The Great Indian Bureaucracy

It’s almost incredible how we blame everything on the government. Somehow, every evil that resides in the heart of our country is because of the dirty politicians. Or is it?

Since time immemorial, we have found ways to put everything on the shoulders of the few in power. But what we have failed to realize is that maybe the Devil has been painted blacker than He actually is. The biggest problem ailing our country is not politics but the bureaucracy. The Devil is not black. He is red and taped to a file near you.

How many of us shudder at the thought of going to a government office? In other words, how many of us have delved into our phone-books for a name that will help us avoid a trip to the nearest bureaucratic headquarters? Remember the time when you bribed an official so that your file would be taken care of earlier than others? Or the time when you got an agent to get a registered driver's license so that you would not have to wait for endless hours in a serpentine queue? Maybe you’ll remember the latest incident when you jumped a red light and had to part ways with a five hundred rupee note that now rests in the shirt pocket of an alert traffic official.

But are they really to blame? If you have ever visited the inside of a government office you would feel surprised that they actually manage to get some work done. Files, folders and scraps of paper stacked together provide habitat to thousands of endangered species of insects. Cupboards provide shelter to adult pigeons and their families. It’s amazing the employees are actually able to locate certain files while misplacing thousands of others. No wonder they require certain incentive for working on any file, unsympathetically called "Bribe". This incentive is the only reason government officials disregard any concerns for their own safety and work for the uplift of the community.

Politicians hardly have any say in the matter. Quite a few of them are only concerned with filling their own pockets and so they let sleeping dogs lie. Some others, filled with a misplaced sense of patriotism and altruism, try to bring about “monumental" changes. Another minuscule number of politicians, satisfied that they have taken enough from the community, decide to give something back to the country. They propose reforms and changes, blissfully unaware that by the time their ideas begin to take a definite shape five years would have passed and their legacy would be buried in an inconspicuous file in a desolate government office. Many long-term thinkers realize the irony in working five years without any hope of re-election and then being blamed for inefficiency. So they peacefully pass their term in office, promising everything but achieving nothing. This saves them the trouble of unappreciated effort.

Bureaucrats are the real power-brokers in India. People at the centre change every five years, sometimes within 13 days, but bureaucrats persist. They do not pledge allegiance to a particular party but to the nation. But they are too pre-occupied with the malfunctioning red light atop their SUVs or getting their wards out of jail for shooting people in broad daylight. As a consequence, try as they might, they just can't spare any thought for the common man.

Frankly, I have grown too tired (and poor) by bribing every peon/clerk/registrar/policeman/misc I encounter. I humbly request the powers that be to have some pity on my plight and exempt me from paying this VAT called bribe. I would be greatly obliged. Please find a note of 500 rupees attached for all the trouble caused to you.

Yours truly

A Common Man

New Divide

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. - Albert Einstein

Remember the time when Slumdog Millionaire was criticized for showing India in a poor light? Or when some idiot asked Aravind Adiga to apologize for writing White Tiger? Chances are high that you do not.

I remember the exact date when I saw Slumdog. It was December 29th and we all were huddled in a friend's room in the hostel, watching the movie late into the night. For the uninitiated, Slumdog Millionaire was released in India on January 23rd (almost a month AFTER I had seen it). But this post is not about piracy. This post is about India.

White Tiger (Aravind Adiga's Booker Prize winning novel) talks of two India(s) - India of Light and India of Darkness. He talks mostly about the India of Darkness where corruption is rampant, poverty forces children out of schools, the rich get away with murder, politicians fill their pockets with the common man's hard-earned money and the government remains indifferent. Somehow this India seems familiar to me.

Frankly, I saw nothing wrong with the book. People who claimed that the book showed India in a poor light should...well... go out often. It is true that Art imitates Life. They said that the author focused on only the bad aspects of living in India. Well, he IS a writer of fiction. He drew everyone's attention to the deplorable condition of the masses. He brought forward issues like Casteism that are often brushed under the carpet, irrespective of the fact that they are more rampant than ever. Reservation on the basis of caste, whether for higher or lower classes, is casteism nonetheless. Such efforts need to be lauded, not discouraged.

Slumdog was the story of rags-to-riches. From Hindu-Muslim riots to the gangsters residing in Mumbai's underbelly, the movie tried to show some of the things that were wrong with the country. However, the scene involving Amitabh Bachchan was wrongly glorified. Instead of saying things like "That was disgusting!" Big B should have questioned whether the human excrete Jamaal dived into was fake or not. After all, human rights of the child were involved.

The reason why some people found Slumdog atrocious was due to the stereotypes generated by the silver screen and the idiot-box. The poor working class hero of any YashRaj or Karan Johar film wears Gucci/Armani to work...everyday. The never-ending Saas-Bahu sagas feature divorces in which the poor hero has to give Rs 250 Crore as alimony to his ex-wife. No wonder people have trouble digesting the fact that nearly one-third of the population is not able to arrange for one square meal a day.

There is an interesting fact about ostriches. Whenever an ostrich feels that it is under attack, it buries its head in the ground assuming that if it cannot see the enemy, the enemy cannot see it. Ostrich hunters have whale of a time shooting such sitting ducks (did you notice the alliteration?). The people who believe that movies like Slumdog Millionaire or books like White Tiger are bad because they depict the truth are just like ostriches. Such morons have the notion that if they do not talk about a problem, it will go away. This notion is true if applied to attention-mongers like Rakhi Sawant (if you do NOT watch Rakhi Ka Swayamvar, chances are that you won't have to watch Rakhi Ka Divorce, or even Rakhi Ka Swayamvar Season Two), but not in case of problems that have plagued our country for years (Reservation, corruption, religious discrimination etc)

To summarize, there are issues which are more important than Rakhi marrying that bald Canadian guy. Issues that have been put aside for too long. Issues that need to be resolved before they divide the country even further.

Spun

Ever since Kareena got that Size-Zero figure, losing weight has become the new fitness mantra. While looking for some exercises that I can do without shelling out a lot of dough for joining a gym, I came across the following article.


Calorie-burning activities and the number of calories per hour they consume:

• Beating around the bush ... ... ... 75
• 
  
• Jumping to conclusions ... ... ... 100
• 
  
• Climbing the walls ... ... ... 150
  
• 
  
• Swallowing your pride ... ... ... 50
  
• 
  
• Passing the buck ... ... ... 25
  
• 
  
• Throwing your weight around (depending on your weight) ... 50 - 300
  
• 
  
• Dragging your heels ... ... ... 100
  
• 
  
• Pushing your luck ... ... ... 250
  
• 
  
• Making mountains out of molehills ... ... ... 500
  
• 
  
• Hitting the nail on the head ... ... ... 50
  
• 
  
• Wading through paperwork ... ... ... 300
• 
  
• Bending over backwards ... ... ... 75
  

Welcome to my life

Are you a software engineer?


Are you tired of sitting and working in a cubicle?

Do you find that the management guys have nothing better to do except use complex jargon and create silly acronyms?

Are you stuck in an organization whose every decision seems stupid and sometimes downright absurd?
Do you cringe at thought of understanding the dialect of managers?

And well, your boss is a loon?

Well, you are not alone.

Dilbert is exactly like you. You can find him on www.dilbert.com

A masterpiece of cartoonist Scott Adams, Dilbert provides you with insight that is necessary for a nerd/geek to survive and grow in the highly competitive world of software.

Why am I praising it? Because I love the cartoon strip and want to share it with you.

Of course, if you are bored with software projects and now want to move on to management, help is on the way. Read "The Dilbert Principle" by by management guru Scott Adams. Its the only management book you'll ever need. There's even an Indian flavour in one of Dilbert's co-workers called Asok.

So, enjoy the humour in our miserable cubicle-ized lives!