NEW DELHI, India. In this, the capital city of India, there seems to be a government office on every corner. “We inherited our love of bureaucracy from the British,” says Atal Bihari, an Undersecretary to the Assistant Commissioner of Common Victualler Registration. “Without government, many people would have to find productive work, which is very unpleasant.”
“You’ll have to go to end of the line.”
But the quiet calm that the slow pace of the Indian bureaucracy provides to its employees has been shattered recently as marauding monkeys have taken over government buildings, in one case causing the death of an elected official who tried to fend off his attackers by returning their bribes. “It was sad,” says Abani Mukhurjee, a political reporter. “Perhaps we have taken the concept of ‘open government’ too far.”
Rod Blagoj . . . Blagovj . . . oh, you know who he is.
So Indian officials are reaching out for help to Western nations, particularly America, where marauding monkeys have occupied government buildings on a recurring basis over the nation’s 230-year history.
Clarence Darrow to William Jennings Bryan: “It’s funny. You’ve run for office, and yet you don’t believe in evolution.”
“American has a rich tradition of simian politics,” says Seth Winegard of Common Cause, a non-partisan good government group. “I’d say it reached its apogee in the person of Larry Craig,” the strait-laced Republican Senator from Idaho charged with homosexual lewd conduct in an airport men’s room, “but Rod Blagojevich,” former Democratic Governor of Illinois, “gave him a run for his money.”
Larry Craig, R-Idaho: “Yes, you may go to the restroom. I’ve got the key.”
Animal-rights advocates say punitive measures to keep primates out of politics ignore the real cause of increased human-monkey encounters. “The monkeys should not be blamed,” says Sonya Guptal. “Man is taking over much of their natural habitat, such as the Registry of Motor Vehicles. They have no place to go.”
“So, basically you’re saying a monkey could do my job?”
Finding a solution to the monkeys in government problem is viewed as central to India’s efforts to persuade foreign businesses to invest here, creating jobs that can lift its population out of grinding poverty. “All things considered, monkeys make more efficient government clerks than humans,” according to Lowell Nordke of MKC Engineers, a design-build firm that has won several public works contracts here. “They eat bananas at their desks, so they don’t take lunch breaks.”
Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Yo, Calcutta–and the Rest of India, Too.”
*groan*
And they basically have 4 hands – so they can take even more hand-outs!
Plus they have prehensile ability in their tails, making them 2.5 times grabbier than Rod Blago.
Which means they aren’t wild about de-tailing?