It was way back in the early 1980s when I was the biggest fool on earth and a student doing research in Bombay. We used to crack a riddle. It was first thrown to me by a very friendly Portuguese girl.

It was like this: “Constantinople is a big word. If you cannot spell it, you are the biggest fool on earth. Spell it.” I could spell Constantinople, but I could not spell the two letter word, it. So I turned out the biggest fool on earth.

You may ask of me the relevance of my remembering this anecdote in the context of our own BSNL and the AT&T of the United States of America. Well my home phone here in Los Angeles was giving some computer replies when I reach back home from office a few days back instead of getting the calls through.

It was already nearing 10 in the night. I was getting frustrated and was wondering (remember I always conceive of the environment back home) what could be the alternative.

I did not feel like going out and buy a Phone Card either. Nor did I feel like buying a phone card on-line for I did not feel like exposing my credit card number to many.

Well I just tried the AT&T number for customer care; mind you it was night already. The computer at the other end guided me to the right person according to my problem. The lady enquired about my problem with the phone. She first tried some queries to make it sure that I was the real owner of the phone.

After that she asked me of my problems. Knowing about the problems she went ahead with rectifying them in right earnest. Well my phone started in perfect order in about ten minutes.

I do not know anyone in the AT & T, I am no friend of the lady I talked to over phone either. But still in that absolutely impersonal atmosphere, my phone was fixed in the middle of the night.

I Could Not Help:
Well I just could not help going back to my country and start mental analysis of the situation there. Our home phone would go out of order for days together, and that too more often than not.

Of course, many talk about the “advanced method” for fixing the problem in a permanent way. I rather find that absolutely unhealthy, and so I will not talk about it.

So our phone goes out of order. In such circumstances, the approach we adopt is a multi-pronged one. We register through automatic fault booking system, we talk to the line man, we contact the JTO and as many other means as possible, less of course the “advanced technique”.

So even the cost of reporting a fault in the telephone is very high, and getting the proper attention is a very costly, time consuming and frustrating experience with the BSNL in Manipur.

Even then the fault would not be duly and easily rectified. Well for a person like me, who had been making loud complaints, it would be even more frequent for the phone to get out of order. You know the BSNL identifies persons, and it does not suffer from any identity problem.

My ultimate realization was the recalling of the personal anecdote I mentioned in the beginning of this write-up. BSNL is not AT & T, Idiot - I told myself.

Is It Solution:
Well I realize that imagining the BSNL to improve in its functioning would be an idiotic exercise. But the question still remains as to whether this realization is the ultimate solution to our problems.

Probably not, an idiot like me supposes. From the BSNL style, let us generalize it to the functioning of the government, central as well as State, departments in Manipur. Let us think of the economic cost the various delays might be causing to our loved motherland.

At the disaggregated level, it is only an individual whose work is not being attended to and whose time is being wasted. On an average, the BSNL must be charging one hour daily from at least one thousand telephone subscribers. It is only one hour for an individual, but it is one thousand hours at the aggregate level.

In other words, the economic cost of the BSNL - besides the overhead, salary and other costs – includes one thousand man-hour worth of economic costs daily to the State.

Similarly, on an average, at least ten thousand persons must be visiting the various government departments daily and wasting at least one hour daily not because of their own free will but because of the inefficiency and in appropriate attendance to duty of the officials concerned.

On my rough estimate, this cost itself works out to around Rs. 20 million per year; I would call it the inefficiency cost.

In other words, we incur an inefficiency cost of Rs. 20 million per year due to the non-performance of duties by the government officials in the State.

Generalized Trust:
But what really worries me is not just this economic cost. The long term damage being inflicted by this is much worse. Any society, whether traditional or absolutely advanced, works on a principle of generalized trust and moves forward on the strength of it.

In a traditional society, it is the personal-based generalized trust that gives order and moves the society. In a developed society like America’s, it is the impersonal generalized trust which binds and carries forward the society.

The lady from the AT&T who fixed my phone in the middle of the night appreciated my need for the phone and trusted me too even though I had not met her in person. The style of functioning of the various government departments in the State not only destroys the traditional personal-based generalized trust in the society, but also stunts the emergence of an impersonal generalized trust.

Like the BSNL compromising the dignity of Bharat many times over in its style of functioning, the various government departments are destroying the basis for any generalized trust to emerge in the society.

The reality, however, is that development history has yet to find a successful development experience in the absence of a generalized trust of one form or another.