Kafkaesque reality: From pillar to post for BPL status

One of my favourite authors is Suniti Namjoshi, a Pune professor hounded out of her home in the mid ‘70s for being lesbian. My favourite book is called ‘The Blue Donkey Fables’, with the amusing story of a critic who tells Suniti that she doesn’t exist. “But here I am in front of you”, says Suniti. But the critic, impervious to such silly details called facts, declares that as she, the critic, hasn’t endorsed her, Suniti doesn’t exist.
I was reminded of this on Friday when my favourite victimised group of people, the residents of Gota Housing Society, came to me in a panic.

On Tuesday or Wednesday, the AMC (goaded by our efforts?) decided to put out new forms for applications for below-poverty-line status. Within 48 hours, 11 lakh forms had been filled in the city alone, and touts were offering free forms at Rs50 each.
My friends at Gota filled these in and went off to the Usmanpura office of the AMC to hand them in. No official was willing to take them.
“You do not fall within the limits of the municipal corporation. You are still a gram panchayat. Give these to them.” Fuddled by this, off they trooped to the gram panchayat office. “But we don’t exist anymore. We were dissolved two years ago when the area was taken over by the AMC.” Back and forth they went, with both concerned offices refusing their existence. And they finally came to me.

I called the commissioner, who luckily was available. “Tell them to go to their ward. Of course the forms will be accepted.” I tried to explain that the problem was that no ward would accept them. Should they perhaps apply to be annexed to Bangladesh or Pakistan? As I write this, the problem has not been resolved and the forms have not been accepted.

Anomalies in each and every system in our government are the true disempowering force in our democracy. If systems are created to obfuscate rather than for efficiency and delivery of services, even the most patient of citizens will ultimately give up and pay a bribe to someone to break the system. And life will go on.

Over the years more and more cases of corruption in high places come out. But unlike in countries like South Korea where even the President resigns when graft is proved against him, and the state impounds all his property, in India we never hear the end of anything. No one is punished beyond their bail dates and no one ever returns what they have stolen, or not that the public knows of. Did Sukhram return the Rs300 crore? Or the various Sahakari bank chairmen (some of whom are even elected officials and ministers!) who ruined hundreds of thousands of families in Gujarat? Or the defence ministry officials, or ….or….or

The answer is, no. Because the very people who are sitting in judgement are fellows in crime and corruption. It does not suit the system to cleanse itself. Making a system easy for those it is supposed to serve, ie the common citizens, would lead to two major losses for all those within the system. It would take away the huge power they wield by making the system opaque. And it would take away all the little holes through which driblets (and larger sums) of money come to them through the agents lining up outside all government offices offering to facilitate and hasten the achieving of a simple service or product. Meanwhile, I wonder what has happened to the Gota Housing travellers.

The writer is a noted danseuse and social activist