Prasanth Nair is a civil servant and member of the Indian Administrative Service. He graduated with in Law from the University of Kerala. In 2007, he was selected to the Indian Administrative Service (4th rank all-India) and borne on the Kerala cadre. He has served in various capacities in various sectors including Tourism, Taxation, Roads, Water supply, Skill Development etc. He headed two World Bank Projects, viz. Jalanidhi  and Kerala State Transport Project.

Presently, he serves as Managing Director of Kerala Shipping & Inland Navigation Corporation(KSINC). He is also the Managing Director of Kerala Irrigation Infrastructure Development Corporation (KIIDC). He graduated with in Law from the University of Kerala.

As District Magistrate in Kozhikode District of Kerala he earned the moniker of ‘Collector Bro’ for his citizen friendly and participative approach in governance. He initiated ‘Operation Sulaimani’ to eradicate hunger under the umbrella project named ‘Compassionate Kozhikode’. Internationale Tourismus-Börse Berlin chose it as one of the 50 inspirational projects from around the world. Digital Empowerment Foundation and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation selected it for the social media for empowerment (SM4E) award.

Prasanth is considered as a pioneer in using social media for governance in India. Even now, Collector Kozhikode Facebook page is the most followed District Administration page in India. 

In an exclusive interview, Shri Prashant IAS shares with Marie Banu the initiatives he had launched during his tenure as District Collector of Kozhikode.

What motivated you to join Indian Administrative Service?

When I was around 10 years old, I had accompanied my mother to meet the Principal of the Government Medical College at Thiruvananthapuram as she had to get a service related issue solved. I can recall even today the arrogance I saw on the Principal’s face. He never acknowledged my mother’s presence in his room and she had to go through a lot of bureaucratic processes to resolve the issue. This led us to the office of the Health Secretary in the Secretariat. What I witnessed here was quite different. There was a cheerful bearded gentleman who seemed quite powerful, yet courteous and generous towards us.

 When I asked my mother who this gentleman was, she said that he was a civil servant and did what a civil servant was supposed to do. I turned back to look at the name board and I saw ‘IAS’ written after his name. This incident inspired me to become an IAS officer.

You are known as Collector Bro. How did you get this moniker?

I don’t know. It came naturally. These days I’m surprised if someone doesn’t call me bro. I don’t insist on people addressing me as ‘Sir’. It feels good to see my chauffeur or my gunman call me bro. I feel good.

Generally, in India, saying ‘Sir’ to express ‘official’ respect has been set as a divine rule.

But, I took a conscious decision to break it. There’s a different language in social media and I noticed more bonding when people started responding the same way to my Facebook posts. Quite amusingly, the moniker, “Collector Bro” was coined through these various FB exchanges, when people started addressing me as ‘Bro’ instead of ‘Sir’. The name stuck.

It was a great learning experience for me to work in an environment where you consider each other member as your equal and not seeking to desperately prove at every moment that you are the boss every time. As a junior IAS Officer, I headed two World Bank Projects where we all addressed each other by first name and no sky fell upon us.

What are your thoughts on humour in work culture?

Good humour is the best medicine to beat dullness at work. Not only does this open up doors for cordiality and directness in an organisational structure, but it also helps dissolve the hierarchical gap that has always remained between higher and lower echelons.

Breaking the hierarchical divide, using humour as a tool, has been one of my fundamental obsessions. This I believe, has enabled people working in my team, irrespective of their position, to feel free to pitch in their ideas and offer suggestions without feeling scared or apprehensive of rejection.

Not only have I received some of the best feedback and advice through this process, but I have also observed that our workspaces showcased better productivity and happier staffs.

Not being scared of failure is tough in government because you have no incentive for innovation, but plenty of penalties for even bonafide mistakes. Taking up initiatives as a team makes the risk seem lighter and having open informal channels of feedback communication makes failure less probable. Humour even helps the team take failure in the chin. This could be cited as another instance of how approachability and friendly work culture can do the spadework for innovative and effective output.

For India to have an enhanced work culture that rises above dense and rigid working environments and pave the way for a friendlier atmosphere and satisfied employees, the first step for organisations and its management is to break barriers between its echelons by encourage collective participation. Every voice has to be heard and acknowledged. We need to understand and attune the language of administrative communication according to the popular culture and ethos of the mass. Creativity should be unleashed and innovation should be encouraged. Humour and informality should be in        the air.

Any memorable incident during your stint as Collector of Kozhikode?

A week into taking charge as District Collector, I visited the Government Mental Health Centre at Kuthiravattam. In the middle of a prosperous city, there is an asylum where people are deprived of everything and are not anyone’s priority. Most of them are abandoned. Their food menu was something that was decided way back in 1975. The staple diet was a soup made of broken wheat, which wasn’t particularly very tasty.

There are two groups of people, who have no control over the kind of food they get to eat — the prisoners and the mentally ill. While the former can raise their voices and put their demands across, the latter can’t even imagine doing so. This was very depressing.

It was at this point in time I launched the Compassionate Kozhikode project. After that, the situation improved tremendously.

Can you tell us about the initiatives you launched a District Collector of Kozhikode?

We should realise that we have a fair share of tensions and violence in our society, many of which wouldn’t have happened had we placed ourselves in the shoes of the other person. Therefore, a compassionate approach is a path to better quality of life. This was the idea behind launching ‘Compassionate Kozhikode’. We realised that there are people in Kozhikode who are willing to give and there are many who really need help. We acted only as a facilitator.

This initiative is all about attitude. It’s about the culture of sharing; sharing for the betterment of people and places. Compassionate Kozhikode serves as a platform to celebrate the lives of people and to bring together like minded persons who can create a holistic destination out of Kozhikode. One of the projects is ‘Operation Sulaimani’ that is coordinated in association with the hotels and restaurants and provides food to the needy in mental health centre institutions, children’s home, old age homes and palliative care centres.

Compassionate Keralam is an extension of this project. It is about bringing volunteers together. During the floods, it was the youngsters who came together quite organically through social media. During the crisis, there was a lot of work that had to be done like collating the SOS, duplicating it and compiling. But they did it through something as simple as spreadsheet and slack. This was very impressive. We have offered scholarships to 25,000 children and a lot has to be done still. We aren’t collecting money here, but people are helping each other. This requires a lot of effort.

In 2015, we launched the official Facebook page for the District Collector, Kozhikode. It was one of the first official social media engagements of that nature and we could establish it as the preferred mode of communication by citizens to sort out their problems -whether suggesting an idea or marking a protest.

These were some of the key initiatives that I had launched.