Following his father's dreams

Finished reading this book by my friend "CHASING HIS FATHER'S DREAM:Biswajit Mohanty which I bought during my just concluded trip to Odisha. Fascinating and a must read for those who interested in following the socio -political - administrative millieu of the state.

The writer has come down hard on the Bureaucrats of Odisha and deservingly so - how the Babus (bureaucrats) of Odisha have a free hand running the show with absolute power and authority, yet vindicating what Lord Acton's time tested saying "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely". 

They would make their counterparts of UP and Bihar (two feudal states known to be paradise of bureaucrats) envy with green. For however powerful they might be in their respective states, they're no more powerful than the mighty Netas (politicians) who rule the roost over there.

Biswajit has sited plenty such anecdotes to vindicate the might of the all powerful Babus of Odisha, mentioning all of them is clearly beyond the scope of this blog. I will mention one incident which speaks volumes, same as you have to squeeze one grain of rice to ascertain that the whole bowl of rice is cooked.

One Bureucrat once made wait N. Narayana Murthy, the scion of Infosys for only 3 hours (he has a penchant for making lesser humans wait much longer), even if the visitor from Bangalore scheduled his appointment couple of weeks ago. Not that Mr. Murthy is lily white, but we can't deny him giving the credit for putting India in the World IT map - not to mention his creating ten of thousands of jobs and contribution to our national exchequer. Such sabby treatment meted out to folks like him by a mere Babu notorious for corruption and contributor to his own exchequer is just the tip of the iceberg.

It reminds me about a common question asked in +2 (Higher Secondary) Math from our days when we have to prove that square root of the number 2 is an irrational number. In order to do so, we adopt a method called "Reductio de Absurdum", which means we first assume that "root 2" is a rational number and try to prove so. But finally we conclude that root 2 can't be a rational number, hence an irrational number.

Similarly we can apply this "Reductio Ad Absurdum" to a Babu at helm in Odisha, assuming he is honest and efficient. But how much ever logic we apply to prove so, we would end up in proving otherwise (usual Disclaimers apply).

A Babu (bureaucrat) is hardly a job creator or contributor to the Indian economy. We can always say there are exception to the rule, we shouldn't use a wide brush to paint blah blah. And here comes to another theorem we have come across in Higher Secondary Math and Science. When an amount is infinitesimally small, or limit -------> 0 (tends to zero) the amount is considered too insignificant to considered equal to zero. Same goes with the Babudom of Odisha. Thanks Biswajit for a great read.