"Chalta Hai"* Attitude : A Hinderance To Progress

In his book “Chalta Hai India: When ‘It’s OK!’ is not ok”, author Alpesh Patel has attempted to look into people’s mind for the careless and carefree attitude that is responsible for the sluggish progress of India even after 75 years of independence. The author chose to focus broadly on three parameters—the speed at which things change in India, India’s standing versus international benchmarks and the amount of pressure people exert to demand change.

In the “India Fraud Survey” conducted by Deloitte, Mr Rohit Mahajan, Senior Director and Head Deloitte Forensic mention that companies continue to battle traditional frauds and that existing fraud risk management mechanisms are inadequately enforced to tackle these frauds. A change in mindset is needed to view fraud risk management as a proactive ongoing effort that will, over the long term, create robust internal controls and other mechanisms to mitigate the risks of fraud.

India losses crores and crores each year due to document frauds. Unfortunately, the understanding of “document protection” in Government and non-government bodies is limited to adding certain security features to the paper on which these documents are to be printed. They forget completely that it is the data on these so-called protected documents that need to be protected. Let me mention here that revenue loss due to illegal sand mining in Rajasthan was pegged at 150 crore, illegal iron mining in Karnataka costs India Rs.50,000 crore. Each State Government is witnessing losses.

These losses are due to the “Chalta Hai” attitude of the bureaucrats and the ministers concerned. They do not want to change the system, explore ways and means to control theft, introduce fraud-prevention techniques, so the leakage in government coiffures could be plugged. The IAS officers in charge of departments should be bold and take decisions in the best interest of the Government. They should stop worrying about comments made by junior staff members, who could have different interests or whose understanding of the technology or the need for implementation is not at par with your understanding.

It is unfortunate that after 75 years of independence, India is still considered a developing country when it has adequate skilled professionals, resources and government support.

What India needs is a quick adaptation to new technologies, new thinking and emerge from the “Chalta Hai” attitude.

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* Chalta Hai represents an attitude like ‘it is ok’, ‘let it be, ‘this is good enough, ‘I don’t care. It reflects complacency, accommodating, giving up, taking shortcuts or resigning.