The Mammaries Of The Welfare State Part 9

Quite often, the government posted a jerk as Liaison Commissioner. After all, it had to post its jerks somewhere. They loved it, the perks, the absence of stress, the hundreds of kilometres between them and their boss. Dr Bhatnagar had three phones on his desk that never rang. They occasionally buzzed, Kalra asking him whether he wished to speak to whoever was on the line. Dr Bhatnagar never did, because the people that he wouldve loved to speak to-the Secretary-General of the United Nations, for example, or the President of the World Bank-never called, and their organizations never even acknowledged his letters. Kalra routinely transferred all of Dr Bhatnagars calls to Agastya.

Accepting them was pretty unpleasant. They were almost always from Headquarters, i.e., the Secretariat hundreds of kilometres away, and almost always accusatory, sarcastic, recriminatory. The entire office had been tutored to say that Dr Bhatnagar was away at a meeting in the Ministry and when pressed, to add, the Home Ministry. Presumably, Agastya had concluded, since it was the vastest, the size of a b.l.o.o.d.y city, and also because it was sort of true, wasnt it, since the b.u.g.g.e.r was always at home, scheming with, and being pushed around by, his wife, a pale, fat, unpleasant woman with fish-eyes and shoulder-length hair. Agastya was quite nonplussed to discover that Dr Bhatnagar too, and quite seriously, meant home whenever he said Home Ministry. 'Ill be tied up all morning in the Home Ministry. From him, such a statement could not be a witticism, and certainly to a subordinate twenty years his junior, unthinkable-unless it was a literal truth. Perhaps, long long ago, it had been a joke between husband and master, so rare that it had been cherished, and therefore oft repeated, and thus had become so familiar that to the ears of the bureaucrat, itd begun to sound just right, not a witty euphemism, but the thing itself.

'I run my office from the Home Ministry. Dr Bhatnagars boast simply meant a costlier telephone bill for the office. Every one hour, both Kalra and Agastya were to telephone him at home to report the significant events since the last call. On the fourth day after hed joined, Kalra advised Agastya to concoct a bit, since the statement that 'Nothings happening, sir, particularly when sleepily delivered, would exasperate Dr Bhatnagar no end. Fabrication came quite easily to Agastya, but the pa.s.sing years had also taught him the virtues of moderation. Buddha-like, he chose the Middle Way. Doctor Saab was never to be told either that 1) anybody more senior than him had phoned him, or that 2) somebody from an Economic ministry had called the office. Such cooked-up reports would fl.u.s.ter him and Sherni Auntie (Tigress Auntie, Kalra and Cos affectionate name for Mrs Bhatnagar) beyond measure. Theyd go into a huddle from which theyd emerge after half an hour with the decision that Dr Bhatnagar should hare off to work to hara.s.s everyone there till well past closing time with nervous, mindless c.r.a.p of a quality of which only he was capable. 'Kalra, take a fax to the Commerce Secretary . . . Agastya, speak to the Additional Private Secretary to the Industries Secretary and ask him whether he wants me to phone his chief now or later . . . Tell the PRO to deliver personally this evening a bouquet of fifty yellow roses to Mrs Khullar, you know, the Chairman of the Public Service Commission . . . he should first take the flowers home and have Mrs Bhatnagar okay them . . . Kalra, take a fax to the Finance Secretary . . .

Thus Agastya, following the Middle Way, every hour, to Dr Bhatnagars house, in Hindi: 'May I speak to the Liaison Commissioner, please?

Kamat, the Residence peon-he and the Bhatnagars have been made for each other, a match in Heaven-in Hinglish: 'Who shall I say is calling?

Agastya, in Hindi: 'Its me, you undie, U Thant.

Ages later, Kamat: 'The Liaison Commissioner wishes to know what the subject of your call is.

'If he doesnt want to get up, tell him not to bother. We merely received a telephone call from- Agastya routinely disconnected at that point and immediately left his room in search of Madam Tina, marvelling at how much they relied on the inefficiency of their telephones to help them in their work. He was safe now from Bakra Uncle (Uncle Goat) for at least one hour, which was when hed repeat the same farce. For Dr Bhatnagar to phone him back was not an easy task. He couldnt of course, because of his seniority, simply pick up the receiver and dial Agastyas number. He had to order Kamat to phone the office exchange and ask the operator to tell Agastya to phone Dr Bhatnagar. Fortunately for Agastya, all the telephone operators at the office hated Kamat only fractionally less than they hated Dr Bhatnagar; none of them was likely to interrupt his card game to deliver any of Kamats messages.

When they next spoke, Agastya would not refer to his last interrupted phone conversation with Kamat until Dr Bhatnagar broached the subject, and then hed state, airily, 'Oh, that! Yes sir, Deputy Secretary, Pensions and Administrative Reforms phoned . . . I think he knows you and wants you to put in a word for him for some post that hes angling for . . . yes sir, terrible, these fellows, sir, no shame . . .

The first new marriage proposal was a postcard from Dadar, Bombay, from one Vishnu Bhatt, Professor Emeritus of Numerology, typewritten, stark in his Office Post File, all stamped and recorded in the Inward Register of the Dispatch Section.

'Dear Doctor Agastya Sen, I learn that you are still available. I have for you a very interesting combination in my second daughter, k.u.mari Lavanya, an accomplished sitar player and a Bachelor of Dental Surgery from Baroda . . . If you show interest, I will dispatch you post-haste her photograph and her bio-data. I saw your date of birth in the Union Civil List, calculated from it and concluded that Lavanya and you are superbly matched. Never in my thirty-four years of numerology have I come across such a perfect pair of numbers . . .

Agastya wrote on the postcard, 'Id prefer a perfect pair of knockers. Dictation please, Steno, and flung it in the Out tray. If his stenographer ever turned up with it, hed reply politely recommending somebody else, Dhrubo perhaps, or the steno.

The second marriage proposal was from Kalra on the intercom. 'Good morning, sir. Doctor Saab wants to know why you havent married yet.

Doctor Saab himself had two almost-nubile children, Bitiya and Baby. Baby was a twenty-year-old bespectacled male, a washed-out student of Physics somewhere. Bitiya the daughter, also bespectacled, was older by a year or two, chubby, wan, smug, plague-like by reason of her parentage. Agastya had met them because the entire office spent most of its day ferrying the office cars to different parts of the city to drop and pick them up. For which it, the office, couldnt of course touch Doctor Saabs office car, an off-white Amba.s.sador with black windows that squatted like a toad at the office entrance, blocking the way, ready to scud off at a moments notice to answer the Call, from the Cabinet Secretariat or the Department of Economic Affairs or, what was most likely, the Home Ministry. Thus in the course of the day, Bitiya and Baby popped into office quite often, between extra Physics tuitions and clumsy tennis at the Gymkhana Club, to fax and phone friends and relatives in Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Bombay.

'Kalra, does Bakra Uncle want me to interface with Bitiya? 'Interface was one of Dr Bhatnagars favourite words. Agastya had explained to Kalra that it was Management language for sixty-nine. Kalra had been rather grateful for the idea. It had thenceforth enlivened a little his gruelling dictation sessions.

'No sir, may your tongue be cut off, said Kalra in Punjabi, 'for even imagining an event so gross. Sherni Auntie is on the lookout for a kayastha from the cow-belt for Bitiya, definitely from one of the two top civil services, preferably from the diplomatic service. She ordered Doctor Saab to ask me to find out from you whether youd like her to find you a match. Which is to say that shes already begun hunting.

'How much does she make out of each successful transaction? I just want to know for my General Knowledge. To remain young, one must learn something new every day.

'Yes sir. Lots, Id imagine. A significant percentage of the dowry finally decided on. Shed certainly make about ten times the amount that Doctor Saab picks up from his faked Medical Claims and Travelling Allowance bills. Small minds win small sums. Slow and steady always finishes the race, but comes in second last.

'Thank you for your observations, Kalra. Your wisdom encourages me to seek your counsel. In my youth, I would have fobbed Sherni Auntie off by admitting that I was already married to a Norwegian Muslim who was at present dying of breast cancer in England. Doctor Saab, though, might use that as a pretext to w.a.n.gle an official trip to Europe. What do you think?

At which w.a.n.gling Dr Bhatnagar is simply wonderful. His expertise forms one of the objectives of growing up within the Civil Service. When one joins it at about the tender age of twenty-two, one is packed off to one of the dots in the vastness of the land to learn about and function in the wiles of district administration. One usually grows up rapidly in those two years, sporadically dreaming of a post in Paradise, namely, the regional capital-to which, eventually, over the years, one makes ones way. Once in the regional capital, one sets ones sights on the Centre, where all the action is, where the foreign trips are. When one arrives at the Centre, one proceeds to scheme for a slot in an international agency-FAO, UNICEF, ILO, UNDP, WB, UNO, IMF, UNHCR-by Jove, the wide world at ones feet, and in ones pocket!-and a salary in dollars US to be spent in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Geneva, New York and Paris.

Agastyas explanation for the civil servants l.u.s.t to travel abroad at official expense is the by-his-standards-princely daily allowance that he is paid for his trip. That allowance, depending upon ones seniority, varies from dollars US seventy-five to one hundred. Abroad, wherever he goes, the civil servant, thanks to the great Indian diaspora, always finds an accommodating countryman to shack up with-and a McDonalds to eat hamburgers in. He thus manages to save, in a trip of one week, out of his daily allowance, the equivalent of two months of his pay (from which saving, before returning to his native sh.o.r.es, at the last truly international airport, he buys girlie magazines like crazy). Everything, reasons Agastya, is economics-that is, when it isnt politics. His first official trip abroad is to the civil servant what the Fall was to Adam; nothing is ever quite the same again. Someone like him from the Emba.s.sy to ease him through the cold discomfort of Immigration and Customs, those s.p.a.cious, silent cars, everyone in what to him look like snazzy suits, those women in skirts, the endless clack-clack of their heels on clean pavements, that frenzied wining and dining, the whirl of one official meeting after another, all handshakes and smiles, in which nothing is ever decisively discussed, the insane sightseeing, the frenzied, high-risk whoring in Djakarta, Bangkok, Amsterdam-having experienced all that and having gained two months pay in the process, the civil servant returns home to find his job rather shabby and dull, without any fizz. He begins to dream of more foreign jaunts, to befriend Joint Secretaries in Commerce and Personnel, to speak the lingo of External Affairs, to invite the chaps from Banking and Finance over for slap-up dinners, to snoop around for the off chance in Agriculture and Fisheries; Dr Bhatnagar had even started to correspond regularly with an incredible number of Amba.s.sadors and High Commissioners. For him, any occasion could trigger off a fax.

'Kalra, take a fax to our Amba.s.sador in Mauritius . . . My dear Katju comma Yesterday was Gudi Padwa here-Gudi Padwa in italics, Kalra-comma a holiday comma you know comma the New Year in many parts of the country and I thought of you . . . you will recall that last year comma on exactly this day comma you and I met in transit at Frankfurt airport . . . you were das.h.i.+ng off to your new a.s.signment in Port Louis whereas I was whizzing off to Honolulu to interface with our chaps there about a few Personnel Administration tricks that Id picked up at Manila . . . when do we see you next? . . . I could always pop down to Port Louis were it not for this enormous comma absolutely wretched pressure of work over here . . . its sad comma but true comma that in our system comma those who work comma get more work and those who s.h.i.+rk comma get the promotions exclamation mark . . . My dear wife sends her warmest regards to Lekha and you dash perhaps warmest-warmest in quotation marks, Kalra-is the most appropriate adjective for this unusually stifling March-April this year exclamation mark . . .

Every morning, with a s...o...b..lling sense of O-brave-new-world-that-has-such-people-int, Agastya would read the office copies of the faxes, telexes and letters that Dr Bhatnagar had dispatched, over the past few months, to the four corners of the world. 'Kalra, why dont I send copies of these faxes and telexes to Headquarters as part of my b.o.o.bZ study? This is what we do, have a look and swoon.

Kalra was surprised. 'But we do send them copies of each and every one of our communications.

b.o.o.bZ could equally aptly have been called SFS-like an obscene hiss from a lout on the road at something pa.s.sing that had caught his fancy-sfs, that is to say, Start From Scratch. Like many other Management ideas, b.o.o.bZ was simply plain common sense whisked up with jargon. Underneath that froth, it merely suggested to an organization to plan its budget with no presumptions, to examine each of its activities anew for its utility, to start from scratch every time. Is your organization fulfilling the functions that it was created for? Is the salary of this particular employee justified? What has been your growth in the previous year?-twenty pages of questions completely irrelevant to the functioning of government. b.o.o.bZ in the Welfare State, though the brainchild of an earlier Regional Finance Secretary, was given extra impetus by the present inc.u.mbent, Dr Harihara Kapila, who was to Dr Bhatnagar what a five-hundred-rupee note is to the currency of Monopoly. He was a genuine Economics whizkid and he truly wanted, with all the naivete and zeal of the whizkid, to run the nation like a private sector corporation, to see the Ministerial Cabinet function like a boardroom. Fortunately for him, the new Chief Minister had given him a free hand because they both belonged to the same sub-caste.

Caste is truly everywhere, even in s.p.a.ce: so Dr Kapila rationalized subsequently. It isnt a coincidence, for example, that our first-and only-astronaut was a Brahmin . . . other things being equal, send a Brahmin into the heavens. h.e.l.l be more appropriate for the G.o.ds. Caste is a much more reliable factor than merit, you know . . . because merit? Every Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry has merit, but how many have the right temperament, the right ethos, genes, lineage, morality, att.i.tude, biases, hangups-in short, the right caste-for a job? By allowing me to do what I want with b.o.o.bZ-which is a much easier, more memorable term, by the way, than the original, rather vacuous ZBB-all that is what the Chief Minister is saying. Ive got to where I am because of my-and his-caste. We should be proud of his vision.

Under b.o.o.bZ, Dr Kapila froze all recruitment to the government. 'Our offices are all overstaffed, said he. Hes crazy, said everyone else.

'If you dont give me men, thundered the Director-General of Police, 'I will not line two alternative routes for kilometres on end with constables fifty metres apart from the airport to Raj Bhavan for two hours before he lands each time the Prime Minister comes visiting!

However was one to reason with the top bra.s.s of the Police State?

In that infernally crowded city, they didnt have an alternative route from anywhere to anywhere else. Dr Kapila suggested that the DGP deploy his constables from elsewhere in the police force. After all, over fifteen thousand of his men guarded the VIPs who stayed in the Central Munic.i.p.al Area of about forty square kilometres, that is, fifteen thousand of his Special Task Force, not counting his staff in the various police stations, anti-crime bureaus, on traffic duty and all that. The State spent over three hundred crores every year on VIP security alone. The DGP knew better than anybody else what frenzied lobbying went on amongst their men of state to get on the Intelligence Bureau Endangered List. One had truly arrived when one was declared a Z-category security risk. One was officially allotted five bullet-proof Amba.s.sador cars with souped-up Isuzu engines, a posse of Black Guard commandoes and a colonial bungalow in the Sanitized Central Munic.i.p.al Area. The Security budget paid for the doing-up of those cars: velvet seats, synthetic-tiger-skin dashboards, a bottle of scent beneath the rear-view mirror, a stereo-security requirements, of course. The Security budget also provided for raised boundary walls topped by barbed wire for all those colonial bungalows-and fifteen thousand men of the Special Task Force watered those vast lawns and hung about at the gates to keep the rest of the gawking nation out. All those men doubled up, didnt they, as gardeners, cooks, nannies and housekeepers. They rushed off to the store when Madam ran short of curry masala or spring onions. Dr Kapila suggested that the DGP pluck them out of VIP security duty and use them to line his streets for the Prime Minister.

Outraged, the DGP dictated a stinker of a note to the Home Secretary, warning the nation, inter alia, of an apocalypse were recruitment to be stopped to the police forces. Following the usual route-Director-General to Home Secretary to Chief Secretary to Minister of State for Home Affairs to Home Minister to Secretary to the Chief Minister to Chief Minister-the note flitted about in the Secretariat for three days. The Chief Minister had no time for the apocalypse, so his Secretary wrote on the note: Seen by CM. The views of Finance may be solicited. Off shot the note again on its, billiard-ball route.

Dr Kapila loved this sort of thing the most-the impressive advocacy to a superior, through the use of cold, clear reasoning, of doctrinaire ways and means of effecting logical economies in the Welfare State. On notes such as the one from the Director-General of Police, he could dictate for months without pause.

If intelligently implemented, b.o.o.bZ could change the face of the government, that is, if sensible economizing is at all one of our objectives. It ought to be one, since we are closer to bankruptcy than weve ever been before.

It was only natural, Dr Kapila felt, that the DGP had expressed the anxieties characteristic of those feudal lords who fear most the diminis.h.i.+ng of their fiefdoms. That b.o.o.bZ concerned itself not with the balance of power between Departments but with planning would never enter his head. The police forces, he would a.s.sert, have always welcomed organizational innovation and new man management techniques (as long as they didnt touch either manpower or budget). Under the mantle of VIP security, Dr Kapila knew that the government protected scores of vague persons whom n.o.body even knew the existence of and whom only the nations taxpayers might want to get rid of once they found out how their money was being wasted. At the same time, two of the countrys last four Prime Ministers and three regional Chief Ministers had been, in the preceding decade, either mowed down or blown up. Thus, one, notched up Dr Kapila, they spent more and more on Security every year. They were at 303 crores that year from the previous budgets 292. Two: Their Endangered List continued to grow even more steadily than their population. Recent additions included the Minister of State for Handlooms, Women and Child Development and the Chairman of the Committee to Celebrate the Completion of Forty-Four Years of the Nations Federal Polity. Three: They could not protect the very few that they needed to.

Dr Kapila sighed and looked out of his ninth-floor Secretariat window at the worlds largest slum and the grey sea beyond. The air above Bhayankar still looked smoky from the fires of the h.e.l.lish election riots of the preceding week. They hadnt yet finished identifying the dead. He was abruptly reminded of his last trip to the northern states.

Hed been sent there as a Central observer for the previous elections some months ago. On the road somewhere just outside Yugandhar City, eleven-ish in the morning it had been, a straight, unremarkable stretch of State Highway with wheat fields on either side, their white Amba.s.sador had been merrily staggering along when, all of a sudden, the skiesd been overwhelmed by a squeal of sirens that had frighteningly grown louder every second. Shuddering with dread, their car had pulled up on the shoulder of the road and breathless, theyd all gaped at a hillock of dust rus.h.i.+ng up the road towards them, like the elements signalling the approach of Robur the Conqueror in one of his futuristic, amphibious vehicles. In a second, it had resolved itself into a convoy-an open jeep, two off-white Amba.s.sadors, a closed jeep. Lights flas.h.i.+ng, sirens now earsplitting, it-the convoy-had shot past them with the roar and whoosh of a jet plane. The two jeeps and the second Amba.s.sador had been stuffed with-had oozed, as it were-Black Guard commandoes and policemen in various coloured uniforms. With some kind of small cannon, a sort of Rambo erect beside the driver in the first jeep, rigged out in regulation khaki beret, sungla.s.ses and moustache, had waved pedestrians and terrified cyclists away from the convoy. Whatever from? Dr Kapila had wondered. From karate-chopping the vehicles as they pa.s.sed? Or kicking the tyres? Perhaps from piddling on the ferociously winking lights on the roofs of the cars? The first Amba.s.sador had been black-gla.s.sed, secretive and ludicrously menacing, like a rapist/blackguard in an F-grade cheap-thrills film. The windows of the second had been down perforce, or else the dozen or so commandoes in it wouldve asphyxiated. It-the second car-looked as though itd just careened out of a farcically violent comic strip-Asterix, perhaps; a dozen determinedly baleful mugs under black berets hanging out of the windows, an occasional hand clutching a reputedly ammunition-less automatic weapon (ammunition-less because of one of the routine Economy Drives. Bullets were expensive and of course the police knew that not everybody on the Endangered List needed all the paraphernalia-five cars, fine, but bullets in the guns of their guards? Oh no no. Reputedly ammunition-less because bullets was a Security subject, and Security had always been hidden in billowing clouds of unknowing, like a masked rioter behind the exploding smoke bomb, exploiting the camouflage to do his own thing).

What could be the purpose of such a convoy? To irritate and scare traffic and the citizenry? To amuse and depress the inmates of other vehicles? 'That must be two dying Prime Ministers being rushed to Intensive Care, Dr Kapila had murmured.

'Ha ha sir. His driver, a local, had then explained in Punjabi, 'But that isnt so. That was the Superintendent of Police of the district, sir, going to office.

Dr Kapila sighed and returned to his dictation charged with an obscure missionary zeal. He must stop the rot, guide the drifters, stem the tide; he had all the ideas, but how to convince the people who called the shots? Should he buy time on Zee TV? Because n.o.body read any more-even electronically-typed, double-s.p.a.ced English notes. Perhaps he could seat the Cabinet in front of the TV for half-an-hour of prime time and have a toothy, nubile thing emcee a show called The b.o.o.bz of the Welfare State. Some good citizens to sing Hindi film songs before a studio audience, a few film clips, a couple of risque jokes, a fistful of social issues and every now and then, a Hindi film personage, preferably female, to chat about the benefits of the b.o.o.bz programme. Perhaps then the Cabinet would listen.

Ah well, until then, the show must go on. 'Please continue . . . b.o.o.bZ is one method by which we can halt the enormous wastage of financial and manpower resources that has become a fundamental characteristic of all our activities . . . Since this is a Secret note, it will not be out of place to describe in some detail here a typical example of how the Welfare State allocates its resources . . . With a bitter half-smile, Dr Kapila at this point balked. How to choose from a million? Without losing objectivity, without becoming near-hysterical, how to lead up to the instance of Bhanwar Virbhim at the golf club?

Golf was a social thing for Dr Kapila, Manila and all that, the right people. Hed been rudely surprised one Sunday morning to spy on the course a handful of Black Guard commandoes scanning the surroundings with eagle eye while b.u.mping into one another, hideously conspicuous against the green, an invasion of aliens. When hed spotted in their midst the golf-ball-like figure of his ex-Chief Minister and present Central Minister, Bhanwar Virbhim, hed felt as unsettled as a schoolboy catching sight of his formidable cla.s.s teacher meekly standing in a long line to buy kerosene at the local market-however could he be here? With the Minister, teaching him the rudiments of the game, had been his loyal sidekick, the reputed sharer of his mistress, squat, safari-suited Bhupen Raghupati.

The sight had needled all of Dr Kapilas caste and cla.s.s prejudices. The Golf Club was for the select-for speakers of grammatically-correct, correctly-accented English, for those who occasionally holidayed in Europe, for that sort; so how come this local from some horrendously obscure small town, who still wore (Dr Kapila was certain) string drawers instead of (the d.a.m.n uncomfortable) VIP Frenchie undies, and who still didnt know that one didnt burp in public, how come he now loved his game of golf? Had we come a long way, baby, sir. Bhanwar Virbhim on the green had indeed looked like the Revolution. Dr Kapila had disapproved. Where would one be if people began to rise in society at the speed with which they rose in politics?

Ranga the Club Secretary, an ex-Finance Service man who favoured checked trousers and who had a bald dome and grey, shoulder-length hair, had not approved either. 'You see, these fellows- stabbing with his pencil in the direction of the commandoes, '-wear studded boots the size of suitcases. We might as well simply dig up the turf. Ill have to speak to the DGP.

He did. The Director General of Police then sent a secret note to the Private Secretary to Bhanwar Virbhim pointing out that in the opinion of Security, for a sniper, an Endangered Listee waddling about in the vast open s.p.a.ces of a golf course was a dream come true. 'The Minister is strongly advised to give up learning the game till such time that he remains on the E list.

Bhanwar Virbhim would not have risen thus far had he ever wilted under a routine caste-and-cla.s.s offensive of this kind. He asked his Private Secretary to write a Secret Note to the Private Secretary to the Home Minister to suggest that the Black Guard Commandoes ordered to protect him, Bhanwar Virbhim, should be instructed to walk barefoot as and when the occasion demanded.

The note billiard-balled its way down to the DGP, who wrote on it that he found the proposal of the Private Secretary unrealistic. Are the Black Guards supposed to protect the Target every second of the period that they are on duty, or not? That is the question. What if-Heaven forbid-something were to happen to the Target at the very moment when the heads of the Commandoes are down and their hands and minds are busy with their shoelaces? Whose head will then roll in the fallout to compensate for the Targets?

The note arrived on Dr Kapilas desk as a fat file full of comment and counter-comment. Bhupen Raghupati had mooted that on Bhanwar Saabs golf days, his contingent of commandoes could be doubled and that the second lot could be barefoot. The DGP had approved of the doubling because it increased his fiefdom, but not of the bootlessness. Security cannot compromise on quality, on anything that will affect performance. What if-Heaven forbid-something were to happen to the Target just when a thorn or sharp object p.r.i.c.ked the bare feet of the commandoes, and their hands and minds were occupied with the distraction? Who would then be held responsible for the tragedy? Please find out what kind of footwear is acceptable on the golf course and how much it will cost us to shod ALL our commandoes. For it is my duty to point out here that other VIPs on the E List might well want to emulate Bhanwar Virbhim. Please solicit the approval of Finance for the extra expenditure.

The more time Dr Kapila had spent in Finance, the more he had come to believe that very few citizens-normal people-would understand the Welfare State economy. After years of sporadic focusing on the subject, hed honed the tumult in his head down to a few basic ideas.

For one, the amount of money that the typical civil servant in Finance could visualize, conceptualize or mentally handle at one time usually depended on the file that he was dealing with but in general, did not exceed fifty thousand rupees, that is to say, his average official monthly earnings multiplied by as far as his fingers could take the figure.

Even though this first conclusion of his sounded like one of his own poor jokes, Dr Kapila had seen it borne out time and time again by the facts. If one asked a Finance man for clearance for any sum less than fifty thousand rupees as a loan, for example, against ones own Provident Fund account to i) buy a car, ii) marry off ones son or iii) cardinal sin!-zip off to Mauritius on a holiday, it was a fact that, quoting his own last Economy Drive circular, he would turn one down.

Yet, when one returned to Finance with yet another harebrained proposal to spend five hundred crore rupees on a new rural water supply scheme-which was merely the fifteenth cosmetically-doctored version of the system thatd been in existence for the last forty years-Finance okayed it, princ.i.p.ally because five hundred crore rupees was way, way beyond the comprehension of its men; about one hundred thousand times more than what they could visualize.

Dr Kapila had once believed that the civil servants of his Department would approve the new rural water supply scheme and turn down the request for a loan to buy a car with because: i) they were wicked, loved power and adored hara.s.sing their colleagues, ii) rural was far away from them, fortunately remote and incomprehensible. They felt sorry for it, and iii) they felt n.o.ble okaying n.o.ble schemes.

Time had however forced him to change his opinion. Why, only two weeks ago, Public Health had sent them a proposal for an extra expenditure of forty-four thousand rupees on Additional Tetracycline for Madna District. His Deputy Secretaryd promptly shot it down, pitilessly scrawling beneath the initial note: Bad planning. PH shouldve provided a minor cus.h.i.+on for such eventualities in its original Firefighting Against Acts of G.o.d Subhead.

Dr Kapilas first conclusion was his second as well. Fifty thousand rupees, he believed, was also the largest sum that the average, corrupt civil servant could look forward to as his share, and both mentally and physically handle as a bribe, per transaction per person, that is, after all the palmsd been greased in proper hierarchical order and the dustd settled right down the line. Venality, however, was not a subject that Dr Kapila was comfortable with. Even after almost thirty years of service, it continued to shock and at times nauseate him.

When hed been young-or rather, younger-he could swear that they hadnt taken any bribes. Almost swear. Well, hed never taken any. What he meant was-the lower orders, twenty years ago, mightve taken a hundred-or a maximum of five hundred-rupees to push or lose a file, or a peon mightve taken ten rupees off a pet.i.tioner to allow him in to meet the officer, or a constable-and there Dr Kapilad always pause. The less said about the police, engineers and Welfare State doctors, the better. Some fixtures of life, like the Milky Way, have been there in the s.p.a.ce around us since time immemorial.

But nowadays! The ethics-and the stakes-stagger the mind! And People Like Me, shrieked Dr Kapila silently, with My Background! It is horrifying that they too are merrily milking away! Not some lower-caste fellow-some incompetent, barely literate Kansal Commission appointee, the holder of a sad undergraduate degree from some obscure regional college that functions out of a ghastly Public Works building that has broken windows and no electricity-one wouldntve been surprised, you know, to hear that theyre still raking it in. But members of the Golf Club, for instance! Who read Alvin Toffler and buy Music Today CDs-civil servants like that slithery Chanakya Lala who, after a decade of dedicated service, reputedly owns a couple of hills in some North Indian resort town-my G.o.d, he went to my school and my college-though, fortunately, twenty years after me-but crookedness that close to ones skin is deeply unsettling.

And the figures that one hears are truly mindboggling! A lakh of rupees for each No Objection Certificate to pull down and rebuild a one-thousand-square-foot apartment! The rates have apparently been quite mathematically worked out and-some say-are indeed quite reasonable.

Chanakya Lala often reminds Dr Kapila of Kaa the snake in his daughters old Walt Disney video of The Jungle Book. Lala is tall, slim, bespectacled, with a womanish sway to his hips in his walk. He stinks of perfume; in fact, in a drawer in his office, he keeps a bottle from which he regularly bathes himself. It is his way of preparing for meetings. That scent of his-airy, pine-forest-like-Dr Kapila has come to consider one of the odours of corruption. Lala wears his gold watch on his right wrist, which Dr Kapila finds truly disgusting. He is unfailingly well-dressed and well-mannered, Suck Above, Suck Below. He invariably shares his booty with the dacoits who are his political masters and with whichever of his official superiors is willing. He has enterprise and has managed over the years to milk the most diverse Departments-Urban Housing, Rural Rationing, Education, Food and Drugs, Excise, Animal Husbandry. You see, no matter where you are, there always will be a law which youll interpret, one way or the other, in favour of one party. Why do it for free? Especially when your own salarys so ridiculous that you are practically working for free. After all, dont you owe a decent life to your children?

The above specious arguments would neverve occurred to me, is what Dr Kapila tells himself. However did they occur to Slither? When Dr Kapilad been Lalas age, every morning, hed-in a manner of speaking-get off his mothers lap, touch her feet, seek her blessings, grab his tiffin box from his wifes hand and go off to sweat in the car on his way to work. Was Lala then a sign of the changing times? How did he get rid of his mother and replace her with a wily dealer in foreign exchange? Or could the changing times themselves be attributed to the moral decline of the Aflatoons? The rot starts at the top? The apocalypse round the corner, times running out for the nation-and just look at the Joneses!

Lala of course was in the big league; the amounts that he supposedly gobbled up in bribes were hardly the norm. Of course, Dr Kapila had steadfastly held that those who could prove his deductions wrong were most welcome to step forward. In fact, by doing so, they would solve some of the riddles and dispel a little the fog that envelopes the economics of the Welfare State. Were he to be interrogated on the subject, hed confess that soon after taking over as Regional Finance Secretary, hed been so intrigued by the economics of white-collar venality that hed felt that he must pose some questions to the experts in the field. Hed thus sent anonymous questionnaires on scented paper both to Chanakya Lala and to Bhupen Raghupati. Hed been partly inspired by some curious sheets of off-white paper that hed received now and then in his office post, unsigned-indeed, blank, save for some large, yellowish stains on them, thick, like dried cream. Though he hadnt signed the covering letter, hed made it clear that the filled-in questionnaires should be posted to the office of the Regional Finance Secretary and that the information disclosed therein would of course remain totally confidential. He was disappointed that neither ever replied. He found that typically self-centred and cowardly of them. They neednt have signed the filled-in sheets. Surrept.i.tiously, they squeeze and suck at the dugs like crazy, but scurry away like rats when they feel the mammoth, sluggish body stir.

Dr Kapilad been quite pleased with the acuity of his questions. Though unanswered, they summed up the disquiet of any thinking Economics man in the country.

i) Apparently, the total amount that the State loses a year in bribes is a little over ten thousand crore rupees. However did the statisticians arrive at such a figure? Have you answered such questionnaires before? If so, how come I dont know? Whod sent them? Have you kept a copy?

ii) When did you start being corrupt? Was your father corrupt? Your mother? Was she a Customs official, by any chance? Did you ever steal money from your servant?

iii) Do you prefer bribes in cash or in kind? Diwali gifts of laser-disc videos? Johnnie Walker Blue? Paid holidays in Goa? With p.u.s.s.y?

iv) Is it true that Mrs Raghupati began life as a profitable foreign exchange racketeer? Capital gains tax, securities, trade cartels, import/export regulations, over-invoicing, duty evasion, bank charges, gold smuggling, tax havens, chronic balance of payments crisis-that she understands and freely uses such phrases daily? Is it a fact that she abandoned her Economics degree in her second year in college to try her luck at the Miss India Beauty Contest?

v) Dont you find it morally baffling that criminals like you are nowadays-sort of, well-admired?

Dr Kapila himself did. At the Golf Club, twenty years ago, he imagined that someone like Laladve been shunned-like the pariah in the play school whos done potty in his pants-but in the present Dark Age, it depressed him to see that when a Lala type stepped out of his after-office-hours, chauffeur-driven, personal Cielo, and womanishly swayed into the foyer of the Club, cootchie-cooing to his kids on his mobile phone because hed simply no time for them in the evenings at home, heads of other Lala types turned; they waved from across the hall and loudly, in Hinglish, invited him over for a drink.

Changing times, no doubt-and hence morally baffling. One couldnt easily distinguish anymore between the Club type and the Lala type. They both wore Arrow s.h.i.+rts and perfumed themselves, as though their deodorizers were extinguishers for their armpits on fire.

vi) Please confirm that what follows is your modus operandi. In any given set-up, you will first identify the princ.i.p.al source of power. Once identified, youll push, with single-minded sycophantic intensity, to get close. When within sucking distance, youll genuflect. Then, your relations.h.i.+p having stabilized, youll magnanimously share your booty and your soul with him.

Dr Kapila knew of bureaucrats who, whenever they met the present Head of the political party in power-which was about twice a week-in greeting, touched his feet with their hands, and on holidays and festivals, with their foreheads-and when they feared his displeasure, with their lips. When Dr Kapila sat across from such colleagues at meetings or stood beside them in the Officers Only urinal gazing pointedly ahead at the tiles before their noses, hed often wanted to ask them how it actually felt, physically, to kiss someone elses feet. The owner of which-the Soul of the Ma.s.ses, the Beacon of the Downtrodden, the Great Light himself-had reputedly told his inner circle about the more sycophantic civil servant: 'If I ask them to eat my s.h.i.+t, theyll gobble it up with salt, pepper, chilli powder and grat.i.tude.

vii) However can you do it? How can you face an applicant across your office table and how can your lips and tongue frame words like: 'Perhaps we can meet in the evening to discuss your case-or whichever words wicked people use in such circ.u.mstances. How come my middle-cla.s.sness makes me uncomfortable and suspicious in front of any applicant in a safari suit and mobile phone and your middle-cla.s.sness makes you want to befriend him?

viii) It has been suggested that you accept bribes only from persons officially richer than you. Given your salary, that means a lot of people, doesnt it? Do you therefore consider yourself a socialist? Do you dread the forthcoming Pay Commission Recommendations because theyll upset your calculations?

ix) May I include here an anecdote for you to mull over? It concerns a certain Agastya Sen who, three years ago, was an Under Secretary-and my subordinates subordinate-in the Department of Labour.

He dealt with Gulf Traffic-namely, he processed the papers of the thousands of skilled and semi-skilled workers-electricians, plumbers, carpenters, masons, fitters, welders, tailors, gardeners, barbers, garage mechanics, undertakers-who were lured by crafty middlemen every month to the Persian Gulf with the promise of a better-if not life, then at least pay. His task was Herculean-to eliminate, as far as possible, the craftiness of each deal, to establish its bona fides, to try and ensure that the worker, in each of thousands of cases, wasnt being ensnared, for example, into a kind of slavery, or some flesh racket, or into becoming a courier for the drug trade. The pressures of the job, as Sen discovered on Day One, were enormously harrowing-an unending stream of oily, bright-eyed visitors whose every syllable seemed to insinuate at a bribe, phone calls from the most unexpected higher-ups about how to decide certain cases; from three in the afternoon onwards, another endless line of bouquets, boxes of sweets, baskets of dry fruit-as though hed just got married or promoted, or the countryd won a crucial one-day cricket match. Upset, feeling as though he was about to drown, he began to refuse all the gifts, even the flowers. His obstinacy made his visitors look at him sadly and long.

By the end of Week One, honest, upright, upper-middle-cla.s.s Sen learnt that he simply couldnt trust his superiors and Dr Kapilas immediate subordinates; by the middle of Week Two, his personal staff either. Close to cracking up, he nipped off to Personnel to ask to be transferred. Oh no, hang in there, admonished Personnel, after its usual fas.h.i.+on and because it couldnt be bothered. Youve been sent there to clean up the muck. Youre doing a great job, we hear. Keep it up.

Sen stayed those days in one of the holes in the Praj.a.pati Aflatoon Welfare State Public Servants Housing Complex Transit Hostel near the Pashupati Aflatoon Public Gardens. Those familiar with the Transit Hostel and its ghastly layout know that outside each flat, alongside the doorbell, is a handy letter box in which the residents receive their daily milk, newspapers and their occasional mail. Three Sundays after Sen had joined the Department of Labour, at eight-thirty in the morning, along with two packets of full-cream milk, The Statesman and The State of the Times, he found in the letter box of his flat a blue plastic packet that contained twenty one-hundred-rupee notes.

He was infuriated at having his Sunday morning disturbed by a petty feeler of a bribe. With its presence, the money clouded his morning tea and his 5BX exercise session. He needed to get rid of it before it ruined his entire day. At eleven, cursing his potential bribers, he put on his crash helmet and with the plastic packet in his knapsack, rode off on his bicycle.

Beneath the new Trimurti Aflatoon Centenary Celebrations Flyover lived Sens favourite beggar family, a one-legged father, two nubile daughters and half-a-dozen younger siblings. He thrust the packet into the hands of one of the daughters and, overcome with emotion, sped off without waiting to see her reaction.

He hadnt travelled more than thirty metres from the spot when a sudden, frenzied and sustained yelling made him brake, stop and look back. A motorcycle-with two men on it, both in dark gla.s.ses, and with the pillion rider tucking something into his s.h.i.+rt front-flashed past him. The entire beggar family was out on the street, bawling, waving their arms, bringing traffic to a screeching halt, gesticulating frantically in the direction of the motorcycle, shouting at one another and at startled pedestrians, darting forward for a couple of steps, then stopping short as though theyd changed their minds, then springing forward again.

With a shrill ring of protest from his bell, Sen took off after the villains. He hated motorcycles because they thought that they were s.e.xy. He much preferred the knee-pumping openness of his Atlas bicycle. The booty-s.n.a.t.c.hers were nowhere in sight. At the first traffic light, he barked at the auto-rickshaw driver idling beside him, 'Which way did they go!

'Who? asked the auto-wala, not unreasonably. Offended by Sens urgency, he dug deep into his nose and emerged with a comet-to wit, a hard head of snot with a long, liquidy tail-which he examined for a moment before flicking at Sen for his inspection. But in G.o.ds scheme, all acts have a purpose, because in jerking his head away from the comet, Sen spotted the duo on the motorcycle on the other side of the street, shooting away from him, back the way hed come and up the flyover. 'Stop the thieves! he snapped at a neighbouring cyclist and jumping the red light, U-turned and zipped off after them, with a policemans enraged whistle screeching in his wake.

Sen was an instinctive economist-one of the nations finest, was Dr Kapilas firm opinion. Even on that bicycle, darting crazily through that indisciplined Sunday-morning traffic, he was breaking down and docketing away for further a.n.a.lysis some of the less obvious but nevertheless fascinating aspects of the activities of the past few hours-the Welfare State subsidies on petrol, for instance. Of what use were they? Why was the taxpayer paying for the energy source of the motorcycles of the hoodlums of the land? And unemployment, a knotted, vexed question. Had his quarry of the moment, those d.a.m.ned robbers of the poor, ever enrolled at an Employment Exchange or answered the advertis.e.m.e.nts of the Staff Selection Commission? Had they ever joined the service of the Welfare State, for example, in the Department of Rural Development and had they been clerks disbursing the funds of the Consolidated Agricultural Regeneration Programme, would they have robbed the poor more, or less? On the motorcycle, moreover, the scoundrels had-strictly speaking-merely s.n.a.t.c.hed back their own money-or rather, their bosss-and had in fact been hard at work, carrying out instructions for which theyd be paid a fee, or even a monthly salary; as delivery boys or Courier Supervisors, they probably had legitimate roles in some illegitimate organization, in the books of which their wages were all properly accounted for. Their zipping about on a motorcycle therefore was licit economic activity, whereas as clerks, while siphoning off funds in Rural Development, theyd actually be converting white legal money into black, thereby adding their bit to rock the touch-n-tumble balance of the State economy. To say nothing of their dubious contribution in their paperwork towards achieving the objectives of the Consolidated Agricultural Regeneration Programme. All in all, therefore, as an economist, a thinking man, keeping the welfare of the state in mind, ought he to chase the motorcyclists?

A road block and a diversion at the bottom of the flyover. Just a board in the fast lane, propped up on a flower pot. It read: ROAD CLOSED. USE-, the arrow pointing at the heavens. Sen braked before an awesome Ganesh belly and demanded peremptorily, 'Who is it? PM? Real route or decoy?

But hed lost the chase, he knew it. He must learn for the future, though, how to dig deep for, emerge with and flick a comet, all in one smooth movement.

It would be a useful counter-missile against the flying nosey of other cyclists which, hed concluded after a few weeks pedalling in the capital, was the third most dangerous thing on the roads after public buses and the white Amba.s.sador cars of the government. One couldnt of course fight the flying nosey of others with ones own because when one, without pausing in ones cycling, swivelled ones head to blow ones nose in the air, ones nosey unfortunately flew backwards to bespatter the cyclists behind one.

He returned to his flat, defeated. He felt weird and foolish all day, tense, jittery, expecting the police to come and hara.s.s him any minute. In the evening, he dropped in unannounced-as was the custom in the Transit Hostel, it being as informal as a slum-on one of his neighbours, Dr Srinivas Chakki, an entomologist in the Ministry of Public Health. Over many cups of tea, Sen described and a.n.a.lysed the events of the day and life in general in the Department of Labour.

'What was most significant, Dada, was that I, in person, even though it was only for less than a minute, could actually hand over what to them is a substantial sum of money, to some of the poorest of our poor-though of course, statistics and reports indicate that our urban poor are quite well-off when compared to their rural cousins. My beggar family actually has to pay some kind of rent, for instance, to some subterranean creature to be allowed to exist under the flyover. But nevertheless, it seems to me that I committed today a perfect, pure act of welfare that lasted all of forty seconds-that is to say, I pounced on the ill-earned money of some wicked man and handed it over-the well-thumbed, greasy, germ-packed cash, the naked notes themselves-to a bunch that needed it more than me. Could welfare be clearer, cleaner? None of that junk about helping the needy to stand on their own two feet. Because you dont know either who the really needy are or what they truly want! Because your Village Information System functions not on fact, but on caste and clout! No fourteen-page forms to be filled in triplicate by an illiterate and submitted along with six annexures and a bribe at the Block office forty kilometres away after waiting in a queue for six hours-for all of which the applicantll get sixty rupees a month. No insanely complicated bank loan to buy a dried-up, malnourished cow when what the b.u.g.g.e.r really needs is water for his three square feet of plot. No, none of that. Just plain, hard, filthy cash pa.s.sed on in a second to the female adults of the family for them to do what they like with. No imposing on the good citizenry that breathes at the bottom of the heap your own doctrinaire theories on what const.i.tutes the good life. Only give them the means to define for themselves, by a process of trial and error, what the good life is.

'I wish you wouldnt call me Dada. Just because were Bengali, you think that I can and want to be called Dada. Well, as the Bengalis love to say, we should change the system. Ive a theory or two up my sleeve that however need some honing before I can roll my sleeves up and make them public.

The next morning, Sen made it a point to reach his office before everyone else. As soon as his PA showed up, he asked him to call the police, declaring that within the span of one hour that morning, there had been both an attempt to bribe him and a subsequent theft. His PA had looked doubtful, had raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips and gone away. Hed returned a while later to inform Sen that they hadnt reckoned with the Police State. The Station House Officer of the local police station had apparently told the PA that he wasnt going to move his a.r.s.e all the way to Aflatoon Bhavan for an official as lowly as an Under Secretary and for crimes as mundane as bribery and theft.

The Steel Frame in Sen had then swung into action. 'Did you speak to him in Punjabi, English or Hindi? . . . Put him on the line, Ill suck his b.a.l.l.s dry in Punjabi.

By cop standards, the SHO was tall, slim, even good-looking. Sens PA later explained that their particular police station tended to have slimmer and better-looking men because the entire force collectively made a-well, minor-killing-just enough for their tea and cigarettes-out of seducing, terrorizing, beating up, sodomizing and blackmailing the closet h.o.m.os.e.xuals who cruised after dark in the Pashupati Aflatoon Public Gardens.

'Well, you ought tove told me all that before. Was that why the meeting was such a c.o.c.k-up? I mean, was I supposed to turn him on or he me or what?

The SHO had entered and saluted Sen with elaborate, stylized insolence, boots detonating on the floor, et cetera. While Send wondered when to ask him to sit, then or a bit later, the SHO hid sat down, sighed, asked him in turn whether he could smoke and lit up while Sen had begun to point out to him that smoking was forbidden on Welfare State premises.

'Ahhh . . . too late . . . perhaps next time, the SHO had lamented in Punjabi, examining his cigarette and exhaling richly at the table top. 'Why do we issue regulations that we cant implement? It gives governance a bad name. Makes the public conclude that we arent serious-Im so sorry, would you like to smoke?

Theyd got down to business. Sen had worked most of it out. 'I usually turn up in office pretty early . . . before everybody else, before the day starts. I go through my files, plan my day, prepare for my meetings. My desk is usually spotless, from the way Id left it the evening before. Ive instructed my peon not to dust it. I dust it myself. He didnt look hurt that Id further lessened his workload. I keep the duster in the bottom drawer on the right-hand side of my desk. This morning, when I opened the drawer for the duster, I noticed on top of it a blue plastic packet. That drawer, I must make it clear, has never contained anything other than two dusters, a sheet or two of blotting paper, some pieces of chalk, and a fair amount of rat s.h.i.+t, both dry and fresh. My skin began to tingle, gooseflesh and all that, as I opened the packet. It contained hundred-rupee notes. I counted them. My fingers were clumsy. Twenty in all. I folded the packet neatly-neater than it was, in fact, put it back in the drawer, picked up the duster and began reorganizing the dust on my table-my mind, as they say, in a whirl. I distinctly remember that I shut the drawer before beginning to dust. To cut a long story short, while dusting, I felt an urge to visit the toilet, so I went, leaving the duster on the table beside the phone, to the Officers Toilet, which is in the East Wing, next to the canteen of the Department of Mines. I was away from this room for about nine minutes-not more, Id imagine. We can time it, if you like. I returned, finished dusting and opened the bottom drawer to put the duster back. The packet had disappeared. I searched the other drawers of the desk, the cupboard, those shelves . . . it wasnt anywhere . . . I spent some time wondering whether I should simply forget the incident or report it as a case of attempted-bribery-c.u.m-theft. I finally decided on being straightforward.

By spinning this yarn and lodging a complaint with the police, Send actually hoped, in a schoolboyish, Enid Blytonish, Five-Go-Off-and-b.u.g.g.e.r-George-on-Smugglers-Hill kind of way, to confound his adversaries, to show them that they were dealing not with a cretin, but with a major player, who knew the ropes and could call the shots. The meeting with the SHO therefore could be considered a turning point in his official life.

For lazily, through the cigarette smoke, after hearing him out, the SHO drawled in Punjabi, 'Ive a constable waiting outside with your PA. Well call him in, you dictate your complaint, h.e.l.l read it back to you, you both can sign it, well give you a copy. But tell me, when you submit an FIR like that to your Tax Officer, saying that youve lost, say, ten thousand rupees-thats simpler, and more respectable, than adding all those confusing details about the blue plastic packet and the Officers Toilet-does he grant you tax exemption or what?

The upshot of the encounter-and indeed, of the whole episode-on the oblique economic implications of which Dr Kapila solicited the views of the addressees of his secret questionnaire-was that Sen decided that till his retirement from the service of the Welfare State, he would not, to use officialese, take a decision on any official matter unless and until he was sure that it did not stink. His decision considerably eased his workload. After his retirement, he looked forward to a career in revolutionary politics. At least politicians, hed point out to himself, without any sense of being funny, were comparatively straightforward in their crookedness.

On the note from the Director General of Police on the subject of doubling the number of Black Guard Commandoes on golf duty and buying all of them shoes acceptable on the golf course, Dr Kapila saw that predictably, his Department had c.o.c.ked up, missed the point, not seen the wood for the trees and for the nth time, had substantiated his, Dr Kapilas, axiom that very few civil servants understood Welfare State finance. For, to a man, all his subordinates-Desk Officer, a.s.sistant Secretary, Deputy Secretary, Joint Secretary-had turned down the two hundred thousand rupees on the golf shoes as wasteful expenditure and en pa.s.sant approved-as though a trifling matter-the proposed six crore rupees on the doubling of the Black Guards. Dr Kapila sighed and dictated a fourteen-page memo on the subject, thereby fattening the file a bit more. He included in his outpourings all his foreboding about the nation, his horror at the endless, s...o...b..lling waste, at the body politic completely out of joint, his conviction that the need of the hour, as always, was an intelligent review of the economics of the state, was the immediate and serious implementation of programmes like b.o.o.bZ.

It was not wise, he knew, to send a fourteen-page note to the Chief Minister, but he couldnt help himself. Sure enough, the file returned with his views clearly not read with the love and care that they required. 'Seen by Chief Minister. We may allow the number of Black Guards to be doubled. Security cannot be compromised. They may be allowed to buy appropriate footwear for the golf course. The police force is the backbone of the Welfare State. Chief Minister is impressed and intrigued by b.o.o.bZ. Finance Secretary is therefore directed to consider appointing Special b.o.o.bz Officers to examine and a.n.a.lyse the economic viability of certain organizations of the government the reason for the existence of which has for quite some time puzzled more than one mind. Examples abound-the office of the Liaison Commissioner, the Director of the Official Languages Cell, the Commanding Officer of the State Mobile Civil Engineering Column, the Director of Tabulation and Punching in the Regional Sample Survey Organization, the Deputy Examiner of Books and Publications . . . the list is almost endless. Finance Secretary may also kindly examine in the first place the economics of appointing Special b.o.o.bz Officers in these bodies.