By Vijay K Kumar, Superintendent of Central Excise

IF the headline is the reason to provoke you to look for a titillating piece, then you may be despaired. No prurient stuff, please! This article is about a serious information deficiency syndrome which most of us in the Revenue Department suffer from! But, first, how do people learn about sex? Certainly Adam and Eve had no sex education and they got on rather well except for that stupid apple and that historic fruit made this article possible! It has less to do with sex and more with the Cadre Review. Even in this advanced age it is difficult for parents to teach their children about sex, mainly because it is embarrassing to parade your ignorance. So most education comes from the peer group, dirty books, scientific books and experience often wrong, immoral and dangerous. So when you have a doubt, the first person you consult is a friend, a confidant who may not be any better than you are but who must have bragged to you about his sexual escapades. The information you get is often imagination and fantasy. You follow that and most probably you land up in a hospital with broken limbs/hearts/brains or damage to other vital parts.

What has all this to do with Central Excise? Certainly there is nothing sexy about Excise. But, to me, it is as exciting, mysterious and unfortunately also as misleading as sex! A young boy joins the department as Inspector or Assistant Commissioner as eager and excited as a newly married young man with hardly any experience or knowledge. Where can he get information? There are, of course, many books written by quack doctors which do not tell you the most important things. The other day I was talking to a senior Commissioner who told me that there is no real good book in the market on valuation. I told him that I am the author of a book on valuation. " Ah, I saw your book", he said, " It is good", " just like any other" is what he meant and that was no compliment.

Coming back to our virgin officer, he really has no source of learning. He can ask his seniors, who are all bloating at the seams with extra calories intake vulgarly visible in the middles and rusted brains (with years of non application/ non-use of minds) hollow inside but believing to be carrying a halo outside. You ask them any question; they will never say they do not know the answer. And they will not answer your question - for they do not know the answer. You ask a straight question to any Central Excise officer - you are sure to get anything but a straight answer. They are all brilliant persons who have qualified for the job after passing through the toughest competition in the world! The honestly ignorant ones also have difficulty in admitting their ignorance. The reasons for their ignorance would be:

1. For the last two years I was in the Airport (Doing a great favour to the country)

2. I was on deputation for the last four years (again a great favour to this poor nation)

3. I don't read ELT ( a great virtue worth emulating)

4. Central Excise is all about Common sense (which I have in abundance and you dunce don't)

5. Any way what is the use of knowing things? (To get a good posting you should know the powers that be not the law)

Rarely would you find a Central Excise officer who would admit his ignorance. You ask him “What is the value when goods are exported to related persons?" He would say, "the basic concept is that …. Blah blah and more blah." You tell him that there is a concept called transaction value; he would tell you it is not much different from old valuation. In answer to a specific question, what you would get is; another question or a volley of questions, irrelevant examples, stories of valour, reference to other laws and concepts, defeatist advice like, "why do you bother" -- all these, rather anything but a straight answer. Our offices are full of wise guys without real answers to any problems.

If not friends and colleagues, where can we get knowledge from? Schools and colleges. Yes, we have our academies, to teach us. In the field they know what happened till last year. In the academies knowledge is fossilised in the last decade! There is no qualification required for a job in the academy - all that is required is you must be a nuisance in the field or you are unwanted in the field. The situation is so bad that even the Supreme Court had to comment, It is certainly a paradoxical situation that a man who is not fit to hold the post of Collector is fit enough to impart training to the probationers entering the service. Best talent should be sent to the academy to teach the probationers. Posting to the academy should be considered as an honour and not punishment. (ZB Nagarkar v UOI) Obviously no help here too!

Where else does one go for information? Why not books? We have any number of books of the standard of Kamasutra to cheap titillating yellow books in plenty available in the market. But these books unlike the sex books are respectable on table tops and bookshelves, but not really always useful. Of course they can scare away a lot of prying officers. The books are mostly compilation of notifications and circulars with no answers to real questions. In the electronic age we have several web sites rarely updated and giving all the information we do not really require.

What next? I am really sick. Yes, there are clinics and doctors and even quack doctors. But as in the other case they are also not very useful as they depend more on experience than knowledge.

The result is I have AIDS. (Acute Information Deficiency Syndrome.) Any help?????

(The views expressed are strictly personal)