Government employees working efficiently is always a pleasant surprise

Good news is rare when it comes to the functioning of our government departments. Corruption, sloth, misuse of power, muscle-flexing , delays, unresponsiveness and red tape are the typical things that we encounter every time we deal with our bureaucratic machinery.

This is unfortunate. But more unfortunate is that even when we occasionally witness a polite, functioning and efficient segment of the machinery, it goes unnoticed and unapplauded. A few years ago, one could have said (and one did in these columns), for instance, that our post and telegraph department was one of the better functioning ones, with their ubiquitous postmen doing more honest work than most other government servants.

Letters rarely went missing irrespective of where you lived, money orders were invariably delivered and the postman helped the odd illiterate villager write a few lines on a postcard. In recent years, with the onset of cell phones, emails and courier services, the sun set upon the era of the post and telegraph for the common man, or at least the common urban man.