“I saw a govtservants.com sticker in our ministry toilet. It is not normal for me to use online forums. But I posted a message on the site, and Ustad Vimal came to my house within a month to meet my son.”
Funda’s online message didn’t mention his son’s medical condition. “After Vimal ji spoke to my son, he offered to teach him for free. He had heard about my message from his bureaucrat friend. I had to force him to take some honorarium. I am so grateful to this website.”
Govtservants.com was the brainchild of a Mines Department section officer, a Supreme Court advocate who retired from the Comptroller and Auditor General’s office and, a deputy secretary of Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution- all of whom didn’t want to mention their names. The Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules prohibits babus from managing publications or electronic media without sanction.
The website, which started a couple of years back, allows anyone to post messages for car pools, furniture, medical needs, queries on service matters and almost anything under the sun. The site made primarily for government employees also filters messages according to the building the bureaucrat works in.
No unionizing is allowed though. A few weeks back an under secretary at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting requested the site to have a small box with notices of the Central Secretariat Service Forum. His request was declined. “We want to be in the good books of the government. This will not be a lobbying platform,” said a founder who has been sticking bills with the site’s URL near lifts and toilets at government buildings.
“There was no platform for government employees to interact. The site makes our lives happier and we will never charge users a paisa. We got to host the site for only Rs. 3000 for nine years and will look for ads only after five years,” said a founder. Initially they were helped by staff from the National Informatics Centre. The site is now managed by IT professionals Gaurav and Sudhanshu Tyagi in the United States.
A founder added that babus are generally trustworthy. “Even for a car pool we like to have some safe person. This site doesn’t allow ads from any agencies. Only users post messages and we vet them.” He adds that real estate companies have already been approaching the site to advertise.
The site, which was re-launched with a user friendly interface last week, gets around 200 hits a day. The owners plan to expand it to other metros as well.
For the women in men working in behemoth-like tube-lit offices, this forum is also connecting them to employees in other departments who’ve probably been working on the same floor for years without exchanging a glance. The site’s moderators don’t mediate and users can directly contact each other.
Coming soon on the site is an option for home-stays as well. “An officer in Udagamandalam can offer to host the family of his compatriot in Delhi, at a nominal rate. That way we can go for holidays which we can’t afford otherwise,” said a founder.
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