MUMBAI AND HONGKONG

NARIMAN AND OTHER POINTS

Pednekar works for the government of Maharashtra at the secretariat at Nariman Point in Mumbai. . Once a month he visits his bank ,withdraws Rs 1200 and rushes to the CST station where he jostles with thousands of others to finally find himself in front of the counter to renew his suburban train pass. He hands over the cash to the cashier who counts it three times and then renews Pednekar’s pass. Earlier the cash has been counted several times including by the bank cashier who counts it before he signs and accepts responsibility from the chief cashier.

NARIMAN AND OTHER POINTS

The railway cashier in turn hands it over to his chief cashier who recounts it before it finally finds its way maybe to the same bank where Pednekar has his account to be again counted by the bank cashier and also recounted by the Chief Cashier !Phew.

This is exactly my point. Why are we going through this tortous exercise 1 .76 lakh crore times across the country every month in a myriad transactions ?

I happened to meet a suburban railway officer at Mumbai and posed to him my take on this problem. ‘What problem?” he barked .He did not see any problem in all this .But I let it be and suggested a simple solution . I did not wish to talk about a smart card—that might have been too much. I merely suggested that state and central government offices, public sector undertakings and even large private sector enterprises like Tatas, Birlas may be permitted to issue railway passes to their employees , deduct the cost from salary and hand over a single cheque to the railways . Presto the era of massive queues ,the harassment felt by commuters, the waste of manpower in checking and rechecking cash , the loss of time in employees waiting at the queue—all this can vanish. ‘But you see there can be many frauds in this scheme’ the official protested . This is the kind of argument—the slippery slope argument—that is used by many people to stymie any reform. I said that frauds are any way taking place even now .No system is fool proof. But at least my suggestion, if implemented, can free employees to check frauds and do other productive work and ease the lives of millions of simple honest people.

I have not received any further response to my suggestion. Nor do I expect any.

Most of our rules and procedures can be simplified so as to make life easier for honest people who constitute the majority. The dishonest minority can bypass any rules as we see every day in scam after scam. Complicated rules drive the honest to adopt dishonest methods.

I am reminded of what my friend Sanjay said after he moved to Hongkong. He said that in that country it takes 15 minutes to understand the tax laws as applicable to you, another 15 minutes to file your return and a few hours to get your refund. Did we not tell ourselves that Mumbai will be the next Hongkong?

K.R.RAVI

WWW.KRAVI.COM