Absurd Red Tape

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In an article about the red tape that hampers the police, the Sunday Telegraph revealed that one superintendent stated that he could sign one piece of paper to authorise someone to be shot, but that he had to fill in a 16-page form for someone to look through a window to keep watch on a suspect.

This is only one of a series of examples of the pointless and unnecessary paperwork required to be completed by harassed police officers which is contained in a report to be published by the government this week. Not surprisingly, the Police Minister has said, ‘The police must be crime fighters, not form writers’.

I know from my own work in the past the amount of paperwork involved in police stations and, though a new computer system was introduced some years ago, it did not lessen the sheer volume of paperwork resulting from the most trivial of offences. Detailed records of crimes and those who have committed them have to be sighted and signed off by senior officers at various stages and, although this can sometimes be done electronically, paper copies of records still have to be run off.

All sections of society are going to be affected by the forthcoming budget cuts but, insofar as the police are concerned, a major effort should be made to cut their paperwork and release police officers to fight crime.
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Chits And Red Tape

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A Hong Kong based consultancy has discovered that, of twelve Asian countries, India has the worst levels of bureaucratic red tape. Any Indian businessman or person doing business in that lovely country could have told them that!

I like India and its people, and I much enjoyed my occasional visits there but even I had to gasp at the amount of bureaucracy involved sometimes. It was during my first visit there in the 70s that I saw for my own eyes, files in a Dickensian-type office bound up with the proverbial red tape.

I learned also that one sometimes needed a ‘chit’ for various activities. Indeed, there was one occasion when I found myself in a long queue of hot and tired folk just arrived in the country lining up to get a chit to enable us to get another chit to have our laptops examined. It was only after I left the airport that I found we had been scammed by a couple of crafty airport officials. But, at least, it was a gentle scam.

Indians are used to the bureaucracy and have ways, which we need not go into here, of getting round it. They do not usually complain, they just deal with it.

The sad truth is that it is the British that originally introduced bureaucracy and its associated chit system into India. An unfortunate legacy of the Raj.
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