Subir Roy: How bureaucratic can you get?

We immediately liked the tall bookcase with a classical look. The further plus was it combined a period look with modern convenience. You could take it apart and put it together easily. Besides, we are a national chain, the Bangalore sales staff assured us. If we have an outlet where you shift, our staff there will put it together for you.

Once in Kolkata, we called the showroom of the chain, explained the need and requested them to send across someone to put the thing together. You have to come over with the original cash memo, said the lady at the other end. What for, I asked. So we know it is our stuff, she explained. One look and your man will know the bookcase is yours; and I will, of course, pay for the visit. Then you better speak to out higher-ups, the lady concluded with finality.

Where will I look for a receipt several years old, possibly cast away when the warranty period expired? Eventually, the carpenter who was doing the woodwork for our flat figured it out himself and put the bookcase together. I must not generalise on the basis of one episode, I told myself, and put the matter behind me.

Furniture done, next on the list was a landline and broadband connection. The leading service provider, now gone global, had served us well in Bangalore. One call to its Kolkata office and a young man was there at our flat, helping me fill up the form and walking away with a cheque, promising prompt action.  

Then the fun began. The workmen came, inspected the apartment complex and decreed: we will take a wire from the road, up the side of your building, bring it in through a window and take it to the room in question. That will look terribly untidy, I said. The building has concealed ducting and our neighbouring flat has a landline from another service provider without any wires showing.

For that we need to get into an agreement with your association so as to put our main box in your complex. I scratched my head and came up with an alternative: take it up another wall, bring it in through the landing to the box there and then use the concealed ducting to get into our flat. That way there will no dangling wires in our rooms. Too much trouble, said the expression on their faces. In a couple of months, I got a refund cheque and a regret letter from the service provider.

Incident three. Our daughter and I have accounts at the same Bangalore branch of a big public sector bank. To square up a recent payment I made for her, she gave me a cheque which I deposited, along with another, at a Kolkata branch of the bank to credit my Bangalore account. Such are the wonders of core banking, I thought.

Then the fun began. The next day a gentleman from the bank’s Kolkata branch called (these days you put your phone number on the deposit slip) to say you can’t put two cheques from two different banks on the same slip. Sorry, I said, please fill out another slip for one of the cheques so that I don’t have to come personally. But who will sign for the “depositor”, the gentleman asked. Anybody can, it is not a cheque, I replied. He didn’t like the idea, but agreed to go along.

He was back in an hour: the cheque number is “out of field”, the system will not accept it. I called the Bangalore manager and he said the cheque book was ancient, issued before core banking arrived; its numbering pattern is now history. But I personally deposited another similar cheque across the counter at your branch the other day and got it cleared, I said. When we get such a cheque directly, we feed in the number manually, the manager explained. Don’t worry, he added, I will call the branch and ask them to fax me an image of the cheque and I will pay it here. By the end of the day, I received an SMS from the Bangalore manager saying: two reminders and still no fax.

I reluctantly called the Kolkata branch. How can he pay like this, said the gentleman. He is paying, not you, I replied. But what if audit asks me why I sent a fax of a cheque; after all, it is a verbal request. Ask the Bangalore manager to fax me a request to fax the cheque and then I will do it. I gave up.

A bureaucratic mindset, I figured, need have nothing to do with being in the public or private sector, but a lot with local attitudes.

 

subirkroy@gmail.com