The Hindu Business Line : A life of rules and queues

When Rev Father Jacob came back to India in 2000 after a posting from Detroit, one concern was his son's school admission (yes, non-Catholic priests do marry). But in Mumbai, schools are aplenty and the boy got admission at St Antony's High School in a city suburb. Six years on, now the good priest is on transfer to Kerala; the school is willing to give the boy a transfer certificate but refuses to part with his birth certificate.

The school principal can readily empathise with the plight of the parent concerned as this is not the first such compliant coming his way.

"I have no use for your son's birth certificate but this is the government rule. We have hundreds of these certificates that we are not allowed to return to students when they leave," the principal had told the Reverend.

Thus, across Maharashtra (not sure how many other States too follow this policy), at hundreds of schools tens of thousands of birth certificates are piling up, that no one but the students need later on in life. Yet nothing can be done to correct this anomaly as this is the law of the land.

But there are other laws of the land such as the one that has caught the fancy of the nation recently — Office of Profit. It hardly affects a handful of people, but an Ordinance has already been contemplated to amend it, and now, it appears Parliament would be reconvened to address the grave matter.

Though not of such grave concern, rigid rules of everyday life do make things extremely difficult for ordinary people. It could be the government hospital or the passport office — but some change in existing rules could make life easier for millions of Indians.

When the use of the Internet was extended to such spheres as passport application, expectation was that serpentine queues outside passport offices would be a thing of the past. Not so, as by applying for passport using the Internet, all you gain is a 15-day window to go and stand in a none-too-short a queue.

A three-four-hour vigil in such a queue hardly ends your woes as you are required to join another queue to pay the fee. After a fortnight the entire procedure needs to played out at the local police station. Ask why such sheer waste of time, and pat comes the reply: "This is the rule".

Wastage of time is an area that management pundits are trying to get Indian corporate houses to address. There are many modes of time audit whereby Indian businesses are trying to cut down on wastage of this precious commodity.

Corporate India may well achieve this goal, but India as a country seems as yet quite a distance away from putting a premium on time. We are still stuck in long queues that govern almost all walks of our lives every day and the rules of the land ensure that there is little chance to get out of them.

VINOD MATHEW