“The wait will make you see
The honey and the bee!
Fanning for eternity for a drop
Must carry on though, don’t stop!”
In the Novel Nexus Yuval gives an introduction to one of the most frustrating activities the modern day civilisation has ever insisted!
the tape which is red! And did you know it was all because of a desk or table!?
read on!
I hate filling forms! They are one of the most irritating things in the world especially if it is a rigid and specific form!
Since I often have flights of fantasy like a would be author, sticking to the script was never the strong suit!
Which may be the reason many like me can never be in accounts or be lawyers! Of course documentation is one of the cornerstones of modern medical practice but those are alright since we can still have creative liberties on the symptoms and complains!
But the most irritating stuff is when you need to do an official work from any government agency or even the bank! Of course now many of the places with the introduction of online access, it is a breeze but I still remember the days when simple things like applying for a official document was a big tapasya!
You need to fill innumerable forms and submit a zillion documents! I still remember those days when we had to apply for a landline telephone connection! That was the most difficult thing to do! After application your phone line may come after ages! Even then you need to ‘grease’ the palms and submit more documents!
This is the region of the red tape or Bureaucracy!
Now Bureaucracy literally means ‘rule by writing desk’!
The term was invented in eighteenth-century France, when the typical official sat next to a writing desk with drawers or a bureau!
And at the heart of the bureaucratic order, then, is the drawer.
Now bureaucracy was introduced to solve the retrieval problem by dividing the world into drawers, and knowing which document goes into which drawer.
The principle remains the same regardless of whether the document is placed into a drawer, a shelf, a basket, a jar, a computer folder or any other receptacle: divide and rule. The principle is division and transfer into sections! The image of the in and out folders of a office babu comes to mind!
This division, however causes more confusion and delay!
So instead of focusing on understanding the world as it is, bureaucracy is often busy imposing a new and artificial order on the world. In the book called Peter principle by Laurence J. Peter and R Suttton; it has been indicated that such Bureaucrats are appointed for the sole purpose to simply follow their rigid rule whether it makes sense or not!
Peter tells the story of Michael Patrick O Brien who was kept for 11 months on a ferry boat plying between Hong Kong and Macao because of a travel issue!
This leads to another interesting phenomenon especially in the Government sector! There are some forms which serve no purpose other than waste time energy and money! But incompetent officers insist on it because of customary routine! Like the case of Michael above!
The above are also examples of Professional Automatism!
Means are more important than the end! The paperwork is more important than the purpose!
But most of the time even if they don’t do any work, professional automatism still gets them promoted! In fact if you question or do not get with the flow, then you are not given any promotion! Here competence is harmful!
This was amazingly depicted even in the movie Zootopia when the cop goes to the Motor vehicle department!
There was this amazing movie called Kagaz and in the movie based on the series Office office; a person who is alive has to prove that he is alive when a ‘certificate’ emerges which proves him to be dead! In fact the comedy series by Pankaj Kapur actually is an amazing satire on the crazy world of red tapes and Bureaucrats!
The Bureaucrat in the office tells the person standing hale and hearty in front him that according to the certificate, he is dead!
It was dark comedy when the person says that he is very much alive while the Bureaucrat tells him that the ‘computer’ cannot be wrong! That whole scene in a nutshell is the state of Bureaucracy!
So bureaucrats begin by inventing various drawers, which are intersubjective realities that don’t necessarily correspond to any objective divisions in the world. The bureaucrats then try to force the world to fit into these drawers, and if the fit isn’t very good, the bureaucrats push harder. The forms do not adapt to you! You must adapt to the form!
Anyone with a big name from South India can relate to the commonly asked question in most official form; ‘first name. middle name and surname”! Try to fit Sriram Nathan Sivaramakrishnan Iyer in that!
Anyway talking about ‘Fit’ you can think about the birthday celebrity Puneet Issar!
Now fill that Google form and hope that you don’t get nightmares about red tape and sleep!
Shubh ratri!
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