As the Central government desperately plans measures to curb fuel consumption to lighten the country’s import bill and shore up the rupee, a bureaucrat in Bihar who started bicycling to and from office to conserve fuel has turned into an inspiring example of for an increasing number of government employees and common citizens.
Arvind Kumar Singh, the district magistrate of the South-western Kaimur district, started sort of a revolution when he not only started bicycling to his office instead of travelling in his official car a week ago, but also urged the government employees to do the same.
The 2000-batch Bihar Administrative Service officer who was promoted to the IAS in 2009 was so upset by the Indian people’s massive dependence on petrol and diesel that he decided to walk the four-km distance from his residence to office in the district headquarters town of Bhabua three days a month. He then mixed walking with bicycling to set an example to inspire others.
The sight of the Maoist-affected district’s top government official walking and bicycling like a commoner soon started having an impact, partly because Mr Singh had issued an official instruction to Kaimur’s government employees to save petrol and diesel. So officials like district welfare officer Rakesh Kumar Tripathy, BDO Ramji Paswan, DCLR Ajay Srivastava, BDO K.A. Siddiqui and dozens others began to either walk or bicycle to and from their offices.
Now, hundreds of people in Bhabua and other nearby towns have started giving their bikes and cars a break to emulate the district magistrate. “It is good that some impact is being made with this exercise in the direction of our collective need to save costly, polluting fuel such as petrol and diesel for travel,” said Mr Singh.
The instructions he issued to Kaimur’s government officials also included not using diesel-generators in offices between 1 pm to 3 pm even if there is power outage, travelling to Patna by bus or train to attend government meetings, and that policemen should begin to conduct patrolling on foot.
“The government is aware of the Kaimur experiment. But implementing it statewide looks impossible due to security concerns,” said Bihar chief secretary Ashok Kumar Sinha.