'Babu Culture' roughly translates to bureaucracy. 'Babu' commonly refers to a clerk in Government Offices in India. More importantly this refers to the practice - a vestige of the British Legacy that we are finding it hard to shed. Unknowingly sometimes we even nurture it to absurd lengths.
Here is a sample:
There is a typical city in India where most of the people work in the offices who come to their place of work from neighbouring towns and villages. Babugiri (bureaucracy) dictates that all workers arrive for work in time . Sometimes, if trains by which most workers commute, are delayed the whole lot of workers get delayed to work.
However babu culture does not accept delays unless there is a written proof for being late. The culture has built in a scheming way by which if a train is delayed the Station Master issues a note affixed with the official rubber stamp of the station, the date and time, the name and number of train that got delayed and the length of delay itself. Delays are accepted only when such notes are produced by the workers to their management.
There is a small procedural problem. If a train gets delayed by, say 20 minutes, about 200 people in the train have to stand in a queue to get the note from the Station Master. Most of the people spend close to an hour or more standing in queue, so that their 20 minute delays are accepted. You imagine the total delay time if multiple trains are delayed.
The whole India works on this Babu Culture whereas the people who taught us this culture have learnt their lessons. We still thrive on Babudom. Long Live Babus.
