A few weeks back, I went on a business trip to Malaysia
and Indonesia. Now that Air Asia operates very economical flights from Trichy
to Kualalumpur, and moreover Trichy being quiet closer to my place, I chose to
use the Trichy airport. The new Trichy airport has been beautifully done up. It has now got an international feel, and as I
start to feel proud of this, I happened to encounter as stinking incident with
the officer at the airport immigration counter, which I would like to share.
I was accompanied by one of my
staff and as it was his first time trip, outside the country he was a bit
nervous about the various formalities like the baggage scanning, immigration,
customs clearance and security checks. His
fears went right. The immigration officer who called him into his counter to
process his passport, started asking a number of irrelevant and meaningless
questions, like do you have enough money to travel abroad, have you made
currency declaration in your passport and he also started to demean my staff by
saying, “you have not even gone to a neighboring Indian state, but you wish to
visit a foreign country”. I was watching
all this and at some point of time, I got so irritated by his attitude that I
stepped into the counter to the rescue of my staff. I told the immigration
officer, that he is my staff and I can clarify all his doubts. It is only after
I could show some personal affluence, the immigration officer decided to keep
his mouth shut and clear his
immigration.
Now in contrast, to what happened
in Trichy I saw something very pleasant and innovative at the Kualalumpur
Airport, which is worth mentioning and appreciating. On our return from Kualalumpur
to Trichy, we were passing through the Malaysian immigration clearance. At each
immigration counter, there was a small board along with 3 push type buttons of
different colours. The message on the board read, if you are satisfied with the
service of this immigration officer, press ‘green’, if not satisfactory press
‘yellow’ and if you had a problem with the officer press ‘red’.
The lady who processed my immigration,
did not ask me a single question. She saw my immigration form, my passport, did
her work in less than 2 minutes and returned back my passport with a smile. I
was so pleased by her service that in return, I simply expressed my thanks by
pressing the ‘green’ button. Perhaps, if there was something like a ‘pink’
button for excellent service, I
would have pressed that.
Just see the contrast. The work
done by the immigration officer in Indian airport and Malaysian airport was the
same. They both belong to the same bureaucratic tribe, yet one was able to give
a heartwarming happy experience and another a heart aching miserable experience.
‘Bureaucracy’
is not so much a dirty word as it sounds. The dictionary meaning of
bureaucrat just says ‘a non elected
government official’. I appreciate that,
bureaucrats are keen on following rules and procedures and doing their best to
keep the systems in place. But in the first place they should realize that all
rules and procedures were formed to ease the handling of people and issues, and
not to create untoward hardship to them.
As compared to a politician who
is “a elected government official”, a bureaucrat certainly scores higher in my
scale. The only issue here is the bureaucrat does more than what is expected of
him and the politician does less than what is expected of him. The general
public gets irritated, when these bureaucrats make use of the powers bestowed
upon them to cause hardship to a common man.
Bureaucrats have got a key role
to play in the execution mechanism of the government. If only they could do
their work with a proper understanding of their work, with thorough knowledge
of the process and with a positive
attitude, they can create a visible difference in the country.
IT IS NOT BUREACRACY THAT MATTERS , BUT IT IS THEIR ATTITUDE TOWARDS
THEIR WORK AND PEOPLE THAT MATTERS.
Happy Reading,
D.Senthil Kannan
Article dated Sep'09