Hygiene

A few days back our toilet cleaner came up to my neighbour to get his signature on his time sheet. Implicitly, a signature means that the person signing is satisfied with the level of cleanliness of the bathrooms and the toilets. My neighbour signed it mechanically. Then he happened to walk into one of the toilets and found that it hadn't been cleaned. He called the cleaner and asked him why it hadn't been cleaned. The cleaner replied, "Sir, saaf hi toh tha. Jab nahi hota toh hum karte hain na. Aapko nahi laga kya? Lao main abhi kar deta hoon."

A lesser being would have accepted this and let it go. My neighbour, discerning fellow that he is, seethed at this explanation. And with good reason.

Last month Jaipal Reddy made a statement which turned out to be hugely embarrassing for our establishment. To the pictures of dirty bathrooms splashed all over the world's newspapers, he said that there was just a difference in hygiene standards between the countries in the West and us.

Good administration is not just about issuing orders and checklisting the minimums. Either your checklist should be long enough. Or your leadership needs to have it percolate to the very lowest echelons of their hierarchy the reasons why certain things are being done the way they are. The difference-in-hygiene-standards argument was really a firefighting response from the minister who, heart of hearts knew, that the establishment he was a part of, had screwed up, but did not believe or want to admit it.