I was in India for a short trip from March 13th to 20th and experienced the government bureaucracy firsthand. I'll describe two occasions where I saw the perils of excessive and often unnecessary rules.
I went to IISc Bangalore for three days to look for housing; I was exploring both on-campus and off-campus options. I find on-campus housing quite attractive because campus is lively and facilities like gym, swimming-pool, etc. are easily accessible. So a helpful colleague took me to the housing department and introduced me to the head of the housing department. According to him the housing situation was quite grim and I would only get a quarter a rank below what I qualify for. I was quite amused how much seniority mattered in all these matters! He told me that there were two houses on-campus and two houses in Vijnanpura, a housing area owned by IISc about 3 km away from the main campus. We had to go to another person a few rooms away to collect the keys to the on-campus houses. The on-campus houses were very small and didn't get much sunlight. I was quite disappointed! At Vijnanpura we had to locate a guy to get the keys of vacant apartments. In fact that guy showed us the apartments that the housing head told us were empty. He told us that there were even more vacant apartments. Vijnanpura apartments were definitely bigger and better than the on-campus houses. When we returned to the head of the housing department he mentioned that there were 6 more houses available at Vijnanpura. So our trip was wasted and I had to once more go to Vijnanpura, this time with another colleague. And finally I selected a house that I liked the best. I had to write a formal application to hold the apartment for me. There was also a possibility that a bigger house may become available at the time I join. I was really surprised when the head of the housing department told me that there was no map for the Vijnanpura campus! All in all there was unnecessary time and energy wasted on a task which could have been done more effectively had the process been more systematic and streamlined.
The second experience was at Jaipur Development Authority (JDA). This was much different as my father, who knew a senior officer at the JDA, was with me. We had to obtain the papers for a new house that we bought in Jaipur, with myself as the owner. We went to my father's acquaintance's office and he called another person (initials BS) to guide us through the whole process. First he took us to another officer who was in-charge of one of the zones of JDA; the officer responsible for our zone was on leave. Then he took us to the accounts department where people said that it could not be done today because the accountant was on leave as his brother had expired. Then BS talked to one of the several people sitting surrounded by mounds of files and papers. My father recognized one of the clerks who had worked on our papers on a previous occasion. Only after he finished his tea did he open our file and prepare our papers. In the same shabby office we met my father's friend, a big property developer, who my father said hanged out a lot in the JDA office to quickly get the paperwork done for his apartments. We got the signatures from the lady Tehsildar of zone-8 (the JDA zone our home belonged to) from the office next door. BS left us and didn't go into her office. Apparently the lady officer was pretty strict about the paperwork. After getting the papers prepared from the clerk and signed by the Tehsildar we went for signatures from another officer to approve the house title. He pointed that signature from the Engineer (to confirm the dimensions of the property) were missing and were to be completed before his approval. Then BS went and got the signature from one of the engineers. After he came back -- we were waiting in front of the office of the officer whose signature was required in the end -- we found that the officer was not in his office. While in reality the officer had locked his door from inside so that he would not be disturbed by unimportant people. We (BS and myself) went out once again to the copy-shop to make copies of our papers. When we came back the officer was in meeting on another floor. We climbed one flight of stairs and reached the office where the meeting was. The guys sitting outside the office -- there were these in front of all offices making sure only influential people disturbed the officer -- told us that we could not go in. But then one of them alized that BS worked there and let him in. Finally we got all the signatures we needed before getting the title.
We were not done yet. We had to go to the title issuance office, managed by private contractors. We obtained a checklist of documents which we marked point by point. BS acted as the required witness at several occasions when I had to sign the documents. While BS was helping us, at all times he was greeted by a lot of people in the hallways, etc. It seems he is quite popular. At one point, while waiting for the photocopies to be done, he told me that his two high-school kids were preparing for engineering entrance exams. This time during my visit to India, all high-school kids I met or heard about were preparing for engineering entrance exams! Its like a mass hysteria! Getting back to the story of title. We finished the checklist and went inside a chamber enclosed by glass and aluminum and deposited our registration fee. My father recognized someone who helped him with registration of another property. There were private brokers -- who obtain property documents for not so small fee -- wandering around the issuance office, like bees wandering around the flowers. Finally my papers passed through the hands of a few clerks and I was asked to pose for a picture in front of a camera attached to a computer and finally our title was printed out after our efforts of four hours. After this ordeal my father told me that we were lucky that our work was done, and that to get this work done without knowing someone at the JDA can take months!
After these two incidents I was thinking that so much time and effort can be saved if the number of steps to get even the trivial things done is reduced! I wonder if the large population is responsible for the government employing people for useless work that can be done away with, with little streamlining! Making a process unnecessarily complicated makes the brokers thrive, who pay some money to officials to get their clients' jobs done in a timely fashion. I feel that the people in the bureaucracy want to keep the mechanisms unduly complicated so that they feel that they are doing something useful, at the same time ensuring that they get paid for the favors that they do to the brokers and influential people. I hope all this changes with time!
