Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Innocent Naivety


A truck full of police officers

Some days back my scooter got towed away because I parked it at a wrong place. What to do… first take an auto rickshaw to go back to office, then find out how you get your scooter back for which of course you don’t have any papers because you took it over from some of the former trainees which already had taken it over form some of the former trainees of the former trainees. J I found out that this doesn’t play a role at all, you just go to the police station with your driver’s license and the key in your hand, say which vehicle is yours, pay the fine and drive out again. Since I’m white my friends advised me not to go by myself… because the fine would surely be higher and some documents might be asked, my international driver’s licence maybe not accepted and so on… so an Indian friend of mine went in to get it.When I was about to give him the money, he asked if I wanted a bill or not: with receipt it’s 100.-Rupees fine (2.20CHF) without receipt 50.- Somehow in my head it made sense…yeah sure, if they have to issue the papers it’s more work so more expensive. I was wondering for what reason people might ask for a bill though… who is keen to have a memory of a fine? But since nobody seemed to bother, I didn’t waste any further thought to it. Yeah, the smart ones of course realise very quickly, it’s got nothing to do with the paper effort. But I was too naïve to think about corruption at this moment. I just applied my logic and not at all the Indian one. So what happens is that with bill, the incident is registered and the money goes to the police’s account. Without bill, there’s no track. So basically you just bribe the police officer in charge who will keep the money with him.

My first case of corruption! Now I understand why accused people insist they didn’t do anything at all ! J

Streetlife in Baroda