I am a bit tired of this relentless badgering of public offices—be it national, state or local governments—vis a-vis the hosannas for privatization. Call me a communist if you will, but in my two decades (ok, almost two decades!) of working as a journalist, I have naturally had the privilege of examining lots of public bodies and private bodies closely. Let me share with you my experience-driven understanding of these two superior phenomena off-the-cuff.
Bureaucratese, or red tape, as we all know, is a bad word. We have all faced the outrageous demand for money or for some obscure document to get that all-important certification from a public office -- for ration cards, driving licence, pension, passport, and what-have-you. In some states, a pensioner is required to get a certificate every month to prove he is alive.
Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that while many are indeed pointless and painful, some of these well-entrenched processes make sense. They are built in as checks and balances to ensure the system is not subverted by any one person or any one clique.
Hence the need to move a file from the desk officer to the undersecretary to the deputy secretary and so on, necessitating the insufferable delays. Hence the need for a seal on a pensioner’s living status to ensure someone doesn’t siphon off his money after he’s dead.
There is a great deal of inefficiency in the public system as well. When I last renewed my passport, the police drove me up the wall by first asking me to be at home at all times for their verification, rejecting documents that were listed by the passport office as acceptable, and actually expecting my neighbours to go to the police station to vouch for my clean character.
I smelt not just inefficiency but also greed. So I simply told them to sit on my file for as long as they desired, knowing well enough that they couldn’t do that for long. They have a stipulated deadline by which to clear their lot of passport applications.
After one month, they ate humble pie and called. They meekly visited my neighbours and cleared my file the day after my visit to the police station.
The point is, the system worked. Take the trains in Mumbai, take the buses. I have never comes across a single private bus in the city or outside that gives way to an ambulance. BEST drivers, running the public transport buses in Mumbai, always do. Besides, these buses are the pride of the city, the eternal cribs of a perennially disgruntled clientele notwithstanding.
I don’t know if you can ever get away by not taking a ticket on a BEST bus. The conductor is diligently all over the place. But I have actually managed to get a free ride on a private transport bus to Pune even after reminding the driver’s escort three times to take my fare. He would nod each time and the next thing I knew, he’d jumped off mid-way. The driver, sweet soul, refused to take any money from me because he had no receipt book!
I can bet that saved fare that you’ll find more rough and semi-trained drivers in the private sector than in the public sector where the training is rigorous.
True, there is frustrating corruption in the public office but if you know better, you realise it will stay that way in the private system too. One electricity company I know is run by a man who knows next to nothing about the business. He’s there for his skills as a wheeler-dealer and his dexterity in handling the politicians, the media and his own bosses, not necessarily in that order. Isn’t this true of any public sector office too?
The difference being that the public sector office is not overly obsessed with making money and doesn’t mind following the rulebook in matters such as keeping some buffer stock, etc. The company in question, though, wanted no overheads or extra baggage. With the result that during the July 26, 2005, deluge, they were caught napping and had to source spare stock and expertise from other electricity companies to restore power to its consumers.
Take our election process. It’s fascinating to see this gigantic exercise being rolled out so casually. The electoral rolls themselves are an impossible task, with great potential for errors in its multi-layered vetting system. Then, the logistics of the poll process is enough to drive a sane person away from the country forever. But our bureaucrats actually stick with it, deliver a largely fault-free election and get those horrible politicians to power.
I cannot imagine any private company having the wherewithal to pull off an election sensibly, even in a trouble-free state like Maharashtra.
Take Mumbai’s trains. There are times when I worry that the sleepers will slip away, that the fishplates will come undone, and I’ll be on the tracks. But how many times do we have any of this happening, regardless of the primitive state of our rail technology? Post 2006 blasts in Mumbai, the western railway was up and running in three hours flat, creating international history. And these guys are public servants who get paid according to the Fifth Pay Commission. No fat packages and pay hikes for them.
Now that I’ve said my piece, let me end with my pet grouse. Mantralaya, that last port of call for the faithful, is probably the only place where you matter more than your boss. It has this inexplicable practice of issuing entry slips to visitors which bear her name and a serial number. The visitor fills up the slip herself, gets some babu to initial it and walks in. She has access to any office she wishes thereafter, solely on the strength of that tiny scrap of paper. But dare she brandish an identity card issued by her office instead and she’s promptly shooed away.
It’s official. The government clearly means to empower you over your boss, who has issued the I-card.

P.S. In the best interests of democracy, I have been trying to amend this confounding practice for the past ten years. But several home secretaries have come and gone; that invincible slip of paper remains.