Paperwork

Some 13 billion years ago, the Big Bang occurred, and the universe started taking its present shape. Brilliant minds of ours and earlier generations have spent a considerable amount of cognitive resources to unravel this mystery. Notwithstanding the appreciable progress made in our understanding, it has been suggested by many a bureaucrat that this wastage of human capacity could have been avoided if someone had neatly prepared an office note on the big bang then.

The process of documentation and record-keeping is essential in government, as in any other form of organization that grows beyond the individual. Documenting known facts of any issue, discovering more through inquiry or academic research, and then forming a well-justified conclusion forms the core of any decision that is taken. This entire exercise is colloquially known as the "paperwork". Since the stakeholders aren't just the people making the decisions, it is important that paperwork is done with due diligence. 

However, it is near impossible to determine if the person standing in front of you asking to issue a family member certificate claiming he was the only son to his father, is in fact genuine. You know this would later be used by him to change the land records to his name as the sole legal heir. He might bring the ration card, but how do you conclusively know if there is no daughter in the family who is now living in a different city and if she knows that her brother is claiming the entire land for himself?

Hence, you decide the neighbor's statement must be taken in this process flow. But what if this family had only shifted 10 years back? Would the neighbors know of the long-lost sister? Would the courts care if this matter ever went to the court and you were found to have issued the certificate negligently? Hence, you ask the son to submit a ration card from at least 11 years back, thereby thoroughly frustrating him. 

Paperwork is the holy grail that separates the individual from the organization when it comes to taking the fall. Legend says that if ever a government office catches fire, the admin section is sufficiently trained to prepare an office note detailing the reasons for using the fire extinguisher, duly taking signatures of everyone present, before actually using it.

Of course, there is always the requirement for triplicate copies - one for the office file, one for the file to be sent to the senior office, and one because what if! More so, because of the inevitable audit trail that will follow, ensuring that each step taken was in strict compliance with the Manual of Office Procedures, circa 1952 when pigeons would transport documents, Courts had given 23 judgements in total and people could count on fingers the number of GOs issued by the government. 

Another important characteristic of the "paperwork" is that it defies the concept of time. On 5th December 1957, someone decided that a particular kind of document must only be signed in black ink. My assumption is that it was because the era was in grayscale and there was an absolute lack of colors in the people's life. However, even with the 4K Ultra HD lives of today, no one wants to review the decision because only God knows why the decision was taken in the first place, and what if something goes wrong due to allowing people to sign in purple ink?

This tendency to not remove unnecessary appendages of the past also leads to paperwork increasing with time. Earlier, the files were signed and sent through registered post to the necessary office. Now, the file is signed and sent through registered post to the necessary office. However, it is also scanned and sent via mail because it's the digital age after all. The scanned copy is also sent through Whatsapp because mail is anyway cluttered. Further, the report will also have to be uploaded to the designated portal because as I explained, mail is cluttered. And if you are one of the e-Office guys, you have to upload the file on e-Office and then send the physical documents. 

I call paperwork an art. The necessary amount is determined less by the rules, more by the risk taking ability of the one putting signature. The "let-it-not-crucify-me" will get an inquiry done by multiple people, followed by quoting 10 relevant sections of laws and based on it, put their signature on 10 copies for storage, while the "daredevils" take their own decisions based on common sense and some rule they might fortunately recall. 

Whatever said, the paperwork is here to stay, and if things go right, this art of paperwork might soon be declared by the UNESCO as the intangible cultural heritage. But that will again require 1000 pages of, you guessed it, paperwork.