Kumbhakarna has gone back to sleep, once again. This happens every year. Come February and March, he rubs his eyes, yawns, and slowly wakes up from his long slumber, and, by the time April and May come around, he’s asleep again…until next year. Those who run the kingdom of Lanka are quite happy with this arrangement. His sleeping doesn’t interfere with the process of their filling of their own coffers. In fact, it helps them swell their coffers. Because, Kumbhakarna doesn’t care if the gold of Lanka just lines the pockets of her rulers, as long as it stays in Lanka. All he cares about, is his pound of flesh and his own sustenance.
This happens every year. Everything carries on at a leisurely pace until the month of February. All Departments – from Information and Broadcasting to Irrigation, from the Public Words Department to Rural Development to Civil Supplies – enjoy a long siesta. They do carry out small but significant battles over paperwork. Plans are drawn up, debates and discussions take place, capital cities are toured, journalists and legislators are consulted… all to one end: getting the maximum allotment of funds. It’s like this: those who have the highest allotments are also those who can siphon off the most. They are also the ones who gain power and status over other departments that have lost out.
To this lofty end, each department tries to find new ways of increasing their chances — new technologies, new reports, new experts. And as their fiefdoms expand, so do the battles. If fodder for cattle needs to be planted, which department should have the responsibility? Should it be Forests, Agriculture, or Animal Husbandry? Or perhaps Soil Conversation or the Horticulture Department? Would these plants be of a forest grade or not? And even if they are, would planting them help prevent soil erosion? Either way, it should be us. Because we are the ones who will plant fodder crops for cattle in a place where there are cattle, unlike these others, no?
These are important debates, and they carry on ad nauseum. An outsider looking in may be pleasantly surprised at this governmental dedication towards the welfare of cattle, but the truth is simpler. It’s merely a matter of who gets the most allotment, for those that do, get to skim the most off the top. Whether work will be done by the Block machinery or the Irrigation Department; whether buildings will be maintained by the Public Works Department or the line departments themselves is a pointless question. Which department does the actual work is irrelevant. Who gets the biggest slice of the pie is the real issue.
But such fervour for service to the nation abates by February, for about two months. These two months are vitally important for gathering all the allotment possible; and to be able to spend it all.
So, a massive campaign begins – to wake the sleeping giant Kumbhakarna. The very real fear of allotments lapsing seizes the Guardians of the kingdom of Lanka. That scary deadline of the 31st of March begins to loom. The problem is: if all the allotted funds are not spent by the end of the financial year, the balance amount will lapse. This horrific fate must be avoided at all costs! Imagine the fate of the skimmers then!
So, please rise, O Kumbhakarna! Awake, arise, and stop not till you release all our funds! Whatever it pleases you to give us, we’ll spend it all before the end of March. And you’ll see what excellent care we’ll take of you all year round. It’s going to be good for us, and good for you too – truly symbiotic. Wake up, O sleeping giant!
It’s time to bring out the big guns. Conch shells are blown, drums of all sizes and shapes are beaten, and the High Priests of all the Department gather to chant loudly the praises of Kumbhakarna. The tremors of this cacophony reach the far ends of the System; but Kumbhakarna does not wake up, it isn’t that easy to dent his slumber.
But wait! The truth is that he isn’t really completely asleep, ever. Even as he sleeps, he keeps an eye, his mouth and his palms always open. The High Priests of the Departments know this, and so they ensure that he remains well fed through the year. They constantly feed him and ensure that they grease his palms well. The Giant sees all this with his one open eye; and tacitly approves. He knows who feeds him what, how much, and how often; and he makes sure to repay in kind. It is the quality and quantity of the offerings that he receives that determines the allocations eventually. The more he delays the allotment, the sooner it will have to be spent. The sooner it has to be spent, the better the quality of the offerings he receives. And the offerings bestowed on him this year determines the allotments made in the following year.
And so it goes on. This is the unchanging law of administration. Those who follow these rules attain Nirvana straightaway, while any foolhardy contrarian who tries to go against these rules, perishes and ends up in the bad books of Goddess Lakshmi.
‘How is that?’ asked the disciple Dimwit of the All-Knowing Sage.
The Sage replied with equanimity, ‘Elementary, my dear Dimwit. The System has excellent Rules for oversight and monitoring at every level on paper. It is thus important for The Seeker to go beyond these rules. If things were done as prescribed, it would require everyone to start working right after the monsoon season ends. That would mean that oversight and monitoring would also have to begin concurrently. This obviously diminishes the chances of getting away with scamming the system, which is to say skimming from the system. You see, if you do all of the work of the year in the space of two months, who will really have the time to monitor everything in detail? That’s the time when all checks and measurements get verified without ever stepping out of offices. Be it the length of a just-constructed road, the thickness of the top mosaic, the depth of a pond that has just been dug: all of these measurements are done from within the confines of offices. A sense of mutual trust and confidence in one’s fellow man pervades the air. The Subordinate Officer trusts the word of the Contractor; the Officer trusts the word of the Subordinate Officer; and the Senior Officer trusts the word of the Officer.’
And before you can say whatshisname, a massive number of new roads, canals, ponds, houses have come up – all in the space of two months. The same road, you will notice, has been built thrice now. The gravel dug up for the construction of the pond has been used once for the beautification of the pond, once for canal construction, and once again for building a road. It’s like killing several birds with one stone. And since all three of these activities have been carried out by three different departments, the amount of gravel used for all of this has been measured and verified by three different officers charged with measuring and verifying. Often, by the time the tedious process of checking and verifying takes place, the monsoons have arrived; and it stands to reason that gravel and mud can wash off in torrential rain. The top mosaic (that someone had measured to be 6 inches thick) appears to have worn away to about an inch, and a 3 kilometre long road is whittled away to 2.
The coming of the month of March is something like a sarkaari festival. Painting contractors celebrate its arrival; because they know that they can give one coat of paint and claim costs for two. Merchants are delighted with its arrival; all of their stores – no matter the quality – will get sold now. After all, the government has to spend their entire allocation. From curtains to paper to ink — everything and anything will be procured. Even the book sellers look happy – libraries are stocking up on all manner of books. If they can’t find Dostoyevsky or Premchand, Harold Robbins and Stardust will also do.
“The end of March is come!” they declare, with Shakespearean fervour. There’s no time to think…there is no need to. It’s a race to the end. And as they race against time, they skim. They take their cuts, stuff their pockets, and ceaselessly complain. “What can be done,” they lament loudly, “the pressure in March is too much to bear!” And as the pressures of March help fill their own private coffers, they help fund Kumbhakarna’s offerings too.
This is an open secret that everyone knows. Everyone, that is, except the Trumpeter. The trumpeter is a misfit in the System. Every year, he wonders why allotments aren’t made in April and May so that work can keep happening at a less frantic pace throughout the year. He doesn’t believe in greasing Kumbhakarna’s palms or making him offerings. He even opposes others who do. He begins playing his trumpet at Kumbhakarna’s ear right from the month of April at the start of the financial year, much to the amusement of the Department Priests, who make fun of his idiosyncrasy. Those who must work with this Trumpeter are unhappy too, as they get in the bad books of the Goddess Lakshmi. Let him play his trumpet and send his kids to the local municipal school instead of the expensive private school, why should our children await that fate?
Even Kumbhakarna finds the Trumpeter’s attitude amusing. “If I were to follow the Trumpeter’s way of working, all the grease on my palms would dry up,” he reasons, “no delicious sweetmeats in my mouth. Then the whole System would collapse. How would Lanka even function? If allotments are issued on time, who would sing my praises and make their offerings? Who would run to the Head Office? If there is enough time to check every detail of the work done, how would corners be cut? How would the margins be skimmed? There is, of course, that tiny thing about rules and regulations and such; and that other small matter of morality; but who in this day and age can afford to stick to the straight and narrow?”
But the Trumpeter doesn’t understand this logic. He just sits by the Slumbering Giant and plays the trumpet in his ear. Sometimes when his playing begins to grate on the sleeping giant, he makes some small allotment for him, a few crumbs really, to make him go away for a bit. At other times, when the Trumpeter becomes too sure of himself and begins to play with more gusto than usual, an irritated Kumbhakarna simply turns over to the other side, catches the Trumpeter by the scruff of his neck, and transfers him to somewhere else in the System – somewhere far away from his ear. But this only happens rarely, because by the time February comes around the more pleasing (and much louder) music of other instruments usually drowns out the strains of the sole Trumpet.
At other times – very rarely, of course – a smidgen of self-doubt gnaws at Kumbhakarna, faintly, from somewhere deep within. But what can be done. He can’t change the entire System by himself, can he? If the rulers of Lanka got upset, the entire System would collapse, and then maybe the High Priests might just replace him altogether… There could even be a revolution. That was too big a risk to take.
The truth is that Kumbhakarna is a hostage of the Priests and the Priests, in their turn are his hostages. And the people of Lanka are held hostage by both of them.
The deadline of 31st March comes and goes. The hangover of that massive party takes a while to dissipate. The rulers of Lanka rub their hands in glee at their bulging pockets, and Kumbhakarna is happy with his own accomplishments. Satisfied, the Rulers go back to their comfortable cushy chairs to contemplate the possibilities of the coming year. Kumbhakarna gives the Trumpeter a withering look and goes back to his slumber. There’s a while to go till February.