The Tyranny of Government Bureaucracy's Resistance to convert Is Dying in India

In India, the Civil Services-the steel-frame-were designed by the British to rule a colony. And even now the bureaucracy works the same way as it did in the days of yore. The British bureaucracy in the Uk has changed, but the inheritance they have left behind in India has not.

The entire focus of the bureaucracy, often mockingly called the babudom, was to put the spanner in the involving wheels of economy pulled by the enterprising Indians.

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Some of the pearls of their infinite wisdom were as follows: municipality levied annual tax on the bicycles; owners had to pay a license fee for the valve or transistorised radio; refrigerators, geysers and even black and white televisions were described as luxury; government decided how many cars or motorised two-wheeler were manufactured in a year; no hidden universities were allowed to open; hidden engineering and medical colleges were un heard of; the quota of newsprint was decided and released by the government; government fixed the price of petrol, diesel, gas, kerosene (it still does); aided or government schools were not allowed to raise fee for many decades, while teachers' wages and overheads multiplied many times over; rents were icy at middle of twentieth century level; so on and so forth. In short, pen pushers reigned supreme.

Sarcastically called the Hindu rate of growth averaged at 3.5 percent per annum. The antique ideas designed for the nineteenth century colonial rural India did not change, while all else did.

The one thing the old babudom did not know, or did not realise, was the rising expectations of the habitancy in general and their own habitancy in particular. The habitancy of their own circle were becoming disenchanted, and exasperated at the growing chasm between them and the rest of the world. The new technology, and its availability to the base people, was slowly making inroads into the lies the babudom told to keep habitancy in ignorance. The radio receiver sets constituted the first wave, then expansion of television in 1976 was the next wave, colour television in 1982 was followed by Vcrs in the mid- eighties, cable television came in 1991. Cell phones came into being in the mid 1990s; its rapid expansion and the advent of internet, the It enabled gadgets kept advent like the quarterly strike of sledgehammer that broke the back of the old system. The rapid expansion of transport sector, both collective and private, also dealt a severe blow to the status quo. The tail was wagging the dog. Educated masses were shaking the bureaucracy like never before. The inefficient bureaucratic buildings is sinking in the rising tide of expectations of 1170 million people, and it is a matter of time before it is thoroughly submerged in the aspiration of teeming millions.

The Tyranny of Government Bureaucracy's Resistance to convert Is Dying in India

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