Can Estonia’s e-example flutter the feathers of our entrenched 'babudom'?

In a bold move to set an e-example to the world at large, tiny Estonia is pink-slipping what Carlyle called as the ‘red tape talking machine’ by radically downsizing its bureaucracy. Estonians can now register births, get medical prescriptions, monitor their children’s progress in school and register new businesses without having to stand in line to meet an official, thanks to X Road, a decentralised data exchange system. However, as Estonia’s top technocrats admit, bundling up what is called ‘bureaucrazy’, by critics might not be possible in large countries like India. Size apart, what Kipling called ‘the little tin gods’ of the bureaucratic pantheon have developed an inbuilt propensity for self-propagation.

Even as the sarkar recites the mantra of streamlining babudom, the creation of new states has led to the establishment of new capital cities and the appointment of municipal and other mandarins. World-conquering Alexander who cut the Gordian knot might have found himself defeated by the thickets of red tape that protect proliferating babudom, and can prove impenetrable to bureaucrats themselves. A paper-pusher used a euphemism for an anatomical epithet denoting disagreement by annotating ‘Round objects’ in a file he passed on to his superior. His boss sent the file back with the query, ‘Who is Round, and what does he object to?’