Is Copenhagen listening

How Indians are discouraged from buying cars

Our Sarkar is not aware of what incredible service it renders to the cause of reducing carbon footprints.

If you have to get just one car registered at Panchkula, in a lifetime, you will never think of repeating the experience.

Wonder, how people think of possessing a fleet of cars! If you have to get them registered, “two is crowd!”

One experience of going through the “testing patience, faith in God and temper” will leave you with profound realisation- that all material possessions are not worth possessing.

To begin with, sarkar will make you realise that a document, as authentic as passport ( given by sarkar itself) is not good enough proof of your existence. So, a bored- with- life, balding vakeel sitting under an equally balding neem tree on a chair panting for breath under his weight with a nineteenth century brief case filled with stamp papers, one stapler and a tube of gum placed on dilapidated table, supported with two bricks, will provide an affidavit for the proof of your existence.

And, how would he know, that you are X,Y or Z? He will check your passport, voter ID, or, ration card !

No! This is not ridiculous. This is faith. This is procedure.

Double protection!

The tables; sad, broken, discoloured, dysfunctional- representing the lives and livelihood of notaries and vakils are surrounded with some forsaken trucks. No, the notary verifying my papers by putting a blue stamp( while he talks, few people just pick the seal and stamp their papers on their own) dispels this myth. The trucks were confiscated for not possessing right papers. So, you learn in one day- relevance of keeping papers in order for a good, orderly life, not to be confiscated.

The typist who typed like a robot, without ever looking at what letters were being printed on paper, looked like a man robbed of all his dreams. If you don’t see dreams, you fail to see anything. His life sure was confiscated.

The whole set up is designed with a view to make the person seeking registration, run away from the scene as soon as possible. And, this is achieved by petty people demanding unreasonable price for such petty jobs as stamping your paper.

No wonder, people want to get rid of the ordeal.

But, this was just the beginning.

With authentic chasis and engine no. provided by a reputed global manufacturing company of cars, you had to look for an illiterate boy who can provide you pencil print of the same, to be attached with your file.

Why? God alone knows!

That provides proof of your car.

This is followed by one more verification of vehicle by our sarkari inspector.

The quality control of the manufacturing company that gives details of all sorts for the car is to be further ascertained by a traffic inspector, who, god knows why again verifies car’s quality by inspecting the vehicle. And how does he do it? By slamming doors and bonnet!

I ask him, feigning innocence, what is horse power?

He avoids me.

Now is the time to again stand in a queue.

When my turn arrives ( this was the second- day I had to take half day off from work to get the car registered) the inspector scrutinises me to ask, why do I write my father’s name along with mine, instead of husband’s ?

I thought I live in a democracy that gives equal choices to genders.

Sarkar, certainly has no value for the time of its denizens.

After all that ordeal and four more visits to the office, this is the fifth month, I am still waiting for RC.

Courtesy- Flickr.com India Marches on by Deetinani