Sri C Satyanarayana
former Statistical Assistant
26 & 27.1.1998

Initially, Dr Gothi was in-charge of the new Stat section. But, Dr Nagpaul was always there to guide the section. In 1966, when we went to Hyderabad to start the STC, he supported all of us. Through him we learnt every working line of the STC Manual and could give guidelines to state officers to carry out all tasks. If they implemented the tasks as guided, that STO could independently guide all the DTCs for the state just like the NTI. Dr Nagpaul was a great teacher... He would want everyone to grow. He made us understand that SRC is not a mere statistics gathering section. It is the real next step to training. We would be in touch with the state, the DTC and the centre. The SRC was fully operational when Dr Arora joined. He took guidance from Dr Nagpaul, understood the idea and the ideals.... trained himself and his staff thoroughly. He read all pages of every report from the DTCs personally and sent constructive comments to the respective DTCs rapidly. Our travel budget was small; so he carefully planned visits to cover vast areas economically and especially covered inefficient DTCs to boost up performance. During his visit, he went to every table in the DTC, met everyone and held discussions. He made note of all deviations, made a list for further consideration... All these voluminous notes came in handy when the manuals were revised in 1978...

Dr Nagpaul was a visionary. He wanted to have five regional centres for India. Problem solving would be rapid. He wrote to Delhi many times to create these regional centres... But, nothing came of it. We thought the regional centres would assist NTI in creating a better atmosphere for supervision. Till we, at the SRC, were taking action constantly, the NTP was functioning fairly well in the southern region. Once we stopped that the efficiency levels started declining. He gifted his Padmashree award to the NTI. He was truly a great leader. All the functioning DTCs of that time had some problem or the other: no posting, no drugs, no vehicle, etc. Dr Arora listened, he wrote down everything. Some times there would be peculiar problems.

The SRC had complex functions. There were so many variations possible in different DTCs and states... It was like a research team with one leader and 20 workers. We could not order DTCs to function as research teams.... Situations were different. To have a uniform system throughout India, was not an easy task. Same is true today. The NRC in Delhi was not functioning like the SRC. Once Dr NK Menon, TB Adviser told us, we can use your reports for many scientific analysis...

I consider Dr Arora to be a ‘Karma Yogi’. When both regional centres at Delhi and Bangalore were abolished, NTI was asked to do the monitoring of the whole country. We started getting the reports from all over the country. He perused every report and wrote his comments...He retired and others could not handle the work load... It then became a routine proforma reply. This is a great setback because the reports are really vital for the programme.. Somehow I feel the philosophy at NTI has also changed in the years...