Bonds Beyond The Red Tape

Government officers are heroes too. Recent stories of the public’s love for some of them stand as proof.

- Abdul Gani in Guwahati and Sandeep Sahu in Bhubaneswar

IT'S a striking photograph, of a young man mobbed by a group of children, some of them crying, others hugging him, apparently to stop their favourite teacher from leaving. If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, this was worth a million. G. Bhagawan, a 28­-year-­old English teacher at a gov­ernment school in Tamil Nadu shot to fame recently when the photograph of crying students went viral, prompting authorities to cancel his transfer. In another incident, about a week ago, hundreds of people took to the streets in Kohima, Nagaland, to protest the state government’s decision to remove the then police chief Rupin Sharma, who had earned love and fame as the “people’s DGP”. People with banners and placards marched through the hill town demanding cancellation of the or­der. Further west, a doctor left an Odis­ha village in tears when he decided to pursue a degree in orthopaedics after an eight­year stint at the healthcare centre in Tentulikhunti in Nabarang­pur district. Photos of weeping villagers hugging an equally emotional Kailash Chandra Das left many with a lump in their throat.