The New Decade

The then UNICEF programme preparation timetable was that about two years before the start of a new country programme, preparations would start with an elaborate system of discussions with various ministries and other bodies, internal consultations and an official preview with the Govt. and UNICEF HQ and concerned office participation. At this time the draft Master Plan of Operations[MPO] for the full programme period, with subsidiary plans of operations for each sectoral programme would be discussed for several days or even weeks. Due to the format and other requirements, from this stage on, the work was mainly done in UNICEF though the relevant Ministry or Department had to okay the final versions. The draft document was then followed by some revisions and the final drafting of the various documents with the addition of an outline plan of action [first year more detailed than the others] and the financial scheduling with major supply and cash flows sketched out.
Finally this document, that was actually supposed to be Government's own, was submitted to the UNICEF Executive Board that used to meet in April each year for its approval. Usually, unless there are major flaws in the programme, the approval was more a routine though the Board discussion can be sometimes very lively. By this time, the old programme has come to an end and the new one swings into operation at once.

Let me come back to the actual process we went through in '79-80. While the various sectoral departments in UNICEF worked closely with their government counterparts during the entire process, the onus of putting the chapters together and ensuring all the requirements for a MPO were in place fell upon the Planning Section. Naturally, I was more than busy all along. All the more so, since the Chief of the Planning Section, Satish Prabasi was traveling most of the time – to the other countries in our region, chiefly, Bhutan. The reason for such a lot of travel for him was that the Bhutan programme was new, and he had full responsibility for it.

One of the documents that the Government had to prepare during a new Country Programme was a Situation Analysis of Children in the country. However, few governments seemed able to do this, and some, as in India, were loth to take up the task. So it fell, here again, to UNICEF, meaning me! I put in all I had, and gathered whatever data and analyses I could get, into this document and the result showed. At the country programme preview, Glan Davies, the outgoing Regional Director was glowing with praise for the document. He suggested UNICEF should publish it with me as the author. But David Haxton, the incoming RD, who had been invited to the meeting, strongly disagreed on the grounds that all documents published by UNICEF should only be in its name.

Years later, when I saw more than one document or book that UNICEF published in the names of other staff members, I reflected wryly on this incident. Once the preview was over, the task of drafting and finalising the detailed master Plan of Operations that described the overall five year programme that the Government and UNICEF had agreed upon fell upon the Planning Section. Basically, this turned to be me with the help of a new addition to the section, Dr. Manu Kulkarni, and a consultant from the National Institute of Health Education, Dr. Kamala Gopala Rao, who worked with the various state offices to produce State Plans of Operations.

It was around this time that I got three offers for international positing as Planning Officer in the Cairo, Colombo and Addis Ababa offices. This bonanza took my breath away. How was I going to choose? I discussed with Ramu at home, but he too could not help us arrive at any decision among the three. Next day, I mentioned this dilemma to Sarojini who then revealed that she had an offer too from Colombo. The offers were couched in language that suggested that the representative there was sending feelers to more than one potential staff member and then he was going to select – like would she [or I in my case] be interested in being considered.

Sarojini came back to me later the same day, saying she had accepted the offer! I was a bit taken aback by her sudden decision but then i realised that she had had only that one offer and she could not afford to take chances, having waited for more than a year to get away from a difficult personal situation. Well, that still left me two choices.

I placed my quandry before Satish Prabasi. Quick came his retort: “Are you serious about there being a choice? There is no comparison – Egypt is a much smaller and less challenging country programme than Ethiopia; Addis is a nicer place than Cairo, being at a height; but most important is that the Rep in Addis is Manzoor Ahmed and to work with him would definitely be rewarding!”

This was enough to make up my mind, but before I could tell my RD my choice, Manzoor himself came to Delhi for a meeting on Education [Manzoor was well-known for his co-authoring a landmark book on Non-formal Education with Phillip Coombs].We took to each other instantly and I felt even more at ease with the idea of going to Addis.

Ramu and I had decided long back that if one of us got a good posting anywhere, the other spouse and children would accompany him/her and take a chance either in the development field or the academic world or do some writing. When I asked Manzoor about the chances of Ramu getting some suitable job inAddis and the children a good education, he assured me that with Ramu's experience, there would be some UN job. In fact, there were two openings in UNDP and another UN organisation and Ramu promptly applied for them.

Manzoor suggested that we put the children in the International Community School run on the American system as it had the International Baccalaureate programme, which meant that they could easily transfer to another such school in another duty station while the British School, according to him, was not so good nor equivalents found in many places either.

It was agreed that my transfer would be in the beginning of the next year, with the new country programme submission to HQ behind the office.

One day soon after, Ramu announced that he wanted to resign from his post of Finance Director of the State Trading Corporation, the biggest public sector company in India. I was stunned. We still had quite a few months to go before we left India, and I was to go ahead in January while the children's school year was to end only in March. But he would not explain why he was in such a hurry.

My unease at this sudden decision was more than matched by Manzoor's who protested that it would be easier for Ramu to command good positions if he was in this prestigious post rather than jobless. But it was done and only years later, I learnt that he had had enough of the pressures from the Ministers to cut corners, do their bidding against the rules and allow them to dole out patronage, not to mention quite a bit of corruption. Since he consistently refused to oblige, things had come to boiling point. Apparently what he said after advising the right course of action in vain, was 'O.K. Please put your order in writing and I will do it'. Naturally they could not [would not] do this.

Once again at the end of the year, there was a global UNICEF meet, this time at Mohawk, where our still new Executive Director, Grant, launched his GOBI initiative. The acronym stands for Growth Charts, Oral Rehydration Therapy, Breast-feeding and Immunisation. Of course, the Delhi crowd would make fun of this since 'Gobi' was Hindi for cabbage. This time, Manzoor was also there and we occasionally talked about the Ethiopian country programme.

Well, soon enough, I would be there and we would be working together. It was good we had already got to know each other and that on many issues, we saw eye to eye.