[OregonRancher]

I’ve spent a lot of time in India and have seen the inside
of several police stations in Mumbai, Puni, Acra, to name a few. One thing that is noticed immediately is the high level
of pencil pushers to the number of actual beat cops. The level of training is nothing compared to any small town cop here in the US. Another thing to remember is the fear of
any civil worker in India of doing the wrong thing. Nothing
is done without CYA and waiting for orders from above. In a strange or unusual situation, these people will refuse to act for fear of coming under scrutiny and the possibility of losing their rice bowl.

[Leisler]

Orwell wrote about that in his 1930’s essay, Shooting An Elephant.

Basically, they came and got the white guy to shoot a rouge elephant because no one wanted to take responsibility.

That is the nature of bureaucracy, anywhere. It is its core reason for being, for taking away decision making from the individual. People thinking was thought to be a primitive and unscientific way to organize things. So bureaucracy was to have an answer, a rule for everything. If it isn’t in the rule book, then paralysis ensues. You can not have people who have given themselves over to a numbing process, suddenly wake up and become quick, independent thinking actors.

[marktwain]

“In a strange or unusual situation, these people will refuse to act for fear of coming under scrutiny and the possibility of losing their rice bowl.”

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bureaucratic empires tend to be that way. That was how the old Spanish empire was when a few hundred buccaneers under Henry Morgan sacked Panama City in the 1600’s. Even though the Governor of Panama warned of the possible attack for two years, and begged for more troops, then did nearly everything humanly possible to defend his city, the government held an investigation that lasted for years, with him in nasty jails for the who period. I believe he was finally exonerated.