Served in last non-Left govt,now set for next

In between,the Writers veteran has seen the tenures of both Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee

In 1974 he saw Siddhartha Shankar Ray,then Congress chief minister of West Bengal,walking firmly along the corridors of Writers Buildings.

By the time he retires next year,Niranjan Guchhait,senior personal assistant to the judicial secretary,may also have seen Mamata Banerjee walk the state secretariat building,provided she does the become first non-Left chief minister since Ray.

In between,the Writers veteran has seen the tenures of both Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

He remembers the flamboyance of both Ray and then chief secretary Rathin Sengupta and the atmosphere of perestroika in Writers and the New Secretariat where he joined the labour department on June 15,1974.

The ambience was friendly,relationships between people cordial. In fact Writers; Buildings used to be thronged by many more people when departments like health and education were here, says Guchhait,one of the few babus who saw both regimes.

Guchhait,a graduate from Midnapore College,recalls how he got the job. I saw the advertisement for the post and cleared a written examination and an interview. The minister was Gopal Das Nag. I worked at the New Secretariat Building for some years and had to come to Writers Buildings quite often. It was in 1978 that Guchhait finally got a posting at the finance department at Writers.

Guchhait worked as a presiding officer at Manicktala constituency in Kolkata in the Assembly elections of 1977,which saw the Left Front government come to power for the first time. There was some tension but ultimately the elections went off without any major incident, he says.

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He reserves his comment whether the pace of government work has sped up or slowed down with time,and whether Do it now, Bhattacharjees famous slogan to government employees after the 2001 elections,has had any impact on movement of files. I am still in service and so cannot comment on this. But as far as my department is concerned,you cannot afford to be lazy here as lots of files from other departments are sent to us, he says.

As far as elections are concerned,he does see a lot of difference,at least in the style of campaigning. It has become hi-tech now with text messages sent to promote a candidate, he says.

Guchhait is not excited about the imminent change being talked about. Governments come,governments go,but babus remain as they are,doing their work and going home, he says,quoting,apparently not consciously,from Tennysons The Brook.