Above and Beyond the Call of Duty

Less travelled, yet spectacular- a tourist circuit increasingly getting popular in Himachal Pradesh for foreigners as well as the young, energetic and adventurous Indian youths, is Lahaul and Spiti.  It is by and large one of the most inaccessible and thus the least explored region by the adventure enthusiasts. Most part being a cold Desert results in Lahaul and Spiti being the third least populous district in the country but interestingly has the highest per capita income for any district in India. Lahaulis till recently practiced Polyandry and Spiti Bhotias have still primogeniture system of Inheritance. The entire landscape is breathtakingly picturesque and places like Baralacha La (connecting Lahaul to Ladakh), Kunzum Pass (Connecting Lahaul to Spiti), Tabo Monastery (aka Ajanta of Himalayas), Guru Ghantal Monastery, Solang

Chander Tal

Valley, Suraj Tal and Chander Tal (of ‘Lootera’ movie fame) are highly recommended to be on any mortal’s ‘Places to Visit before I Die’ list. The district remains snowbound and landlocked for six months a year from December to May and thus there is a single line of Administration and the Deputy Commissioner is virtually the King of the place. Emergency Helicopter Services is the only lifeline during these six months. During the rest of the year Lahaul is connected to other parts of Himachal by motor-able Rohtang Pass which literally means ‘pile of dead bodies’ capturing the idea of terrifying terrain. Situated at around 13000 feet, Rohtang Pass connects Manali on Kullu district side with Keylong on Lahaul side. The Pass receives heavy snowfall and blizzards during most of the long winter season and is open to traffic only for 4-6 months. Now, an 8.8 Kilometres long tunnel is being built under the Pass to provide all weather connectivity, and to reduce long hours in traffic jams.

This story dates way back to late 1970s when this young SDM of Keylong, belonging to Hamirpur district, was returning back to Duty after a small winter vacation. It was mid-December and the winter season being at its peak, there was incessant snowfall. He was accompanied by three more junior officers and a policeman who were also returning back to Keylong to report to Duty in the same vehicle. Journey from Hamirpur to Manali was pretty smooth in the larger context of their entire journey. They reached Manali by 6:00 AM as planned to cross Rohtang Pass by 8:00 AM which is the ideal time to cross the Pass. Just as they were nearing Manali, the snowstorms and blizzards got gravely intensified. They didn’t want to miss the best time window to cross the Rohtang Pass and in a hope that blizzards may calm down they continued moving forward. Right before they could reach this place called Kothi, 16 Kilometres ahead of Manali at around 7:00 AM, they stared with their eyes wide open at what laid ahead.  The road was totally covered with thick sheet of snow and rendered useless for any further vehicular movement. They were stranded at Kothi along with hundreds of other commuters. Kothi is situated at around 7500 feet. Back then, Kothi had no telephone services making them completed disconnected from rest of the world. Now the officer had two choices at his hand. One was to wait for weather to clear a bit and return back to Manali and call the headquarters at Keylong for further instructions. The other choice was to walk on foot carrying the luggage and cross the Rohtang Pass to report for Duty next morning. Easy as it may seem, but the choice to return back to Manali appeared bad to him as he thought that these snowstorms are only going to intensify in coming days and he will not be able to reach Keylong till next June or so unless emergency helicopter services drop him at Keylong which was highly unlikely in those days. Between Life and Duty he chose the latter. He conveyed his decision to junior officers and the lone policeman and told them to decide independently. Since their senior officer was taking the lead others too got motivated to march ahead. Little did they know what horror awaited them!

All five of them joined a human chain of some hundred odd other travellers and started moving up towards Rohtang Pass. The sweeping past wild blizzards showed no mercy and kept breaking the human chain at many points.  The visibility too was reduced to just a few metres. Before these five could reach a place called Madhi located at the opening of Rohtang at around 13000 feet they lost sight of all others in the chain. They realized that they were lost amidst the heavy snow and unruly blizzards which were tearing them apart. They were unable to walk and were losing the sense of direction now. Breathing was becoming a strain and they could hardly hear each other. It was gradually getting insurmountable to carry luggage any further so they got rid of their luggage except for the essentials.  All of a sudden, one of the junior officers started getting breathless.  He gave up and sat down gesturing with his hand asking others to move on and he will catch up later. SDM knew if left there alone the guy would die and would be buried under dense sheet of snow within no time. So they decided to drag him along. They kept him dragging and lifting him at times till they reached a point on the Pass from where the down slope began. Now on the downhill slope, they began rolling this guy down. He would reach some distance rolling down like a tyre and lay there till the rest four reached there and pushed him to roll down again. This way all five struggled but managed to reach Kokhsar located at around 9000 feet in Lahaul on the way to Keylong after traveling non-stop almost for half a day, at around 6:00 PM in the evening.

They somehow managed to find a government guest house in Kokhsar to their utter respite. All were badly frost bitten and in totally bad shape. They would have probably died had they had to walk another extra mile. But fortune favours the brave. They had managed to escape from the horrible clutches of an unforgiving weather. The guest house staff quickly arranged for fire to raise their temperature. When the SDM sat down at some distance to the fire to warm himself, he experienced the worst moment of his life. As if the blood in his legs and hands had frozen and on receiving heat it started to melt steadily.  He felt the blood forcefully gushing through his narrowed veins. He was under unimaginable pain, as if some hundreds of needles were piercing through his legs and hands at the same time. The policeman could not bear the pain and wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible so rushed towards a bucket full of hot water and put his hands into it. To his shock, his fingers were badly frost bitten to an extent that they came out detaching from his hand in a snap second, as soon they came in contact with hot water. He started crying in unbearable misery, fell down and went unconscious. The SDM too was losing consciousness and eventually fainted.

Survivor in true senses! Next day when he woke up the weather had cleared a bit so he proceeded for Keylong.  He reported for Duty the same day just as he had determined. Later during the day he heard the news that many people died while crossing the Pass previous day and were buried beneath the snow.  A rescue operation was in full swing to recover their bodies. SDM on knowing this, thought for a second and realised that he might have walked past over the bodies buried under the snow. This very thought ran a shiver down his spine and he stood motionless as if along with his body even his soul had frozen.

                Such use to be the commitment of officers in those days. Ethics, moral values and call of duty carried huge significance in their lives. Due to such commitments by young and old officers alike, Himachal has steadily progressed since its formations and reached to this stage where it is considered a model state. Multiple factors have been responsible for the steady progress apart from committed bureaucracy and polity. One such factor and still the biggest asset with the state is its law and order situation which is prerequisite to any developmental initiative. It is much better than any other state and to some extent unmatched in the country providing congenial environment for progress. The biggest contributors as well as stakeholders in this situation are the people of the state who are always cool, calm and composed. Jocularly people say that forget about police even 'Hanuman Ji' is so jobless in the state that instead of keeping his ‘Gadda’ on shoulders i.e., ready to fight mode, he has kept it down on ground as portrayed in the statue installed in Jhakhu Temple of Shimla.

                Ministers in Himachal walk without a gunman on Mall road and it has not changed since the days of Dr. Yashwant Parmar, the first CM of the state who used to take strolls on the Mall Road without any paraphernalia like a so called ‘Mango man’. Which other state can boast of such a remarkable law and order situation? It’s just not a conceivable idea for most of the states. But it is for real in Himachal Pradesh. Himachal is one state where you will still find that old brigade ICS kinds who are still like Caesar’s wife beyond suspicion and their commitment is unquestionable. All Himachal needs is a leap of faith that would take it to the next level setting benchmarks for the rest of the country in every field possible.

But then what actually is ailing the system? My personal take after talking to some very senior bureaucrats in the state is that Risk taking ability is vanishing in the Indian bureaucracy in general. The inertia and complacency setting in the services is actually harming the steel frame more than anything else. It’s not corruption but politics of vendetta and vote bank which is ruining the efficiency and hampering the delivery in Himachal Pradesh per se. The political class is highly educated and enlightened in the state. The synergy between the bureaucrats and politicians is however missing. The next administrative reforms committee should actually deliberate on this aspect more than anything else if this so called 'System' has to be brought back to consciousness or snowballed to happy ending.