Like Hacking a Path Through the Amazon Forest

What is Indian Red Tape like? A great anecdote from a book I'm in the middle of, made me laugh it's so ridiculous but having lived in the system it's totally believable. As Luce says, it's like hacking a path through the Amazon; by the time we have proceeded a hundred yards, the undergrowth takes over again. The author, Edward Luce, recounts a story from Arun Shourie, minister of administrative reform in New Delhi from 1999 - 2002.

Shourie also provided an example of the farce that sometimes results from efforts to reform a system that will go to great lengths to thwart even the smallest of changes. In April 1999, India's ministry for steel submitted a formal query to Shourie's ministry for administrative reforms. The grave matter, which would take almost a year to resolve and would consume the valuable time of some of India's most senior officials, was about whether civil servants should be allowed to use green or red ink, as opposed to the blue or black normally used to annotate documents.

After several weeks of meetings, consultations and memoranda, the IAS (administrative) officers in Shouries' department concluded that the matter could be resolved only by officials at the bureau of printing. Another three weeks of learned deliberation ensued before the bureau of printing returned the file to the department of administrative reform, but with the recommendation that the ministry of training and personnel be consulted. It took another three weeks for the file to reach the ministry of training, since the diligent mandarins at administrative reform needed time to consider the expertly phrased deliberations of the bureau of printing.

And so this question of state meandered for weeks and months, in meeting after meeting through ministry after ministry, before the following Solomonic compromise was struck: "Initial drafting will be done in black or blue ink. Modifications in the draft at the subsequent levels may be made in green or red ink by the officers so as to distinguish the corrections made," said the new order. Hierarchy also had to be specified. "Only an officer of the level of joint secretary and above may use the green or red ink in rare cases [duly set out, with appropriate caveats]." As Shourie noted: "A good bureaucratic solution: discretion allowed but circumscribed!"
Edward Luce, In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India

It's interesting to me, but this kind of management (to misuse the word) is visible to some level at every level of Indian practice, whether in the private or governmental sector, religious or secular. Procedure most often trumps common sense, with the result that things move forward arduously but upward (in terms of stacks of paperwork and procedure) most earnestly.