Avoiding insanity

While superfast information highways are being set up and bureaucrats talk blithely about e-governance, getting simple things done in an RTO office still remains an exercise in self- torture. TIMERI MURARI on just another day in bureaucratic hell.

IF I can help it, I avoid all direct contact with our bureaucracy. We have 22 million babus and sometimes it's impossible. Many of us, who can afford it, use a go-between. They're usually men, seldom women, who have retired, recently or not, from that particular department. Or else, they're clerks, peons, lower echelon managers working for the company. Go- betweens do a thriving business, they know their way through the serpentine tangle of Indian red tape. They're worth the additional cost as they're cheaper than a nervous breakdown and, ultimately, madness.

Unfortunately, my particular go-between fell ill and as I don't have any clerks or peons, I thought I'd do this task myself. I had a simple piece of business with the local regional transport department. I needed them to make a change in my car's registration book. I had all the documentation and it looked, as I said, a simple procedure. In another country, I would have just dropped my registration book in the post and it would be returned duly stamped.

The central transport office in Chennai is off a broad avenue and down a narrow street choked with trucks, buses, new motorcycles, autorickshaws and cars, awaiting registration. The entrance is equally clogged with many, many aspirants waiting for their driving tests. I'm not surprised that driving tests are cursory affairs, I'm only surprised they even bother about it.

The office appears to be an old colonial bungalow but it's difficult to tell. It's entirely hidden from view by countless additions of temporary sheds covered by weather-worn plastic sheeting. The sheds surround the building like a moat. They're shelters for the besieging army. Just outside the gate, a young boy, immaculate in kurta pyjama, sits regal as a lord behind a low platform covered with piles of closed notepads. I barely gave him a glance as I entered.

Bureaucracy's doors, like the hole in Alice in Wonderland, are always open for the unwary. I negotiated my way in, past the director's office. Behind a limp curtain, I glimpsed a plump man, lounging back in a padded armchair at a very bare desk, in a palatial room. His personal assistant, the gatekeeper into the labyrinth beyond, was cramped in a corridor.

He is a portly man, his desk is piled with papers and his writing-board. This is a piece of plywood, about two feet square, which allows a bureaucrat to sit back in his upright chair and work. They never, ever sit forward and use their desktops. There must be an edict about this. Beseechers, like myself, hopelessly lost and needing guidance, surrounded him.

I attracted his attention, like the others, by thrusting my papers under his nose. He flicked through them and said I had to sign at a couple of places. He added proudly. "The cancellation will be done immediately. No waiting."

I duly signed and returned the papers to him. Not immediately, as others had grabbed his attention. He looked through my papers again and asked in a puzzled voice. "Where's the stamped and addressed envelope?"

"What envelope?" Nowhere in the forms is the word "envelope" mentioned.

"You must have a stamped and addressed envelope."

"But where can I get one?" I couldn't bear the thought of driving home or looking for a post office.

"Outside," he said.

Outside where? I wandered outside, the ebb and flow was a tidal wave of aspirants now. I now took notice of the boy and asked him for an envelope and a stamp. It seemed a dumb question to me but not to him. He waved me across the street. All I saw was a tiny teashop, no bigger than a telephone kiosk, dark and insanitary, selling tea and a few cigarette packs. The last place to buy an envelope, let alone a stamp. Two men manned it.

"Envelope?" I asked hesitantly.

One of them reached up and slapped an envelope down on his dusty counter. I didn't blink. "Stamp?"

He pointed down. The envelope was already stamped. He charged me twice the price of the stamp and the envelope and, quite rightly too, as he serviced the needs of ignorant people like me. Of course, the bureaucracy knew of his service, and probably has a cut too.

I squeezed my way back to my man. I was becoming possessive of this rock-like sage. He was my life jacket in this sea of seething humanity. I expected the "immediate" to happen. Once more, he rifled through my papers with the expertise of a gambler with a deck of cards.

"You haven't paid the money," he said.

"Anything else?"

"No. It will be done immediately."

I swam back through the heavy surf of people, round the corner to a barred window. The cashier was counting money, standing at two desks pushed together, piled with ledgers. Marooned on the desks, rising sleek and straight like Manhattan's World Trade Centre set in the slums, were two brand new computer towers. But no monitors or keyboards in sight. They were neatly preserved in plastic and could well have been beamed down from Mars. The cashier used a typewriter-like machine to make out my receipt. It had a printer module attached like an afterthought transplant. When the module bit stopped printing, as if it had grown too exhausted, he picked up a heavy paperweight and whacked it back into action. It reminded me of a tired bullock goaded to keep working.

"Wait," he said as I turned away with my receipt. "You have to have details filled in the ledger." And pointed to an empty chair beyond him. I started to return my papers. "You come inside and wait." I saw at least 15 men already waiting.

The room was behind my PA's desk. Ledgers help up the roof and shored up the walls. My ledgerman, after a lot of shuffling, found the right ledger. He took my papers and rifled through them.

"Where's the authorisation letter?" he says returning my papers. Of course, there's no mention of this in any form.

"Why do I need that?"

"You have to have an authorisation letter so that whoever you authorise can collect your register book," he is patient, as they all are when explaining logic to the public.

"I don't need it. I'm the owner of the car and I'll be collecting my own book, so I don't need an authorisation letter," I say with equal patience and, I believe, impeccable logic.

"No. You must have an authorisation letter, otherwise your papers cannot be processed," he says and hands back my papers. There's that bureaucratic tone of voice, the ultimate power, like God handing down the Ten Commandments. It can only be appealed by my producing the "authorisation letter".

I don't need to ask where to find this letter; I'm being trained better than a Pavlovian dog. "I need an authorisation letter," I tell the boy outside. Sure enough, he rifles through his letter pads and tears off an authorisaiton letter. Of course, it costs a few rupees. It's addressed to the RTO, and starts with a "Dear Sir" and then there are many blanks for the car's details to be filled in and ends "Yours respectfully". To the left of the "Respectfully" is a blank for the authorised persons signature and below that a dotted line for the authoriser to sign, attesting to that signature.

My ledger man is very helpful. I am writing to him authorising myself to pick up the register book. I then sign it under the "Respectfully yours" as the sender of the letter.

He glanced at it. "Who will pick it up?" I admit I will. So, I have to sign as the person authorised to pick it up. "But you haven't signed it as the authoriser to attest to that signature."

"But it's my signature."

"You must sign below authorising the signed person to pick up the book."

Herein lies insanity but I attest to my own signature.

He's happy. He fills in his huge ledger and I sign it. I now expect him to fulfil his side of the bargain, cancelling the notation. No, I'm directed deeper into the labyrinth. This room is squash court size and the sardines have been hammered into this tin. Everyone moves sideways between desks. The register book man, behind his ledgers flicks through my papers.

"Where's the government stamp? It must be placed on the authorisation letter and the authorised person must sign over it when he collects your register book."

Of course. How stupid. I return to the teashop. He slaps down the government stamp and I return. The morning has passed, the crowd hasn't thinned. If we all got together we could over run this hovel in seconds but these ledgers hold our vehicles hostage. My register man looks satisfied. I only feel the tension of knowing somewhere, something could be missing. He chucks my papers into a drawer.

"Come back later."

"But I was told immediate."

"Immediate is today, not instant," he sniffs.

I return mid-afternoon. It looks as if no one's moved. My register man hauls out my papers. Someone has punched a hole at the top and tied the papers together with a little string.

"Where's your stamped addressed envelope?"

"I gave it to you." He searches, either it was pinched or it fell off somewhere in its travel. My teashop sells me another.

My register man hands over the papers in exchange and I'm grateful to see the cancellation. I'm off. No way. I can't leave without someone stamping. The stamping person was a lethargic woman. She sat on a high stool in a tiny, toilet size cubicle. She stamped it. And it turned out she stamped the wrong bit. So she did it again and I asked her to stamp everything for safekeeping. But she doesn't see the humour in overworking. Then she hauls out her ledger, fills in the details and I sign that one too.

"Finished?"

I push through to the exit. I'm followed. One more signature is needed.

I'm out, exhilarated at my own fortitude. Then I remember. I didn't sign over the government stamp of the authorisation letter as receiving my register book.

I know that this blank will be in a ledger, just waiting for me to return when I try to sell my car and get the registration changed. They'll have the proof the authorised person did not collect the register book and therefore mine must be a forgery. Also, to this day, I've no idea why I needed the stamped and addressed envelope.

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