One of the strong perceptions that I have carried for a long time is about the government and its officials, irrespective of the state or their department. That perception is based on a few of my personal experiences, lots of what I have heard from friends and acquaintances, and what I have read on the internet. Needless to say that the perception is not positive. Of course there have been exceptions, but these exceptions have been rare and not a norm. 

In the last few days, every single experience that we have had with teachers, faculty, principal, support staff and most importantly an IAS officer, all in the state of Himachal Pradesh, have been excellent. Almost all these interactions were spontaneous and were not planned in advance.

Bindu and I were on our morning walk in Mandi, in our casuals, and saw the building of ITI, Mandi. Despite being unsure of our reception inside the institute, we decided to walk in to see what was happening, and were welcomed by one of their support staff. He introduced us to Ms Lata Jha one of the faculty at the institute. She patiently listened to what we had to say about ShikshaDaan and our Yatra. One thing led to the other and in no time we had the opportunity to address almost a hundred students and several faculty members. We were told to get in touch with the Director of Technical Education, an IAS officer, based in Sunder Nagar about 20 kms from Mandi. I wrote a mail to the Director, around the lunch time and was surprised to get a call from his deputy director within the next half hour, saying he would like to meet us the same day. We fixed an appointment for the next day and met Mr Rajeshwar Goel, Director of Technical Education, Himachal Pradesh, in his chamber and had his undivided attention for the next 45 minutes. The conversation ended on the very positive note that we would present a detailed proposal to the department and that he would be happy to consider a collaboration with ShikshaDaan. 

In just a matter of two to three days, we were able to reach out to a number of senior level functionaries in the technical education department of Himachal Pradesh, and share with them about ShikshaDaan and the Yatra. What is very impressive is that all of them were uniformly sincere, committed, honest and willing to go the extra mile for their stakeholders. In fact Mr Goel and the principals of the institutes whom we met were very appreciative of the minister in charge of technical education in HP, apparently a very dynamic person who is very receptive to new ideas and opportunities. We hope to meet him in Shimla during our stay there. 

Back to the point of perception and a closed mind. Bindu and I discussed in detail our interactions and experiences with government officials of Himachal Pradesh over the last few days and just like every new experience has expanded our perspective, these experiences have broken our perceptions about the government and its officials. We have always been open minded and receptive to different ideas and this experience reinforced our decision to remain open minded.