The Government Servants of West Bengal
When I stopped eating the salt of the West Bengal Government (or, to put it less dramatically, when I resigned from Government service,) I had hoped that I would never have to enter a West Bengal Government office again. This was wishful thinking, because when I came back to West Bengal in 2004 to live in Siliguri, and bought an apartment here, it was imperative to visit several offices, those of the Registrar, the State Electricity board and so on. Let me tell you of my experience a couple of days ago when I visited the offices of the State Electricity Board at Matigara, an outlying suburb of Siliguri. The work I had there should have taken all of three minutes. I had to pay a sum of money at the cash office and then get a form endorsed by the clerk in charge of the Office. The office is supposed to start functioning from 10 AM, so I went at 11. The person who was supposed to accept the money had not yet arrived. The cashier assured me that he would be there by 11 AM. When I looked pu...