An old saying in Malayalam is you need not count the teeth of a cow gifted to you. When the army was ready to ‘gift’ milch cows that yielded 10 to 15 litre milk per day to Kerala, bureaucrats didn’t go to count their teeth but gravely missed that chance by keep the project stranded in red-tapeism. Only Kerala can do such a thing!

When the State also have a bunch of ministers who lack the ability to control bureaucrats, whose concern is only fat salary and the number of allowances, there is no place for any surprise, even if the state of Kerala itself is lost, let alone cows.

In the recent devastating floods in Kerala in August, hundreds of families in Kerala lost thousands of bovines, which were cared well by them. According to government’s assessment, about 5680 milch cows were lost to floods. These beings were the real bread-winners of families.

When the people were struggling to find a means for living soon after the flood, came the silver lining in the form military farm cows that the Centre was ready to transfer to state dairy cooperatives and other government departments at a very nominal cost.

The decision was to sell off 23600 cows in 39 military farms all over the country at a token amount of Rs 1000 per cow. The steps was initiated to handover the cows as the Central government decided to shut down military farms in order to cut expenses.

It was decided to give cows to dairy cooperative societies and not individuals. This was set as a condition. Feeling excited over the deal, Dairy farmers’ society in Thrissur envisaged a project to buy 1000 cows and distribute them among farmers. The expense for bringing here a cow was estimated to be Rs 2000, which included the truck rent, medical aid in between the journey, medicine, cattle feed and labour charge.

There was no hurdles in getting the permission of the minister of the department concerned.

But as top bureaucrats including Animal Welfare Board principal secretary sat on the file related to the purchase, cows were snatched away by people from other states. Maharashtra alone bought 3200 cows. They took away cows that cost more than Rs One lakh per head by just paying Rs 1000 per head.

When the files concerned shuttled from desk to desk, no timely decision was taken on it and not even an official letter was sent to army authorities. The army’s advertisement on selling of cows came in August. It was the failure of the Animal Welfare board to do the paper works for the transfer of cows even months after this ad appeared that resulted in dairy farmers’ despondecy.

Dairy cooperatives were ready to bear the expense including that for transporting the cows. Not even a penny was required to be spent from the government treasury.

But alas, because of the laxity of officials, thousands of flood-affected families lost a big opportunity that would have been means of family income for them.

Such bureaucratic overlords are the real bane for the country and the people. What is more unfortunate is the administrators also don’t have the ability to rein in such bureaucratic autocrats who always turn their face against society and throw spanners in the works done for society’s good.

When ministers also come forward to buy the arguments of such officers, many losses will happen to states or country. In the above case, the minister is known to have got the advice that a private organisation cannot be given permission to transport the cows. The minister should have enquired about it and convinced himself of the real fact.

When Kerala kept clinging on to presumed rules and laws, it would be interesting to know about how states such as Maharashtra, Goa, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand managed to buy and take home hundreds of cows from military farms. In these days, how easy it is to enquire and understand about a thing.

But issue is not that. This is just a time-pass for such bureaucratic overlords who are habitually inclined to block the path of anything or everything progressive. They will not do anything that will bring prosperity to the people. If somebody comes forward to do it for free, they will not allow that person to do it. This is the practice that has been going since the day Hazoor Kutcheri (the Secretariat) was formed. No wonder each government department gaze upwards open-mouthed, not knowing what to do as just six days are left for the end of the current financial year and half of budget shares for various projects remain unutilised.

An unusual step is needed to make department heads and their cronies - who are not in the habit of doing their duty punctually – duty-bound.