TEEVRA CHAUKAS - MEANING

TEEVRA CHAUKAS :  RIGHT PERSPECTIVE

Lt Col HS Bhandari (Retd)     Editor  “THE SIGNALMAN”

The motto of Royal Signals was (and still is) Certa  Cito, often translated from Latin as Swift and Sure (not secure!). When the Indian Signal Corps was formed its motto became Tez-o-Sahih. After we wanted to make it into the Sanskritised Hindi, its adoption was Teevra Chaukas (in 1949). ‘Tez’ became ‘teevra’ and ‘chaukas’ substituted for ‘sahih’. Google Hindi Shabdkosh also defines ‘chaukas’ as ‘durust’. ‘Chaaron ore se achhchhi tarah kasa hua (चारों ओर’ से अच्छी तरह कसा हुआ) is how chaukas has been defined elsewhere. It amounts to saying that our systems should be secure, but chaukas is definitely not alert or chaukanna, as most perceive but unfailing,  fit and tight from all four sides/directions.

I seek to explain my own perception of our motto using vocabulary from the management sciences. All organizations and systems aim at achieving high efficiency. The word efficiency is used to quantify output to input ratio. For our ‘systems’,  efficiency means following the laid down procedures, parameters and practices to achieve the desired standards. If you conform to the SOPs, drills, rules, regulations, orders, acts and directives and do the job as expected, you are efficient. Thus, doing things right is efficiency.

Another term, often confused with efficiency, is effectiveness. There is however, a difference quite significant for the system’s perspective. If you achieve results, both in terms of quantity and quality even without following the laid down drills or through unconventional methods, it is effectiveness. Economy of time, cost and space are more important here. Also in this case the outcome may, sometimes emerge as out-of-the-box solution and ingenuity could be the watchword. Doing right things is, therefore, effectiveness.

If we can connote ‘science’ as an ingredient to efficiency, the ‘art’ may play a bigger role in effectiveness. Now if we could integrate effectiveness and efficiency (as defined here) through some kind of synergy, we succeed in doing things right, right first time; which defines the Total Quality Control.

We have to practice (to perfection) so effectively, efficiently and intelligently that our systems serve right, right first time — ‘Zhakaas’ as a Mumbaikar would say. In simple words, Teevra and Chaukas means swift and sure, fast and flawless, Chust aur Durust, ’Sheeghram-Sundaram’ or words to that effect. ‘Sarvottam’ could also go close to Chaukas!

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