Lucknow: The “Bada Sahibs” in Uttar Pradesh are sleep deprived, over-worked and still racing against time.
They can no longer enjoy leisure hours at work, go for business lunches that end in the evening, send their wives and children shopping in their official cars and invite friends over for dinner.
UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, in the past 42 days, has turned the lives of the bureaucrats completely topsy-turvy.
Senior bureaucrat who sauntered into their offices around 11.30 am and announced lunch time at 1.30 pm, are now seen huffing and puffing to work at 9 am on the chief minister’s orders.
Lunch breaks and the power naps in the afternoon is a thing of the glorious past and office work goes on well after the sun has set.
They can no longer play truant from office and enjoy afternoon shows in multiplexes because the chief minister has now started contacting them on landline phones.
Yogi Adityanath spends the day meeting people, attending programmes and his official work begin after 5 pm. The recent presentations of various departments have continued till 1 am on most days. Ministers, officers, junior staff, peons and security staff also remain on duty till the chief minister leaves office.
A senior IAS officer in the rank of principal secretary, said, “I am diabetic and cannot take this hectic lifestyle. I have been reaching home around 2 am and then am expected back in office at 9 am. During the meetings, we are only served snack and there is no dinner break. I have to miss my insulin shots because of this. My family is asking me to take voluntary retirement because these working hours will ruin my health,” he said.
Another bureaucrat said that he had been sleep- deprived since Yogi Adityanath took over and had developed high blood pressure. “This sudden change in lifestyles is wreaking havoc on our health. The chief minister is young and has been used to this routine but we are not accustomed to it,” he said. To make matters worse for the high-profile babus in the UP government, Yogi Adityanath has now ordered that officials will be entitled to only one official car.
Till now, most bureaucrats kept multiple cars and their families used them. The junior staff — clerks, peons, drivers and security personnel are equally harassed. A joint delegation of various government employees unions met the chief secretary Rahul Bhatnagar on Tuesday evening and asked him to specify how many working hours they are expected to put in.
It may be recalled that chief minister Yogi Adityanath has already stated that those who cannot put in 20 hours a day of work are free to walk away. “A government employee is expected to put in eight of work daily but the chief minister is pushing the envelope too far. Who will be responsible if some employee suffers a heart attack due to this work pressure? We have family responsibilities and cannot work for 20 hours a day”, said a leader of the employees’ union. The ministers in the Yogi government are also burdened with work but are, apparently, in no position to complain.
A senior minister confessed, “Since the day of the swearing in, I have not had dinner with my family. We are either attending meetings or meeting people. If there is any time left, we are made to sweep the offices. This time is certainly different. We do not even have beacon lights on our cars”.
Even as the babus in UP are trying to cope with their new ‘miserable lifestyle’, the social media has found humor in the whole thing and a new parody song doing the rounds is ‘Afsar, babu daud lagaye, ki Yogi aa gaya hai’, sung to the tune of Hame kya ho gaya hai” from Heer Ranjha.
