The Hindu Business Line : <I>Humour in administration </I>

Humour is humour, and administration is administration, and the twain shall never meet, is the popular belief. This is particularly true of Indians, widely held to be singularly devoid of a genuine sense of humour which is the ability to laugh at oneself and to debunk the high and mighty. Just look at the way cartoonists and late night show comedians squeezed the last drop of humour from the accidental shooting of his hunting partner by the US Vice-President, Mr Dick Cheney.

They maybe the Keystone Cops of the world, but Americans are great when it comes to their penchant for converting even serious things, say, the US Administration's canard of weapons stockpile in Iraq, into Rabelaisian humour.

Indian officialdom and humour are poles apart because of the airs officials put on, little realising the ridiculous impression they make. Posturing with glum faces on their lofty perches, they look upon any attempt at cracking jokes by themselves or their subordinates as derogatory to their position. No wonder, they end up being the laughing stock of the people.

By contrast, British colonial officials were known for their funny bone. If the administrators of the imperial era were able to carry off the White Man's Burden with aplomb, the secret was that they never took themselves seriously.

It was they who defined administration as the knack of "getting out of one damned hole into another," boasted of getting the better of crises by "muddling through" them and talked of having acquired the Empire "in a fit of absent-mindedness". Or, how about this tongue-in-the-cheek reply of a British Collector when an eager-beaver Sub-Collector wanted permission to destroy old records cluttering the record room: "Approved, but keep copies"!

Verily, he who laughs, lasts!

B. S. RAGHAVAN