Impunity of babus is galling. Contain it

When ordinary people go out for a picnic by the lake with friends drop their phone into the water, they can only rant and rave. But babus of all types in India have always seen themselves apart from hoi polloi. And so, it did not come as a surprise to anyone at all, that a food inspector in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker drained 4.1 million litres of water out of the reservoir of a dam to recover his new expensive mobile phone (he succeeded; but the phone wasn’t working). Even in a country immured to the ways of bureaucrats and government officials, Rajesh Vishwas’ move reeked of overreach and excess; and it created waves internationally. An inquiry has been ordered, the official in question fined and issued notice, but the surreal absurdity of the episode (straight out of a Shrilal Shukla book) has, once again, underlined the decades-old twin problems of impunity and untrammelled powers that government officials wield in India. The culture of babudom might be a vestige of the British Raj and then the licence-permit Raj, but the ease with which the official thought and executed his plan (and the fact that no one thought it fit to stop him) shows that such attitudes are alive and well in the country.

Despite some progress in recent years, the bureaucracy is yet to fully shake off its feudal instincts. This cannot stand, and the authorities must devise ways to impose crushing costs on anyone trying to bend the law, whether from inside the officialdom or outside. Because, in the end, the real rub of this story is that the penalty for flagrantly abusing your position and draining 4.1 million litres of water, all for the pointless exercise of retrieving a phone that’s been submerged for four days is a measly ₹53,092. It can happen only in India.