connecting link between the animal instinct and the supernatural within, had been reduced to an elastic supplement because:

Ø  the department is quasi not only in judicial things, but also in uniform, discipline, responsibility, execution and many other things;
Ø  the uniform imposed upon the frame of the executives was a myth;
Ø  the powers stated in the statute for these executives were at the mercy of unwritten codes;
Ø  there were no work norms;
Ø  nor was there any uniformity in administrative decisions between various zones within the department and
Ø  all the benefits of the office, infrastructure and career benefits are supposed to be the exclusive prerogatives of only the very ones whose burden we bear and whose bread and butter we make.
So now it is time for this SPINE, once proud and erect, but now tired to the bones and shattered in spirit, to recline and introspect – where we went wrong.

About this blog

This blog has been given shape following an initiative by Shri R Manimohan and Shri Arun Zachariah, along with several other individuals who are, or  have earlier been,  in the forefront of the organisational movement in the CBEC. Its day  to day operation shall be looked after by A Satish and Ajit Kumar K G.  These four persons thus constitute the present editorial team of this blog.