We Need Corrupt Officials
Team Anna has the wrong end of the stick
The country (at least the netizens and newspaper readers) are currently pinning much on Team Anna and the Janlokpal. The Janlokpal, armed with drastic powers, is supposed to make corruption vanish from the country. Corrupt officials and politicians twirling away at the chakkis is jails, grinding grain like they used to grind us.... oh happy thought...Too bad it wont happen, any more than they make prisoners grind chakkis in prisons. Not that it should happen. A corruption-free India will become a hell on earth for man and beast - in the present set-up anyway.
How? Imagine if you wanted to buy a car. Present rules say you have to attach a copy of the Driving License, if you want to get the car registered. So you decide to settle that matter of the Driving License first.. Thanks to Team Anna, let's imagine there are strictly honest and dutiful officials behind the window. "How do we know you live here? Where's your ration card?"
Ah, so you have to get the vital card. The officials at the Food & Civil Supplies are honest too. "Why do you need a Ration Card?" "To get a driving license, Sir". "That means you're going to buy a car?" "Yes your Highness - er - Sir." "Do you know that Ration Cards can only be issued to poor people? And you can afford a car! Get lost!"
There are other ways to prove that you are indeed you, but the procedures are involved and Byzantine. Still interested in honest officials when a couple of papers with Gandhiji's toothless smile will do the trick?
And what if you got sufficiently crazy to attempt to set up an industry - you know, generate employment, contribute to the national growth, give China a run for its money. You have the patch of land, a brain full of ideas. Some money worth investing. So go ahead ... no, wait.
Get an NOC from the Electricity Board. "Sure, we'll give the NOC, but rules say you'll have to pay for and install your own transformer; and rules also say that transformer becomes the Board's property. But, hey! where's your NOC from the Town and Country Planning department?" So off you toodle to the Dept. of T & C.
"Sure, we're here to give you our NOC! That's our job! But where's your NOC from the District Environmental Engineer?"
The District Environment Engineer wants to see the NOC from the Revenue Department. The Revenue Department wants to see the NOC from the Forest Department, that your proposed factory doesn't abut Sanctuary land. Then you start looking around for a revolver to blow your brains out. But you need an Arms License first...
This is only a sample. Multiply with numbers of departments in existence and square by the numbers of officials who are your bhagya vidhatas. That's the amount of Red Tape of the reddest hue that the benighted aam aadmi has to untangle on a daily basis. Are you still sure you want honest officials manning all those posts?
Team Anna, I'm sorry to say, has the wrong end of the stick. What he should have been agitating for are simpler procedures, less red tape. Then corruption will wither on the vine and disappear. The Lokpal can sit content in his office, playing Solitaire.
