During the ten years of hard, agonising struggle to assert the audit and accounts employees' right to work with dignity and have an effective instrument of collective bargaining, there were many occasions when I was told that the fight was doomed to fail. After my first removal from service, a prominent leader of the most powerful federation of central government employees advised me to 'go and apologise'. An outstanding national leader offered me a job. None expected that the campaign we built up would succeed. One top bureaucrat once asked me: "Don't you know that the Auditor General who is a dyed-in-the wool I.A.& A.S. bureaucrat gets absolute powers from the Constitution and that it is not a practical possibility that he will be impeached for what he does to his employees? Don't you know that the nature of audit is such that even if you go on strike for one year, nobody would be bothered, that every I.A.% A.S. head of office, under the umbrella of the Auditor-General, can and will behave as a feudal satrap and is free to indulge in any devil-dance?" I remembered his words when Shri Ashok Chanda, the then Auditor-General told us during our first and last meeting with him: "I shall decide the service conditions you will have. Don't look to the other departments." Looking at me, he added: "I won't allow anyone of you to criticise by officers. I won't allow my employees to address press conferences". It was a meeting which we had sought to take up with him the issue of victimisation at Rajkot. Instead of hearing us, he chastised and scolded us roundly. The Gwalior Conference in 1958 resolved to take the challenge and elected me as the Secretary-General. My compulsory retirement at the age of 27 followed.We decided to fight back peacefully. Then came another blow: the threat to withdraw recognition if I continued as Secretary-General. The Assam Conference unanimously decided, with a courage never seen so far in the government employees' movement, to face this challenge. Soon, the derecognition followed. The storm did not shake us at all. We stood firm as a solid rock.
Finally when my reinstatement came AS A RESULT OF A POWERFUL MOVEMENT ALL OVER THE COUNTRY, it came as a surprise to all.
The same was the situation after the 1960 indefinite strike when we created history by the best organised strike among all. The audit bureaucracy unleashed a hurricane of victimisation all over the department. The government simply watched the violation of their own policies and declarations made on the floor of Parliament. Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri told me in his own way that the government can do nothing to tame the Auditor-General. What came as a shock to me was the way audit employees were left in the lurch by the rest of the movement. In fact, the P&T leadership scuttled my decisions twice to go on indefinite fast. By 1962 it became clear to me that audit employees had to fight alone and we prepared ourselves for a long-drawn battle. Even the so-called revolutionary leaders condemned it as my adventure. To their surprise, we won finally in 1967. Those were years of toil and tears, sweat and blood. But through it all, the movement emerged the strongest, the best organised, totally disciplined and most trusted and united trade union organisation in the country.
During the years of battle against massive victimisation and continued derecognition ever since 1959 was established a well-functioning office in Delhi, a monthly journal born in fire and then published regularly, a building fund of Rs.30,000 started and collected during these burning years and a balance enough to meet current expenses built up. We won not only recognition, but also facilities like foreign service for the Secretary-General, universal respect and acceptance by the bureaucracy as the powerful voice and leader of the entire employees.
How could all this be done by middle class employees, most of whom were postgraduates, belonging to socially-well placed respectable families? And that too when employment was scarce and the country's economy still was only slowly recovering from centuries of colonial rule and the rules were draconian and the judiciary was still a distant factor?
The one single element that brought about this miracle was the unity of the employees, of all employees. This unity came from total love for and trust in the leadership. I had no agenda except the dignity and rights of the employees. I had no personal or political ambition. There was no divisive factor whatsoever. All decisions were taken by our leadership without any outside influence.
This great battle and the victory won should constitute the bed-rock of our unity. The story narrated in my book "A LEGENDARY BATTLE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS" is a testament of unity. The one lesson of this battle is that "WE CAN WIN, BUT ONLY THROUGH BUILDING UP AND PRESERVING A TOTALLY UNITED MOVEMENT". Unlike other departments like the Railways, P&T, Defence etc., where the powers of the bureaucracy and nature of work and the class character of the employees are very different, AUDIT AND ACCOUNTS employees cannot afford a movement divided on political, sectional, cadre, regional or any other divisive basis. Our very existence depends upon UNITY.
(E.X.JOSEPH, is OUR Former Secretary General, ALL INDIA AUDIT & ACCOUNTS ASSOCIATION IS THE LEGENDARY PERSONALITY WHO MADE THE AUDIT MOVEMENT AS THE VANGUARD OF THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES MOVEMENT AND WAS DISMISSED UNDER ARTICLE 311(2) OF THE CONSTITUTION AT THE AGE OF 27)
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