TMM 2025 Fund Raising Target : Recollections of a Nostalgic Memory.

 

This post is courtesy of an Instagram post by the United Way Mumbai under the caption “Meet our Change Runners and Young Leaders” for the Tata Mumbai Marathon (TMM 2025), under which yours truly has also been featured. Although I have an Instagram account, I don’t use it but then this post by United Way Mumbai, which was shared with me by Ajay Mehta, a Trustee of Adhar, an NGO which I am supporting under the aegis of TMM 2025, has tempted me not only to revive my Instagram post but also to pen this article, whose caption may appear rather confusing.

The Instagram post, while coming as a pleasant surprise, also came in with a challenge, which perhaps was an ‘incentive’ - government type - for achieving a target of Rs 5 Lacs ( Five hundred thousand) that was set for me to raise, through crowdfunding, for Adhar, using the platform of TMM 2025. Adhar (An Association of Parents of Mentally Challenged Adults) an NGO that is working in a rather difficult area of addressing the challenges that parents and guardians of mentally challenged adults face. One of the main worries for these parents is a question that haunts them all - what happens to their special children after their demise? This question struck a chord with the visionary founder of Adhar (www.adhar.org) late Shri Madhav Rao Gore, who founded Adhar with a mission to take lifetime care of such special adults even after their parents and guardians breathe their last.  Passing through trials and tribulations Adhar has now established itself as a leading institute in providing lifetime care for special adults and has developed and is operating three Adhar units in Badlapur, Nashik, and Satara, Maharashtra, which take care of 350 plus special children, including 70 plus women, who require lifetime support and care. Adhar will need a separate write-up to describe their noble work, therefore, I am confining this post to the title of my article.

After reaching the target of Rs Five Lacs, assigned to me by one of the go-getter Trustees of Adhar who spearheads Adhar participation in TMM 2025, I thought I could relax in the glory of meeting my target. But then – surprise, surprise! – just as I crossed the finish line – the target of Rs 5 Lacs -, my target was doubled to Rs. 10 Lacs! The reward for success is… well, more target! A mantra that most successful senior government officials follow. This twist in the upward revision of the target as a reward for achieving one’s target brought back memories of my early days as Director at the National Science Centre, Delhi, where a similar situation had unfolded much to my annoyance and argument with my bosses, at a cost of course.

 In the middle of March 2007, I assumed the charge of Director of the National Science Centre, Delhi (NSCD). In one of those meetings of the heads of science centres, which decide the targets for science museums and centres, the then DG of NCSM, which governs all science centres and museums that function under the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, assigned visitor and revenue targets for each of the heads of the four zones, under which the NCSM science centres function. As the Director of the NSCD, my responsibility was the three science centres in the north zone – NSCD, RSC Lucknow, and KPSC Kurukshetra. I was assigned a visitor target of 2 Lac visitors for the year 2007-08 for NSCD. Although during the preceding couple of years, the visitors to NSCD had hovered around 1.4 to 1.6 Lacs, I did accept the target. Fuelled by an unending enthusiasm, I rallied my team, setting an ambitious internal target of 3 Lacs. We pulled together and brainstormed and evolved ideas and strategies that could help us reach this stiff target of 3 Lac visitors to NSCD, a target which was almost 50% higher than the highest ever achieved by NSCD, barring when the Dinosaur Alive Exhibition was presented. We had a series of follow-up meetings to monitor our set goals, and by December 2007, my team achieved a visitor figure of 3 Lacs, and we still had another three months to go before the financial year 2007-08 ended. My team, who spearheaded this initiative for which I was incidental as the head of the institute, did not rest and kept the momentum and when the financial year ended on 31^st March 2008, they had clocked an impressive 4,26,000 visitors, with a 50% revenue increase to boot! Here comes the twist to the tale.

During a meeting of heads of science museums to fix the targets for the next financial year (2008-09), the then DG, rather than going by established norms to increase the target by 10% of the previous year's target, strangely and much to my annoyance and heated argument used a yardstick completely unscientific to assign target for NSCD, which was an increase of 10% on our extraordinary achievement for previous year which was more than 100% of our assigned target. The target assigned was 4.70 Lacs. All my pleas and heated arguments had gone in vain while assigning a target for NSCD.

Now, here is another extraordinary twist to the tale: Another national-level museum, the Birla Industrial and Technological Museum (BITM), Kolkata, a much older museum, which too was assigned a target of 2 Lac visitors for the financial year 2007-08, had ended up achieving a paltry 1.30 Lacs visitors when the year ended. Since NSCD was assigned 4.70 Lacs visitors and a corresponding revenue for the year 2008-09, I expected that a similar target would be given to BITM, which too was headed by a new Director, my contemporary. But then, the adage “all are equal some are more equal” kicked in, and the DG based on his so-called discussion with the Director, BITM assigned a 1.7 Lac visitor target to BITM, and lo and behold, justified it by stating that he had increased the target by 20% over what BITM had achieved.

Notwithstanding the fact that any discussion on this matter with the DG, even with rational thoughts, would only result in vituperative arguments and perhaps would also adversely impact my career prospects, I could not hold back. At the end of the heated argument with the DG, I ended my argument by saying his decision has only disincentivized NSCD and its extraordinary achievement of more than doubling its target and incentivized BITM, Kolkata the unit which had fallen much short of the assigned target. It is another matter that all my arguments fell on deaf ears and perhaps may also have had an impact on my career.

The TMM 2025 target of Rs 10 Lacs has brought back those old memories, which I thought would be an interesting read for my friends. Interestingly, most senior officers in the government work with the same principle and assign more work and higher targets for those who work sincerely to achieve their targets and the ones who don’t, remain untouched, rather incentivized, which it was in our case.

This case is not unique or specific to NCSM, I am sure this cuts across government institutions. One can witness people who are problem creators are never targeted, and mostly kept at arm’s length, and no coercive action or otherwise taken against them, while those who work sincerely are rewarded with more work with no incentives to motivate them. It is this quagmire that, unfortunately, breeds inefficiency in government and no one wants to dive deep into solving this problem. Although things have improved, an introspection will reveal there is a lot that needs to improve. There is an unwritten belief that the more one works there is that much more chance of going wrong and even if one comes out successful with ten and fails in one, the concerned will have to answer for that one failure, while in another case if an officer has achieved nothing, but the fact that nothing wrong has happened will get him scot-free. It is time for these changes and those who achieve must be incentivized and those who don’t must be disincentivized. Will this happen? A million-dollar question for sure.

Be that as it may, let me also take this opportunity to once again appeal to you all to please help me achieve the revised fundraising target of Rs 10 Lacs for TMM 2025 for Adhar by your kind donation using the link below.

https://www.unitedwaymumbai.org/fundraiser/23375