The contrast between former Patna District Magistrate Gautam Goswami's position last September, as a feted "Asian Hero" alongside Shah Rukh Khan and Anoushka Shankar in Time Magazine, and his nose-diving image now, is rather comical in its description. Goswami is alleged to have diverted Rs 17 crore meant for flood victims to the coffers of the Rashtriya Janata Dal. There is no one more reviled than a fallen hero.
Goswami was a brilliant student, who became an upright officer, and inexplicably gave up the job for a "lucrative" private sector position.
Yet, beneath these cliches lie a story, of how a man hand-picked by the Election Commission to conduct two of Patna's fairest polls ever, in 1999 and 2004, came to be accused of relenting under political pressure while disbursing relief to flood victims.
The 38-year-old bureaucrat was born in Bhojpur's Rohtas district in Bihar, from where he went on to win a gold medal in medicine at the Benaras Hindu University in 1988. His MD in cardiology was through and he was preparing to be a heart specialist.
"Then, two seniors in my college, who I looked up to, were appearing for the IAS exam. It was then that I had thought of taking the exam," he says. Goswami was selected for the IPS in 1990, but preferred to sit for the exam again, and cleared the administrative service in 1991.
Goswami's do-gooder image received a boost when was allotted the Bihar cadre, despite discouragement from many quarters. "You have poverty and corruption everywhere, so why not go to Bihar?" he now says.
He uses the "political consciousness" of Bihar as a defence. "The people here are politically conscious. You think they will not have known if I had taken any money?" he says.
After several postings, starting from Rosera district in Samastipur to Bokaro, Vaishali and Munger, Goswami's moment in the sun came during the 1999 Lok Sabha elections when he was posted in Patna. He was ordered by the Election Commission to oversee election work.
In fact, the kudos he gathered at that time meant that he would be deputed to Patna in April 2004, just before the general election that year.
He secured his almost iconic status by stopping LK Advani, who was the Deputy Prime Minister then, from continuing with a public rally in Patna, since its duration had overshot the imposed curfew.
And then came the floods of July 2004. In one of the most sustained relief operations to be undertaken, Goswami was made the nodal officer in charge of operations.
He took out tenders for relief material, and took air sorties and road trips, sometimes having to make do with just a couple of hours of sleep. Was this when his idealism might have tripped over lucre?
Nobody knows for sure, for he got an award from Time Magazine, and ironically, soon after a reprimand from the Election Commission. For, in the short time between 2004 and 2005, Goswami appeared to have learnt the political ropes.
The commission publicly reprimanded Goswami for not preventing the misuse of official machinery for Lalu Prasad's Maha Raila in the run-up to the Assembly elections in the state.
Goswami, who is fluent in Hindi, English and Bengali, appeared so distressed by the reprimand that he gave up his job for a post of senior vice-president in the Sahara group. Some allege that Goswami's haste to get out of the service was to avoid the inquiry against him, while Goswami insists that it was because of his "capricious nature".
"I was trained to be a cardiologist, then became an IAS officer, then this (the Sahara job) came along. Everybody has a right to look for better opportunities," he says. The question is whether the opportunity he is referring to was funded by money meant for flood relief.
In his defence, Goswami says the relief work was carried out according to funds available. "I was given a letter of authority to make payments to Sanjeev Kumar and BK Singh by the Bihar State Industrial Development Council and the relief material had reached everywhere. Exhaustive air and road logs have been kept and receipts taken for every delivery," he says.
He refuses to admit that he has been trapped, yet insists that he is innocent. "I am glad the vigilance inquiry is on, the truth will come out. I have all documentary evidence," he says nervously.
One would want to believe that Goswami is innocent, since it would prove that a good man is not hard to find, even in Bihar, but then what are the real chances of that?
