Faith can move mountains, they say. Doggedness can move bureaucracy. Ask any one of the silent soldiers who work for no gain, but for public good, and try and change a rule, a law, a given, so that others can benefit. They have the vision to see beyond what is, to what can be, and then they try to grab the wheel of change in their grasp and turn it just a little.
More often than not, they find the wheel is tightly tangled in red tape. Or sometimes it is complete lack of attention to a fact, that jams the wheel with rust, making it impossible to move it.
At this point many give up. Ramming their fist into the wall of governmental neglect and bureaucratic inertia is a thankless task, and really creates a frustration that spoils one for the many other aspects of life.
It does not really affect me, is a posture that can develop as the thwarted do-gooder goes on to pick up the other threads of his life.
Others, however, are more dogged, and keep trying to find a chink in the armour of disregard, be it public or organisational disregard. And in due course, the chink helps to create a gap, and a foot is thrust into the door and a voice filters through to wake those sleeping inside, to stir them into perhaps reluctant action, and get a change effected.
One such example is a letter that has just come in from the Western Railway office. That a foot overbridge will be constructed so that platforms 1 and 2 would be connected to 3 and 4 at Parel station. This simple letter is the result of incessant knocking on the doors of the concerned authority, by someone who realised that the two foot overbridges leading out of the two functional platforms of Parel, were crowded to bursting point.
The confusion worsened when there was a train coming in, and passengers at the top of the bridge wished to rush down, and the stairs were crowded with people climbing up from a train that had just departed. Nothing new in this, but Parel is one of the stations
that feeds three major hospitals, and the sick and infirm have a tough time keeping up with the healthy in a hurry. Connecting the platforms would at least give an option, and divide the crowds. This would ease the congestion on the two platforms which were being serviced by the trains, as commuters would be able to use the empty platforms to come and go to the overbridge.
The idea was simple, but the resistance, though broken down to the level of ‘send us a letter’, did come back at that stage. The letter lay in some tray or the other, as letters to busy public servants are wont to doing; and the public they serve continued to suffer the brunt of his being too busy to serve them.
But some people never say die, and like a terrier worrying a rag, the letter writer continued to press his case. Finally, it reached the ears of a senior official, who
dispelled the clouds of junior babus who hid him from public view, and the matter moved ahead. Two years after the proposal was first sent, this letter had been delivered by snail mail!
It is cause for jubilation, and proof that even in the mills of government action, the wheels can grind, and though slowly, they sometimes grind exceedingly small!
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