The Hindu Business Line : Ever the whipping boy

The mention of bureaucracy very often conjures up the apparition of a government set-up. This is natural and inevitable: It is with the government bureaucracy that a citizen has to deal most of the time since it touches every aspect of his life, begin ning with the birth certificate to death certificate, in a manner of speaking. Actually, though, any large organisation depends for its orderly functioning on systems, regulations, rules and procedures, and yes, paperwork. The last is to have a proper documentation from which the basis of the action would be seen to be justified in the eyes of any reasonable and prudent person.

Not just the government personnel but also people in private sector companies, universities or institutions whose hierarchies and scale of activities are large are liable to suffer from the same kind of bureaucratic mindset. Prof. C. Gopinath, in his eminently readable portrayal, “Flush out the bureaucratic mindset” published in these columns (August 19), gives three examples of situations commonly experienced, two pertaining to government, and one to a private sector bank.

Is there the bureaucrat’s side of the story in each of these cases? There is, but it will be drowned in the chorus of abuses of the large number whom he has displeased by his apparently irrational behaviour.

In the first instance, the clerk at the corporation office looking after water meters finds that in the application for replacement of a defective water meter, the space for the existing connection number was unfilled and wants the applicant to fill it in.

Prof. Gopinath’s contention is that the clerk himself could have found out the information from his own office records and filled it in, instead of requiring the applicant to go back home all the way to get the number.

Well, the clerk probably did it to get the number from the horse’s mouth, as it were, as a way of confirming to himself the genuineness of the application and the identity of the applicant.

Realistic

The second case is that of an intending passenger at the railway booking counter who wanted to buy ticket for a particular train, but learning from the clerk that all seats in that train had been sold out, but ticket in another train was available, agrees to switch. The clerk then asks the applicant to score out the name and number of the train previously mentioned and write down the name and number of the alternative train. Prof Gopinath’s point is that this should not be necessary as nobody is going to match the ticket issued with the original application form. However, I see nothing wrong in the clerk wanting to keep the records straight.

In the third instance, a fixed deposit holder goes to a private sector bank two days before the deposit expires, requesting the clerk to credit the amount due on the expiry date in his savings account in the same bank. The clerk tells him to submit the receipt on the due date and not earlier, to avoid its being misplaced by her. The clerk was being only realistic, as there was every chance of the receipt being lost among the flood of papers she had to handle and of her forgetting the task.

Thus, to my mind, the three instances reflect, not exactly a bureaucratic mindset, but an extra-cautious attitude to which most of us are prone.

What I would call a bureaucratic mindset is one which is impervious to human suffering, and bereft of compassion and common sense, in applying rules and regulations. There is no dearth of examples of this nature.

B. S. RAGHAVAN