Death of the Dak Pad

Every bureaucrat of India was served a fat folder of documents in the morning, the DAK PAD. The folder contained all the letters received the previous day, which an Office Superintendent would assiduously classify based on subject matter, status of the sender, purpose of the letter as he understood, and the route of its disposal. Most often the Sahib would go by the suggestions of the Bada Babu, the OS.

The Dak Pad was a kind of morning bulletin, which would in a matter of half-an-hour bring up the Sahib to speed on what was happening in his domain, what was expected of him from the Head Quarters, what requests and petitions called for his attention and accordingly he decided the course his day would take ­– replies to be dictated, orders to be issued or data to be collated, further “position” to ask for etc. In other words, the Dak Pad was the ultimate planner.

An accomplished Sahib, with his uncanny ability to separate the grain from the chaff, would in a few seconds, decide the action to be taken on each letter and his office would get into the requisite gear to achieve the targets for the day on behalf of the boss, until the next Dak Pad arrived the next day. It didn’t matter what level of the hierarchy the Sahib lived at. He had his respective commensurate and matching Dak Pad. A lower rung Sahib would often get a letter sent to him from Dak Pad of the boss, which the latter would have perused the previous day. He may then decide to pass it on to the next level. Thus a letter could take up to a week to reach the appropriate level beyond which it could not be passed down any further.

For a letter to jump levels of hierarchy was a strict no-no. It had to take the mandatory six days to travel six layers of office tables. It was at the lowest level that government came alive and action took place. A draft reply, or the action plan, or the “position” would often travel the same path in reverse – from bottom to top, either through the same Dak Pads or duly “put up” in files. Files still exist. They cannot be given up for they are eternal beings unlike Dak Pad, which had to be refilled every morning. A file is a permanent home of documents, where the government dwells in the form of letters and notings and is also the device through which it acts.

The Dak Pad has now practically vanished from the table of the Sahib or is in its death throes. With the government insisting on electronic ways, an entirely new genre of office working is evolving to replace the Dak Pad and all attendant ways of office business. It is called e-Office. The e-Office has killed the soul of the government office – no Dak Pad, no Day Planner, just plain ad hocism.

The Sahib comes to his chamber, sits at his table and twiddles his thumbs knowing not where to start. The morning rush of adrenaline is missing. So, he picks up his smartphone and browses through WhatsApp messages. Then he looks into each corner of his vast table and the side tables and racks – but no paper is to be seen. He is dismayed and feels disempowered. He then calls the Bada Babu hoping some paper would be presented to him, but the Bada Babu is no where to be seen. The Office Superintendent, whose letter sorting skills would set the daily tone of the country’s governance is practically jobless. He now inspects bathrooms, lunchroom sinks and cobwebs on file racks.

The Sahib receives his daily Dak by email, e-Office, WhatsApp and myriad other encrypted channels. They are all scattered means and need to be opened separately like three of four different Dak Pads. None of them gives the pleasure of ripping open the white string of a Dak Pad. Besides, his power of pen, which by a few scribbles on the earlier paper-letter send the corridors ringing, has lost the punch. How does one scribble on a computer screen? And, how does the magic of turquoise ink play on WhatsApp? Where does he doodle now? The Sahib is no more his old self. He can’t delegate, he can’t send the office scurrying for cover by a pen-stroke, he can’t cast satire on his colleagues, he can’t send a paper upwards for a good word back from the his boss. He can only type, and that is not what he had joined the coveted Civil Service for.

Well, the Sahib can still take a printout and perform the power-scribble on it and send it onward for the the old-fashion impact. But, someone down the line would capture it, scan it and reconvert it into a computer screen! The war is lost, the Office Superintendent is now an idle ceiling-watcher, the Sahib is an emaciated ghost of his old self, the bureaucracy is dead, the country is sleeping.