Excess Redundant Manpower

The University of Poona, where I am working on an assignment, employs this one person whose only function is to go around the University and cleaning the phones.

Every two weeks he makes a visit to each and every office / department. He pulls out a cloth and wipes the telephone instrument with some liquid detergent. He also applies a solution from a little bottle on the mouthpiece of the instrument which leaves behind a floral smell. This is in addition to at least one peon in each department who cleans all of the office infrastructure but the telephones.

Can anything you have seen beat this example of how ridiculously redundant and completely wasted some of the resources are in the offices of most government agencies?

As an addendum consider this. The Maharashtra Governments wage bill is more than 50% of its annual budgeted expenditure!

Discipline 101

I visit Pune every week on an assignment I have taken up there. As anyone who has been to Pune knows, two wheelers rule the roads in Pune.

Most of the signals at the traffic junctions have timers on them, which are tell how much more time for the signal to turn to green. Extremely useful and saves fuel. Also these signals are powered by solar panels.

The other day I was at a signal which was to turn green in 10 seconds. A young man on a zippy two wheeler comes along with his girlfriend as his pillion, stops for a second at the signal and then drives right through it, knowing very well that it would turn green in a few more seconds.

What is that makes one break simple rules like this with such alacrity? Is this blatant disregard for law isolated cases or simply endemic?

I wonder what kind of citizens such individuals would go to make.

Hierarchies of Justice

On Monday night September 12th, we were robbed. We live on the top floor of a three storey building in a quiet area of Andheri. All this time we had scoffed at suggestions received from all and sundry about putting grills to our windows. We wanted to breathe in the sense of freedom and safety that we thought our third floor apartment would provide. We were wrong.

That night some bare-footed bugger walked into the window of our study either from the overheard terrace or climbed up the pipes along the walls. Surprisingly all he walked away with was my laptop, with all the invaluable data and memories I had collected on in over the last two years, leaving behind another newly purchased laptop, digital camera and Discman.

The next morning on discovering the theft I lodged a police complaint. That’s when I faced the unfair treatment meted out to the submissive and the poor. The cops met the watchman who was on duty that night, and gave him two slaps before the man could even say anything. When I stopped the cops from what I thought was completely not done they snapped back at me and told me to mind my own business and let them carry out their investigation.

The watchman, a scrawny little fellow from some small little village in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh, barely literate, could rarely speak confidently. He was not even being suspected of the crime. His only fault was he was asleep on his duty, instead of being ever so watchful. But if a man does two shifts of 8 hours each, every day, only so that he can earn Rs. 1600 a month, it is but expectable that he is going to doze off while at work.

Can we call ourselves a fair democracy where the poor and the weak are always under suspicion? Does it give the cop or anyone in his position to slap someone only because he is sure that he will not have the courage to standup and question the slap? Will there come a time when the economically and socially underprivileged have as strong a voice as all of us? Well I hope so.