Fine is not fine

These days you hardly get letters in postal mail box. The mails that come are seldom pleasant ones, for they are mostly bills to be paid, sometimes the credit card bill or the landline bill or the electricity bill. On other occasions they are mutual fund statements (they aren’t looking good either these days). However the other day, something else came in the mail box. It was an inland letter. I opened it to find that a traffic violation notice had been served to me. Not pleasant by any stretch of imagination, either! Anyways the details were as follows: Date of violation was mentioned to be 1st Feb. 2012; Time of violation 1305 hours; Nature of violation – Using mobile while driving; Place of Violation – Sadda Halli Junction (I did not even know where this junction was!).

I never use mobile while driving and was wondering how I possibly violated the rule. But even otherwise, I could not have possibly violated the rule because on the date and time of violation mentioned in the notice, I was actually in my university teaching my students. And, my university campus is some 60 kilometers away from the place where the violation supposedly took place. My car was parked safely inside the campus during the alleged time of violation. So I wondered how in the world I flouted the traffic rule. There has to be a clone of me and also of my car to have possibly been there at two places, at the same time. To the best of my knowledge cloning has yet not been tried on human beings or maybe I am the first one to be cloned.

Anyways to seek further clarification on the ‘misdemeanor’ that I had not done, I called-up on the number mentioned on the violation notice. The voice on the other side listened to my innocent pleas but still maintained that I have committed the violation. The voice on the other side was so confident that I began to suspect myself. On my repeated requests, he gave me another telephone number of the police station that had supposedly recorded my ‘alleged felony’. I repeated my pleas to the person who took the call, who was perhaps a sub-inspector. He listened to my story and asked few details like my car registration number etc. and found it difficult to believe me. Yet, he took a sympathetic view and advised me that I should come to police station and present my case in front of the inspector. When I told him that I was a good 60 kms away from the police station, he very kindly connected me to the inspector. I repeated the same exercise of trying to convince him that I had not committed the violation, besides telling him that I had all reasons not to be there when the violation was committed. He listened to me patiently and thankfully seemed to believe my version. He also conceded that it may have been a clerical error as the number had been noted down manually by one of their staff members. Thankfully, someone believed my truth…however the advice that he gave me was very practical yet funny. He told me that it would take me a long time to convince everyone and get this violation notice cancelled. Hence it will be in my interest to pay the fine (which was only 100 rupees). He sounded very helping yet helpless. Further, he told me that most of his colleagues manning the roads are armed with BBMs and if they find that I have not paid the fine, they shall catch me & speak to me harshly. He believed me every bit but was kind enough to tell me that my welfare lied in paying-up the fine ad in not in trying to convince people of my innocence.

I thanked him and told him that I had actually written a column in Business Line (Driving towards Safer Roads) emphasizing the importance of driving safely and hence the likelihood of my violating the traffic rules was perhaps even more remote. He apologized for the error & the inconvenience caused to me (It was very nice of him to do that but I guess he thought that I was some journalist) and pleaded that I should pay the fine and he would ensure that nothing of this sort happens in future. Undoubtedly, the inspector (I think he introduced himself as Inspector Srinivas) was very polite and cooperative. His helplessness lied in the system that made it so difficult to undo a mistake on their part. But still I have every reason to thank Inspector Srinivas for he not only helped me to have a closure on this but also saved me from future misery through his ‘practical’ advice. I, ultimately, paid the fine for a violation that I never committed.

Rigid, bureaucratic systems kill engagement. Mistakes are always possible since to err is human. But flexible & open systems help not only to minimize these mistakes but also help to minimize the damage caused by such mistakes. This always promotes better engagement of the stakeholders.

Coming back to my case, one who has stopped on red light traffic signals in the dead of night when most other vehicles had been jumping the lights, this notice and eventually the fine that I paid further reduces my faith on our traffic management system. And yes, I am certainly not amongst the 'happiest Indians' but I am happy...