Big Man, Little Man

 Inappropriate use of personal power by Indian Officials are not unknown, in a land ....

Indian Food Inspector Rajesh Vishwas

.... where, as has been highlighted before, power and justice is often a case of wealth, influence or celebrity.

So nothing too bizarre about the case of Rajesh Vishwas, a Food Inspector from the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, who on the 21st of May 2023 was taking a selfie on his new Samsung S23 smart-phone, for which he had paid Rs 96,000 ($1,200 - £970), when disaster struck, as he accidentally dropped it into the 15 foot of water.

Now, most of us would realise that any phone in that much water, even a water resistant one, will only last 5 to 10 minutes (if that long) before its probably ruined. But Mr Vishwas was just obsessed with getting his prized phone back. So he hired local divers to search the reservoir (which must have taken at least a few hours to organise ... way to late to save the phone), but after several hours searching, they didn't find the phone. So he then said that he got local agreement from RL Dhivar, a senior water official, to drain the reservoir by around 3 - 4 foot into a local canal (this was later amended in some local reports to be by '5 foot' ... versions often vary a lot in India as backsides are covered).

An Exercise In Futility?

To that end he hired a 30-horsepower diesel pump or pumps, which was deployed to drain the reservoir's water, and which he later claimed was actually just overflow water in a sub section of the dam, and couldn't be used for irrigation. But over three days, more than 440,000 gallons (two million litres) of water were pumped from the reservoir - enough to irrigate at least 1,500 acres of land during India's scorching summer, and took the reservoir down not by 3 - 4 foot (or 5 foot), but a whole 10 foot, before he was eventually stopped by a much senior water official.

Mr Vishwas was immediately suspended from work, pending an investigation, after he was widely criticised for wasting water resources. Mr Dhivar was also suspended, and reportedly asked to pay up for the colossal waste of water at the peak of the Indian summer. 

A Kanker district official, told The National newspaper: 'Water is an essential resource and it cannot be wasted like this.' The senior local BJP official accused the two government officials of using the regions as their "ancestral property". Another added that 'When people are depending upon tankers for water facility in in scorching summers, the officer has drained 41 lakh litres (440,000 gallons) which could have been used for irrigation purpose for 1,500 acres of land.'  

Mr Vishwas was eventually told to pay Rs 53,092 by the Water Resources Department as a fine. He had 10 days to comply. Mr Dhiva's fate was not remarked on again, but presumably he got at least a similar fine. Mr Vishwas did actually recover the lost phone, but quelle surprise, it wasn't working after three days in the water. 

So all in all, Mr Vishwas was out of pocket for his phone by Rs 96,000, plus the Rs 7,000-8,000 that the pumping cost, plus the Rs 53,092 fine, and of course the cost of any new phone (Rs 96,000?) ... at least Rs 252,592 (US$ 2,991.79 - £2,359.44).

 .... so an expensive exercise in local power abuse.