[Reader-list] In RTO, a licence for corruption

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear Taraprakash,

Thank you for your mail.

The question is not whether you agree or disagree with me. Please do not
consider my posts as an exercise in public persuasion. Far from it, I would
rather think of them as an exercise in public questioning. If we are a
democracy then as citizens of a proud country we have a duty and an
obligation in following the rule of law. If a National identity card is
introduced then I will accept it. But as citizens we also have a duty and an
obligation to engage in public processes. Hence if the Government of India
has proposed that it intends to issue a National Identity card then I
believe all of us must think about it. And talk to each other about the
nature of that process, its history and so on. Reader list gives us this
space. And there is no harm in talking about it.

Having said that, please allow me to say that I share your anxiety regarding
the need to have an identity document rather than not having one.

Have you ever wondered that when individual family histories of most Indians
out date the history of independent India by many years then why do we
sometimes feel this insecurity or fear if do not have a piece of paper, a
token really, certifying who we are?

Why is it that everyday millions of poor of our country have to bribe in
perhaps millions to get that piece of paper? If our State is a welfare
state, then why do we, even in the middle-classes, have to undergo bouts of
insecurity, apprehension, fear in the absence of identity documents? When we
know who we are or do we? When as far as our subjectivity is concerned, we
can be pretty sure and confident in telling others about not only ourselves
but histories of our families?

Why is it that when we have in India a fairly rich history of the failure of
the State to capture all Indians under some sort of a documentation regime,
that goes back last one hundred and thirty years, that we still seem to have
faith in the Idea of a passport or an identity document some sort?

Maybe if we start asking even more rudimentary questions about the history
of the passport or history of the ration card then we could perhaps have a
more distilled understanding of this need, which sometime seems inevitable
isn't it, to have an identity card rather than not have one.

Warm regards

Taha

On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 1:05 AM, taraprakash <taraprakash at gmail.com> wrote:

> Now, I agree with you there for sure. Corruption is really a big problem of
> the country. I don't read much discussion on this kind of corruption on this
> list. In fact corruption does not seem to be part of any intellectual
> discourse these days.
> Still I don't consider corruption to be a good enough reason to outrightly
> reject this plan. As your mail suggested it is possible to make fake
> passports and driving licences but still the driving license and passport
> regime is on and we can't think of an alternative to it. Moreover, as far as
> I know, it is not a norm but an aberration. And finally I believe it is
> safer to have multiple (even fake) identities than to have none. Such an
> identity card regime will be useful to remind the state of the existence of
> the forgotten multitudinous citizenry.
>
> Regards
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Taha Mehmood" <
> 2tahamehmood at googlemail.com>
> To: <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2008 5:00 PM
> Subject: [Reader-list] In RTO, a licence for corruption
>
>
>  Dear Taraprakash,
>>
>> I am still not convinced about giving competence of data gathering
>> agencies. Please read the story below for more.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Taha
>>
>>
>>
>> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Nagpur/In_RTO_a_licence_for_corruption/articleshow/3898438.cms
>> The Times of India. Nagpur Edition
>> In RTO, a licence for corruption
>> 27 Dec 2008, 0111 hrs IST, Vijay Pinjarkar, TNN
>>
>>
>> In the year 2000, MLA Devendra Fadnavis had exposed the corruption at
>> the regional transport office
>> (RTO) Nagpur when he 'managed' to get two
>> driving licences issued. The first was in the name of a dead man. The
>> second licence — intended to be a political barb — was made for the
>> then chief minister, without the CM being present for the mandatory
>> driving test.
>>
>> However, a sting operation by TOI in August revealed that things have
>> failed to change even after eight years. The trail of corruption
>> continues in a more organised way in the RTO office which has been
>> virtually taken over by touts, enabling any person to obtain as many
>> number of duplicate licences by bypassing all rules.
>>
>> In the second week of July, my boss called me and narrated a mishap in
>> Mumbai in which three persons were crushed to death by a rashly driven
>> truck. When the driver was arrested, police seized nine driving
>> licences from him. This exposed the corrupt affairs in Mumbai RTO
>> office. Taking a cue from this incident, he asked me to check if I
>> could get a duplicate licence issued in my name even though I very
>> much had the original licence.
>>
>> When I went to the RTO office, I was greeted at the entrance by a
>> tout. I told him that I wanted a duplicate licence and lied that I had
>> lost my original one. He asked me to bring a copy of the police
>> complaint for the misplaced licence. "If that's not possible," he
>> said, "it would cost you Rs 500." The official charges to get a
>> duplicate licence are Rs 200. I protested that Rs 500 was too much.
>>
>> The broker gave me a neat break-up. "If you stand in the long queue,
>> it'll take time and the RTO staff will ask you copy of FIR. If you go
>> through me, it'll be easy. Out of Rs 500, I hardly get Rs 100, after
>> paying Rs 150 to the woman at the counter for out-of turn clearance of
>> forms. Rs 200 is paid towards smart card
>> fee besides Rs 50 to the computer clerk at the thumb impression
>> counter for early processing of cases."
>>
>> I trusted the broker, who has a pucca shop at the RTO gate, and gave
>> him Rs 500. He promised to deliver the licence in two days and asked
>> me to come around 4 pm for the thumb impression and photograph. Due to
>> load-shedding, I had to visit twice for this. The RTO staff hardly
>> works for four hours as the office doesn't have a generator.
>>
>> The next day, the broker made me stand in a long queue despite
>> promising otherwise. But even then, it took him almost 25 days to get
>> me the licence as against the couple of days he had sworn.
>>
>> Frustrated by the affairs, I finally told him I was a journalist and
>> that I would now take my duplicate licence directly from the RTO. The
>> broker was shocked. He grabbed me by the hand and took me to the woman
>> clerk, who issues licences and told her about me. Stunned, she said,
>> "Why did you approach him? You could have directly come to me."
>> However, all said and done, I got my licence in 10 minutes. The next
>> day, I went to officiating RTO Raj Bagri and offered to surrender the
>> duplicate licence. He returned it saying it was of no use to the RTO.
>> I told him the entire story. He laughed and could only say, "It's a
>> worrying factor."
>>
>> There were brokers who were ready to issue even more than two licences
>> to me. In the huge scale of corruption in our country, getting a
>> duplicate licence issued fraudulently may not seem like a big deal.
>> Until, that is, you remember that the hijackers of the Air India
>> flight from Kathmandu in 1998 had also obtained their bogus passports
>> on the strength of the driving licence procured through touts.
>>
>> Scary, isn't it?
>>
>> (While covering transport, Vijay Pinjarkar often goes the extra mile)
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>
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