Comment Pieces

Lies, Bribes and Govt Babus

Posted on March 24, 2011

How fast can the government machinery move if it is well greased with a few thousand rupees bribe? Faster than a speeding bullet, as these residents of Nagpur found out. Here’s the first in the series of their personal experience.

 

Nobody enjoys neighbourhood disputes especially if all you want to do is play with your four dogs, go swimming and read books with a hot cup of coffee for company. However this is not the beginning of the story.

 

My husband J and I are both ex-Infoscions and I am now studying to be a veterinary doctor. J has decided to be a pet groomer and we have tied up with SPCA to work towards animal welfare. Our neighbour, Mr. T is a real estate dalal who sold us the house he was living in before. He is now our neighbour. T is a six foot Goliath and old enough to be our father. A while ago, he started harassing us with petty complaints and phone calls telling all and sundry that he wanted us to leave the colony (we suspect it is because he found out I was from a lower caste even though J was not). We kept appeasing him to maintain peace in the neighbourhood.

 

July 2010 was our first brush with the well-oiled government machinery moving against us. This began when we started renovation of our house. On 1st July, two officers from Nagpur Improvement Trust (NIT) came to our house in their blue uniforms. They entered our house with the copy of our house plan and insisted on seeing the house from inside. I could see T standing in the balcony of his three-storey house, watching these people. We politely asked the officers why they were here and that is when they showed us a complaint signed by T with the Nagpur Improvement Trust, Ambazari Office saying we were doing structural changes to the interior of our house which would destabilise our house. NIT is only responsible for making sure that the plan on paper and the house built match, and nothing more. We showed the NIT people that we were only making cosmetic changes to the interiors. However, they insisted on measuring the house and the interiors and left.

 

J and an uncle of mine went to their office. As soon as they saw J, one of the officers who had come to our house immediately went outside and called up somebody on the phone saying ‘woh aa gaya hain yahan’ . Two days later, NIT sent us a notice asking us to demolish huge portions of our house. But is kahani mein twist hai! The plan had been sanctioned with T’s name on it; hence the demolition notice and fine to be paid went to him first and came to me later as a copy! We suspect T bribed and buried the file which could be why we have not heard from NIT since.

 

But what confused J and me was that we had clearly shown these officers that T’s complaint was false. But the notice sent to T contained a completely different reason for the demolition. We were to find out in the future that this is exactly how our government babus work. November 2010 is when all hell broke loose and it has been 111 days and counting.

 

- AB Watch this space to see how the story unfolds.