Khairnar

 G R Khairnar

During one of my visit to Mumbai I planned to visit Mr. Govind Ragho Khairnar, the Deputy Commissioner of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation who is popularly known as the Demolition Man. He rose from the post of a clerk to Deputy Commissioner and was known for his uprightness and fearlessness while carrying out his duties in the face of fierce opposition from politicians and grave threat from land mafia.  He was instrumental in demolishing many illegal structures and encroachments thereby reclaiming property worth thousands of crores to the Government.  In the process he had to suffer injuries and even his life was in danger.  During the course of service he was humiliated, harassed and even suspended by framing false charges and served eviction notice to vacate the house. Even after the High Court passed an order to re instate him, the Government did not comply. He is still hailed as a hero of the middle-class Indian.

During his suspension from BMC he wrote his autobiography “Ekaki Zunj” (The lonely fight) in Marathi in 1995. Khairnar was known for rescuing minor girls from human trafficking and prostitution. He used eunuchs to rescue minor girls from Kamathipura, a red light district in Mumbai. Khairnar later took up living in Bibipura village in Sabarkhata District, 70 km from Ahmadabad, working on a few development projects in rural Gujarat, funded by a US-based non-governmental organisation. While in Gujarat his health suffered a setback due to his experiments with naturopathy and he became seriously ill. He had a brief association with social activist Anna Hazare.

I am a proud recipient of a letter from Mr. Khairnar. During my Mumbai visit I phoned him to seek permission to meet him. When I gave the reference, he could recollect and happily invited me. He was staying in the BMC quarters at Dadar. He was under Z category security. Security personnel took me inside after a thorough check. A simple man wearing khadi kurta pyjama. We talked about 20-25 minutes mainly about corruption. He accompanied me up to the gate on my return.

A big salute to the crusader against corruption. We need more Khairnars to take up the devils of corruption and take the bull by its horns. In this connection, my write up on corruption is appended below:

“We, Indians lead the way in many fields like population growth, pollution, road accidents, robbery, kidnapping, dacoity, murder, bride burning, scams, scandals and last but not least corruption. Corruption begins at the top and percolates downward to the lowest rung in the ladder. Corruption has made a cancerous growth eating the vitals of our body politic and there is hardly any area, which is free from corruption. For all these evils, we conveniently blame the system as if the system was designed, developed and supplied by the God. Occasionally we witness some nobility in the midst of this cesspool of corruption but those who stand against corrupt deeds are hounded, harassed and humiliated. The situation has become so bad that for the honest people it has become difficult to survive in this society. They are branded as fools and idiots who are unable to amass ill-gotten wealth. In fact, corruption has become a way of life today. We boast of having achieved all-round progress in all spheres of life after independence but the sad state of affairs is that while we have made arithmetical progression in the positive aspects of life, we have made geometrical progression in the negative aspects of life.   

 

Few years ago a proposal was made by some political parties to exclude MPs and MLAs from the purview of Prevention of Corruption Act.  This would have drastically reduced the rate of corruption in the country as a large chunk of corrupt practices would not have been reported or recorded. Unfortunately, the proposal was not legalized. Politicians can do a great favour to their countrymen by reviving the old proposal and excluding more categories of people from the purview of Prevention of Corruption Act so that corruption can be considerably reduced at least on paper.”