Restoring a Gallantry Medal Allowance.

Two years ago, when my octogenarian mother was ill I found a tattered passbook amongst her belongings.

Till 2004 she was drawing Rs 60 pm from the government for the King’s Police Medal for Gallantry which my father had been awarded in 1948. A medal-allowance, not a post-retirement pension.

I applied on her behalf to the Pension Section, Accounts Department, Ministry of Finance, Government of Goa. Cc’d to the Treasury Section.

I was told to address my problem to ‘Treasury’ with a cc to ‘Pension’, along with photo-copies of the PPO and the Maharashtra-to-Goa transfer order. Did that in April.

By Diwali, I’d got familiar with the bus and ferry timings that matched office-hours.

Staff was helpful but helpless.

Letters sent by Post didn’t reach me. Possibly because my village had no postman at the time and the ‘badlee’ doing the rounds wasn’t delivering the envelopes sincerely, someone suggested.

          My visits to Pension and Treasury resulted in cupboards turned downside up; but, no records came up.

          For how many years do you store records? I asked.

Ten.

It isn’t ten years yet, I said.

Each person told me that s/he’d been around for less than nine-and-a-half years, so knew nothing. Then would mumble some mantra to make me disappear. Didn’t work. I turned up regularly.

The file was untraceable.

I got applications inward-stamped-and-dated from despatch clerks before shifts got over.

          On my trips, I carried along with me snacks, water, a book, paper napkins. Our taxes don’t ensure us clean loos anywhere. Toilets first, temples later, NaMo had said. Tathastu.

          (The only reference of my father getting this medal was online, in the London Gazette, awarded after Independence, but before the first R-Day.)

          December 2013. Treasury confessed, ‘no case papers of pensioner (were) traceable in (their) record’. If pension ‘remain(ed) undrawn for three years or more, neither (could) monthly pension amount be resumed, nor arrears be paid without the authority of...” the pension sanctioning authority, the Mumbai Police.

          Thus, mother’s file began to shuttle between Pratishtha Bhavan and the Police HQ in South Mumbai.

Up went my phone bills.

Goa had asked Mumbai to say aye to the arrears.

I applied directly to the DIG and AG’s offices, to consider restoration of allowance as well.

          No responses.

          Reminders were sent. Nothing happened.

          A Mumbai newspaper reported this ‘nothing happening’ on the day the Delhi zoo tiger mauled an intruder in its cage.

For a couple of weeks, I got phone calls from various officials. My father, resting in peace since 1983, apparently didn’t exist in the DIG/AG records. How then, I asked, were you paying Rs 60pm for so many years to him and subsequently my mother?

          The medal had been awarded for shooting dead a dacoit in Satara, one said, and Satara wasn’t in Mumbai.

I stated: at that time, Mumbai didn’t exist.

          My Mumbai-based sibling took the baton and visited offices, floors, cubicles, desks.

          Before Christmas 2014, one day I relayed between the DIG’s and AG’s offices and got written instructions for the Accounts Directorate, Goa Government to give arrears and restore pension, with Pay Commissions’ enhancements. Rs 60 had become Rs 2000.

          We brought in 2015 in a celebratory mood. Prematurely, as it turned out.

In Goa, pensions and allowances are electronically transferred to bank accounts on the 15^th and 25^th of the month. I thought that the amount would be credited in the first fortnight of January. It was pushed towards the R-Day weekend, assured that it would be in mother’s account by the 24rth.

Nothing happened for nine days. I was told ‘server problem’.

On Gandhi’s punyatithee, in a ‘what-next’ frame of mind, I bus-ferry-bussed to the Treasury office. The register showed that the Govt’s banker had been instructed on the 21rst to transfer the arrears to mother’s account. On following up, the bank discovered the glitch and did the transfer asap, but couldn’t explain why the NEFT malfunction went unnoticed even after enquiries were made.

Next, I went to manually collect the monthly allowance, carrying with me a signed Pension Bill, mother’s PPO book, a letter from her authorizing me to collect her dues and a medical certificate to declare her unfit. The life certificate was submitted in November.

Then came a fresh surprise: I needed the signature of the doctor on the pension-bill. Attaching a medical certificate wasn’t enough. I could get it signed by any official in that department who knew my mother, a helpful Director said. Someone complied.

I took the pension-bill-form duly stamped to the bank next door. Long queues of pensioners stood before four counters.

My form was turned over. The cashier said she needed my mother’s signature at the back, on the receipt. But, I explained, I’m receiving the cash, so I must sign, no?

She needed a ‘Power of Attorney’, she said.

Power? To do what, I wondered.

The problem went to the manager. Finally I was given the rupees, after I’d taken the form back to the Treasury to for someone to sign and state that it had the letter of authority.

Sri Husband, seeing my flurry and fluster, wants to know why technology can’t be used to make both staff and citizens’ life easier. It’s like asking why the sun rises in the east. There is an answer and some people know it, but not everyone can figure it out.

Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in