By Waqar Jappa
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms; the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in end the triumphs of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. That was TR (THEODORE ROOSEVELT) 26TH President of the United States of America, a champion of the progressive era in the first decade of the 1900s.
The more I knew about him, the more I fell in love with him. Though, there was a little change of heart when I read Richard Nixon, FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and Kennedy (JFK) in detail while preparing for my CSS interview some five years ago. But it was temporary. My love for TR never grew less. Every one of these great statesmen had a profound influence on my understanding of American history and different times they were serving their nation. So I had a pretty elevated standard of leadership in my mind or being inspired by someone after reading these giants.
It had only been a month a two since I was appointed as Information Officer at DGPR, still finding my feet and figuring out my job as it happens with the newly appointed and untrained officers. Meanwhile, one fine morning, we heard that there was a change in leadership and we had a new boss. Over a century later, since TR’s times, I met with somebody I could identify with him or at least some of his personality traits. It was RJ (Raja Jehangir) previous secretary Information and Culture.
Later on, I had the good fortune to work with him more closely as Section Officer Culture and I could relate his progressive thinking, mental alertness, the infinite appetite for hard work and an amazing ability to inspire the young officers with that of TR.
Trust me, if he were a politician, he would have been an instant hit. But he chose the thorny road of an upright public servant who goes around saying “I have nothing to hide and nothing to lose”. A fearless man with a purpose is a dangerous man. Yes, such a man poses a threat to bureaucratic inertia and red-tape. Interestingly, he has a classic ability to identify a “work shrunk” from a hundred miles. He would look right into his eyes, press his lips a little and say, you were not intended to be an oyster. The latter is a euphemism for KADOO.
Anyways, during his year and a half tenure, the department remained in the limelight for all the good reasons. We were able to start many new initiatives both in information and culture sections of the department. Artist Khidmat Card and Punjab Culture Policy Draft are the flagship initiatives among many others started during his tenure as secretary ICD. He has left a rich legacy of progressive thought, audacity and hard work for his successors. I wish he could have stayed a little longer!