ancient temple of bureaucracy

Needless to say, India is an old country. Foundations of this culture were first written down as far back as four millenia ago. I suppose the age has given its society more than enough time to develop a good deal of complexity. This is particularly evident in India's deeply rooted social stratification, consisting of over 3000 social classes. However, Team India has had a closer experience with another complex feature - unbelievably elaborated paperwork.

Despite the overwhelming chaos I've been mentioning, observing rules is not alien to Indians. Trains follow their schedule, the bus will not wait if you decide to take a last minute leak, prices are often not negotiable. This is because basically everything apart from buying street curios gets written down. With your name on it. And date and place of birth. The name of your father (I love this one). And passport number and validity; often visa number, type and validity; all of which I can write down in my sleep by now.

Checkin procedures at hotels are painfully lengthy, especially when you feel there's a big dump pushing its way round the last corner after a several-hour bus ride. But not just at hotels; tourist sites, railways - any place owned by the government will first push two big books at us. And internet cafes. I've seen signs blaming it on the threat of terrorism, probably due to the Kashmir conflict; anyway, I guess that controlling world's second most populous country is challenging so it takes a big and awkward apparatus. And a lot of paper.

I don't know what happens with all that paper, but I remember reading an article once about the state government of Bihar in eastern part of India. The offices were stacked with huge amounts of paper all the way to the ceiling, and the officials claimed they could find any document required. One of the piles consisted solely of requests by the same officials for a business trip to Delhi, and they even had an employee whose full-time job was to go through these requests and to decide about granting state-covered accommodation for the traveller.

Ok, no more second-hand stories, here's a genuine first-hand one about the previously appraised Indian Railways. We took a train from Vidisha to Jhansi, a 4-hour ride. I should point out that Indian Railways offer no less than seven different classes of travel. Now, since Vidisha is a small station, they were not equipped with a computerized booking system so the only tickets they claimed they could sell us were "general class" tickets - yep, that's the lowest one, I mean goats and chickens and everything. And some really nice people, I must say.

Anyway, we agreed that with our budget, a 4-hour sardine ride was an unnecessary adventure, so we tried to upgrade to second class on the train. There was no conductor for almost an hour, only a security lady who instructed us to simply board the second-class car and explain the situation. Which we did. Half an hour before Jhansi, the conductor finally came and kindly explained that the fine for doing this was 1300 rupees (roughly 25 euro), which was almost four times the price of the tickets. Complaining didn't work, returning to general class probably wouldn't either, so we paid. And, admitedly after a struggle, actually got a receipt.

To avoid future problems, Dan asked what the correct procedure was for upgrading to a higher class. The answer he got was that we were supposed to get out to the platform at one of the stations and hailed the conductor to let us in the second-class car. Of course, if we had a second-class ticket, there would be no problem upgrading it to any other class. Only the general class has no room for improvisation.

There was no time for further inquiries, and conductors on trains carrying 2500 people must be very busy men. But my next question would have been if the request was to be handed in on paper.