Tales of strange colonial practices in babudom

Ajitha Karthikeyan | TNN

India’s babudom may be derisively dubbed a ‘white elephant’, but the bureaucracy’s affinity to the mythical pachyderm runs beyond the idiom. Until the babus shook themselves out of a colonial stupor some years ago, IAS officers were signing undertakings that they had not used ‘government elephants’ for their official travels.

Until the early 1990s, civil servants could claim travel allowance only after they gave an undertaking that they had not used elephants maintained by the government for their official visits to various places. Assiduously, but unknowingly, all IAS officers were following the practice until an civil servant officer noticed the absurdity in the practice that could be traced back to the days of the British Raj.

A chat with long-time civil servants yielded a clutch of such instances of strange colonial practices surviving till very recent years, long after the demise of the Raj.

About 100 years ago, a forest officer had claimed TA, saying he had used elephants for official visits. However, British rulers found that he had used government elephants for the journey and was, therefore, entitled only to daily allowance and not TA. It led to a new rule for officers claiming travel allowance.

“Since then, the TA claim form contained a clause saying I will not use government elephants and nobody noticed what was in the fine print. In effect, even when the chief minister visited New Delhi by flight, he should give the undertaking printed on the TA form,” said S Ramakrishnan, a retired officer, who finally put an end to the practice in the early 1990s.

In another practice that had outlived its original reason, the collectorate in Nilgiris used to send a weekly report to the Board of Revenue about the number of water drums procured that week. It was only in the 1970’s that a curious district collector decided to investigate the background.

He found that during World War II, an English military contingent was stationed in the Nilgiris and the then collector was directed to commandeer drums from all over the district and supply them to the troops for storage of water. A weekly report was filed every Wednesday to account for the number of drums procured for the purpose. But even after the war ended and the British left India, babus were dutifully sending the periodical water drum figures .

Another official recalled how the Dindigul collectorate was maintaining vouchers for ‘supply of cigars’ to Lord Mountbatten even ten years after independence. There may be no such outdated practice today, but an unusual perquisite that survives from the British days is the supply of toiletry to babus. Every month, they are given a kit containing soap, talcum powder and towels.

“Every month, I get soap and talcum powder though I rarely use them. I really feel it is an unnecessary expenditure. The government could utilise the fund for something more fruitful,” remarked an officer in the education department. Another officer reasoned that it could have had its origin in a colonial practice of officers needing a wash after shaking hands with commoners.

Former IAS officer M G Devasahayam said the designation ‘district collector’ itself was irrelevant in today’s context as the British coined the name for those who collected land revenue in each district.

Source: Times Of India, Chennai, July 3, 2008