But if anybody stole the show at the closing ceremony of the 61st Cooperative Week it was Bijender Singh, a well-known cooperative face in the town. His speech at the NCUI Auditorium generated happy laughter and received enthusiastic applauses.
In his scathing attack on bureaucracy he told the Union Minister Radha Mohan Singh “here what you see is a cooperative crowd but forgive me for saying that what is there in your ministry is a pack of mandarins indifferent to the issues of cooperatives. Their sole job is to put spokes in whatever we want to do.”
Assailing what he called “babu-raj”, NAFED former Chairman Bijender said their work is only to put signature on files without feelings. They are not concerned about anything and they have unleashed a reign of terror, as it were, he hinted.
”They are supposed to be the best advisors of the government. Tomorrow we should not be surprised if they came up with the idea of giving all the proceeds of cooperatives to some NGOs. And if there is a corrupt Minister like me whose wife runs an NGO he would hand-over everything to her, Bijender said in a lighter vein.
The pain of Bijender was understandable as he has already been exonerated by the court in the Nafed tie-up losses and his umpteen efforts to convince the government of reviving Nafed have fallen on deaf ears so far, said a cooperator to Indian Cooperative.
He has also been a victim of the obnoxious flexing of muscles by the bureaucracy in the case of NCCF where the babus contrived to grab the cooperative. The matter is pending in the court.
Bijender’s frank remarks ultimately forced the Minister to assure the audience that in the Narendra Modi era such things are not possible as taming the bureaucracy is one of the important goals of the Prime Minister. There have been many indications of it including Shri Modi recently urging bureaucrats to visit their first place of posting, the minister said.
