West Oakland Works

"He was a young genius who graduated from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley when he was only 19," according to his mother Ruchira Handa, in an interview the local magazine India-West. "After finishing business school, he was offered a good job but turned it down, saying he never wanted to have a boss above him."

In addition to his mother, he leaves behind his father, Manohar Lal Handa, 82, who still works as a civil structural engineer, and and his brother, Vikas.

Handa floated through several jobs before founding the East Bay News Service, of which he was both the proprietor and the sole employee, eventually producing an e-letter about Oakland politics called “The Six-Minute Report."

“We always asked him, ‘Why are you wasting your life, your knowledge like this,’” recalled his mother, who lives in San Jose, “‘You need money, a good job, a wife,’ I would tell him.  But at his cremation, so many people said such good things about Sanjiv, and I was so proud of him. I wish I had known more about his life when he was alive.”

This author remembers Handa as a fixture at City Hall Council meetings where he always sat in the first row, in his trademark pullover, waiting for the opportunity to deliver what would often be a tirade, in a rapid fire voice, that after initial surprise was generally quite coherent and fact-filled.

Several Oakland city council members, probably occasional objects of Handa's critiques, said he looked ill at the December 20th meeting. Perhaps for the first time, he did not step up to the podium but delivered his harangue while seated and also evidencing arm tremors.

Described alternately as “gadfly” or “citizen-journalist,” Handa attended and spoke at virtually every Oakland city council meeting or committee hearing for at least two decades. In fact, the council changed its speaking time rules, in an attempt to rein Handa in.

“The balding 55-year-old with a fondness for pullover sweaters,”  is how Oakland Tribune reporter Tammerlin Drummond described Handa. “His M.O.—which drove many people to distraction—was to hold forth during the open forum for public comments. Without fail, Handa, who considered himself a journalist, would give his two cents on just about every item. He always used the maximum time allotment, often not to address any particular agenda item but to launch into long diatribes against the City Council.”

“Handa raged against public officials for everything from illegal parking to engaging in pay-to-play politics to violating the Brown Act, the state's open-meetings law,” Drummond continued.

Handa even put in a speaker card and demanded to speak at Oakland Mayor Jean Quan's inauguration last January. Some laughed, others booed, but he kept talking, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.  Nevertheless, Quan commemorated his premature passing with a statement: ““We are sad to hear of Sanjiv Handa’s passing. He spent most of his life at City Hall. There will never be another Sanjiv Handa.”