Obit
This smile will
never fade
She was grand daughter of former Prime Minister PV Narsimha
Rao, daughter of former Secunderabad MP PV Rajeswara Rao, wife
of a distinguished bureaucrat and mother of two lovely children.
Ever smiling Satyasree fought for 18 months with deadly cancer
but ultimately lost.
I had a brief five –minute encounter with her at Pandara Road
quarters of Mr Srinivas in a sultry afternoon in 2017. Mr Srinivas had
just moved to his parent Rajasthan cadre to join his new assignment at
Rajasthan Tax Board. Just before his transfer from AIIMS, Delhi our
Special Correspondent Ms Charu Mittal had interviewed Srinivas. I
had just gone to deliver a hard copy of the monthly magazine to his
residence. Srinivas had also been writing for our publication then.
When I rang the bell, Satyasree opened the door and I handed over
the magazine to her. I wanted to hurriedly step down the stairs for
the waiting cab but she insisted to at least take a glass of water, a offer
no body will like to decline in sultry afternoon. The simplicity, the
grace, the poise and the smiling face impressed me to the core. A
down to earth personality she had a post graduate degree in English
literature and had also studied anthropology— the subject which
probably enriched her respect for human values.
Satyasree Pamulaparthy
W/O Mr V Srinivas, IAS, Additional
Secretary, DARPG, GOVT of India
dropped by over 6 hours. Pre-dawn
3 AM patient crowds disappeared.
Patient registration became a matter
of 40 seconds; from registering 2
lakh patients a month in July 2016,
AIIMS now registers a whopping 3.2
lakh per month. Total registrations in
a day have touched a peak figure of
18,000 patients, added Srinivas.
These simple, but far-reaching
changes not only enhanced access
to affordable health care, they
also made AIIMS India’s first fully
digital public hospital in July 2016.
It even found mention in the prime
minister’s Independence Day
address, in which he appealed for
pan-India replication of the model.
“AIIMS teaches compassion, takes
away impatience and brings in a
certain level of maturity to the way
one sees life. It’s a transformational
experience in many ways,” says
Srinivas.
Asked about ongoing challenges
at AIIMS, he feels the institution’s
governance model entails significant
process-driven systems, which
can sometimes be more tedious
than “even the Central Secretariat’s
Manual of Office Procedures and the
Allocation of Business Rules”.
“I am left with the thought
that decades of implementation
of the Standing Committee-based
governance model at AIIMS have
diluted authority from the post of
Director AIIMS, while retaining
huge responsibilities that the
post is burdened with,” making
it “extremely challenging” to
administer the giant institution, he
notes.
But Srinivas is no stranger to
complexities or success at work.
www.smartgovernance.in | February 2020 47