Last week, I had been to dharwad. I had to transfer the vehicle name, from my father’s name to mine. I had submitted work to an Agent (Not Vinod ;)). This agent would charge more but he’ll do the things quick coz he will pay money to RTO officers. We had a deal that I have to pay enough money & on Saturday, I have to come till RTO office & SIGN. That’s it! Nothing worries. Everything left to him & vehicle will be in my name.
Don’t you think I’m entertaining corruption? And why do you think me or you or any other person entertain corruption? What’s the need of corruption?
All such above questions started to ponder in my thoughts when my Agent, in hurry, had forgotten the emission test paper at home! So he made to sit & wait in RTO office for 40mins until he bring them back! Sitting alone, I was wondering, why do I need to pay for the work more than it’s worth? Why do RTO officers take extra money to do their own work?
According to me, the reason for corruption in that RTO office is because the officer working over there knows that, without his signature on the paper, nothing can be done! Everybody working over there knows that, they are the only people who can do this work! This thought, we also know. Since work needs to be done for us, so we have to listen to what they say coz there is no option for getting this work done elsewhere!
Just imagine how much critical these, RTO officers are, for us. Suppose if we purchase new vehicle, or want to sell vehicle or to get Driving license or anything related to transport activity, then without these set of RTO officers (for that particular area), nobody else can do it. This point, even they know very well. So they play with us if we go straight without paying extra money telling crappy rules. For example, like telling, get that form, get this certificate Xeroxed, get sign on that, do this crap, that crap etc even everything is fine. But if we pay a bit more, then they won’t question a THING! What the HELL is this?
This is not the only case of RTO office. Even in other government offices where work has to be done explicitly by only that office, the corruption rate is very high. Take example of Registrar office. If you wanna purchase or sell your own land, then you have to visit HELL called, Registrar office. I already visited that HELL too for transferring my own house name from my parents to mine & ofcourse by paying extra money. Similar to RTO’s officers in prev example, these people also know that, without them, our own land cannot be sold or cannot be bought or renamed etc. If you go straight, they will play around you with crapy rules, but just pay a bit more, they can make miracles happen!
‘Miracles’ in the sense, you may not believe, what my RTO agent said me while leaving RTO office. When I paid him his money for transferring name of vehicle, he knew, my work has finished. Now I’ll not be meeting him again, until I have one more transport related issue. So he was telling, “Sir, do you have car license?” Actually I am very much excited to learn car driving & of course to get car license. So I said honestly, “No, I don’t have, but I want to have.”. Then he said, “Sir, don’t worry, just call me when you want to make your car license, no need of you coming to RTO office, or even to drive the car, I’ll get you license. Just give me Xerox of your voter id & passport along with photos. I’ll take care of everything”. Isn’t it a great MIRCALE? :P
So according to me, corruption is entertained because of uniqueness of offices to get work done. We don’t have options for few government related work & this point the officers know very well! This is one of reason of corruption. This is my thought. May or may not be correct. But don’t you think, this is one of the reasons among several other?
In my thought, we should be having multiple RTO’s offices, multiple Registrar offices etc. So that, if one cannot do properly or asks more money, then we can go to other. (Example: just like restaurant. If one restaurant doesn’t cook tasty food, we tend to go towards other. Another example is a tailor shop). Each RTO office should be reviewed every year, counting statistics comparing with other offices. Best office should be rewarded & recognized.
Why do I think, this might help in reducing corruption is because, let us take an example. In our city, there use to be only KSRTC govt buses which run between twin cities, Hubli-Dharwad. The service wasn’t that good. Driver-conductors use to travel whenever they wanted to, etc. But there came a competitor named “Bendre” bus. This was a private bus & started giving good service (Even they started to give monthly passes as like govt). Obviously the KSRTC people started becoming cautious as public was getting diverted. Result is that, now we have an excellent service of govt KSRTC bus between twin cities. The point is competition & opponent. The example quoted might not exactly fit & I can quote several other examples but I got this thought when I was thinking. Anyway, but the point is that I suppose, getting opponent & competition will increase efficiency.
I don’t think, getting multiple RTO offices or Registrar offices might be possible in this real world, but at least, by sitting for 40mins idle in RTO office, I was wondering & imagining a world in my thoughts, where it was possible & certainly there was very minimal corruption.
