Can non IAS/Politico citizens add value to governance?

Dozens of dapperly dressed young people gathered to attend a conference entitled, "Exploring Spaces for Young Indians in Government."

Suri, who is spending the summer assisting the office of Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Communications and Technology, is among the growing ranks of young Indians who are showing an increasing interest in exploring careers in public policy and government - areas in which Indian civil servants have had a historical monopoly.

Counter-intuitively, the majority of the attendees were young people comfortably ensconced in private sector jobs. If these two things are anything to go by, then it strongly signals a slow but steady shift in the years and decades to come, towards a younger, more inclusive and level playing field in India's governing fabric, which will ultimately bode well for its nation-building project.

I happen to take the BMTC bus everyday to my office, however recently i encountered a situation where the conductor handed out a used ticket to me instead of tearing a new ticket from the foil. By the look of the ticket even a lame man could say that its an old ticket with traces of sand and dirt and torn edges. When i questioned him about the issue of old ticket he refused to accept his mistake and said it to be a freshly torn ticket. I was so helpless and did not get support from any of the so-passengers and had to return with the same ticket. This has not happened only to me and when discussed with some of my friends, they also complained of having faced the same issue earlier.

These conductors are not only causing a loss to the BMTC but also to the passengers, the situation is worse when some illiterates or school children alight the buses, many a times the conductors take the money and not issue the ticket for short distances thus pocketing the extra money into their personal account which actually belongs to the BMTC.

This could rather be called a daylight theft.

Some authority needs to look into this and get this right immediately...

[Promoting Transmogrifier's comment to a separate 'crowdsourcing' post - we need to know what is happening to the various taxes and cess that makes petrol so expensive for us. 59% of fuel price is levies, where is it all going today? Do share if you know.]

@ PublicAgenda, while conspiracy theorists make for good movie-making, it's time (like many here are suggesting) that we look at why we pay so much as in the way of levies (59%?) and much worse, get so little. Let's take two examples:

1. In one of the most capitalistic of societies, federal and state taxes, on average, are about 45.6c/gallon (for petrol) or 16.7% at today's price of unleaded petrol. What do you get for that? For 18.4c out of that (or 6-7%) you get 75,000 km of Interstate system on which you could cover 950km (that's the distance to Chennai... and back...and then back again) in 9.5hrs.