USS Clueless has a longish article that talks about, among other things, how the American military machine and the Information Economy has this in common today: empowering the line worker, be it an employee or a soldier. One sentence caught my eye:

And it’s just about the opposite of any nations whose traditions derive from monarchy or authoritarianism, where the governing elite do not trust (emphasis mine) those they rule and fear letting them have access to information and fear letting them make decisions.

That was because I had just finished reading this tale of what it took for a man to fly the Indian flag in his own country.

But, in January 1996, the Government of India appealed against this judgment. In its special leave petition to the Supreme Court, the government said the policy to restrict the use of the national flag to the barest minimum was meant to ensure that it was not dishonoured. Jindal, it said, had taken a questionable position by imagining that one of the ways of showing his patriotism and love for the country was to fly the flag. The petition pointed out that there were millions of Indians who were not swayed by a desire to fly the flag in their houses.

And we are supposed to be the largest democracy in the world.

Of course, it’s quite legal now to fly the flag in one’s own house on any occasion, thanks to the Supreme Court clarification. They’ve been selling reasonably well too, though not as well as expected. I suspect the reason is a niggling suspicion on the part of the long suffering Indian — why fly something that can get me into trouble? Do I really want someone to turn my life into bureaucratic hell because someone suspected (or cooked up a case) that I was not flying the flag ‘respectfully’ enough to merit action under the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act 1971? (Though the flag code now clarifies that anyone can fly the flag, it still carries some conditions and provisios intended to safeguard the flags ‘dignity, honour and respect’).

At its frigid bureaucratic heart, inherited from the colonial Brits’ Indian Civil Service, the Indian bureaucracy, 55 years after Independence, does not trust the classes it governs. It still has a ‘we know better’ mentality that is one of our biggest failures ’til today.