Both are extremely important to run the Government, which provides services in a lawful environment. But in both the cases, the Person executing the powers vested onto them slips into a maglomaniac personality , believing that he is now the Gift of God to mankind. Since the systems do not provide for checks and balances , where the society at large controls the bureaucrats ( and not the politicians ) , the bureaucrats tend to get away with wrongs.
Study the case of any government in the world and you will find the biggest litigator is the Government itself. Fighting almost all its own citizens either on Tax or land disputes or politically motivated charges or simple vendetta.
In Third World, the most corrupt are the Revenue Department and the Police. The revenue department rather then looking at tax payers as the customers who are financing the budget of the government treats them like defaulters. The tax laws itself are made so complicated, that it goes through series of expert interpretations, before any sense can be made out of it.
Taxation does not need tons and tons of books and volumes of interpretations. Tax on sales is already big enough . Income tax, service tax , etc etc are all unnecessary intrusion into the personal lives of people. No person wants that any other person should know and least the Government should know the income made by him.
Again look around you and almost everything that you buy , sell, use is taxed and taxed multiple times. And if this was not enough, then the little earning out of your hard work is again taxed. The tax goes into finance the government employees and all its social projects. The Military which is supported by the tax of its own people, then goes onto attack its own people as now being seen in Syria , Libya, etc. In many African countries and Third world countries, these armies routinely plunder their own people. Should there not be a law which prohibits army firing its own people and if so the army chief facing ICC.
When it comes to Policing, it is still more interesting. An Institution , which was build to keep law and order in the society has now become the most feared institution. Ask a child, what he thinks of a policeman and he would comment him as the monster. It is also the institution, which no one in the Third world Trust. In Indonesia, they have saying, " If you go to report to the police the loss of your two chickens, you will end up loosing your goat". But this is true for most third world countries.
However, having said that , it does not mean that there are no good Revenue Officers or Good Police Officers. In fact a lot of people still fear God and don't want to indulge in obstructive activities , however, get carried away by the system. And that is why , whatever sense is still there in these department still prevails.
In both cases, the next level of redressal is "Judiciary" . The situation being such that in most Islamic nation, one would rather trust the Sharia Law to be a quick and fair system of Judiciary. For the non Islamic countries, the laws are drawn from the 15th and 16th century and most of the laws are such , where the Colonial powers made to rule over their subjects and are still carried down.
It is about time, when Governments have an introspection and review both the Revenue collection systems and Policing. The Revenue department should stop this business of continued notices for payment collection on account of misinterpretation of laws and work on collecting payments on sales of goods and services.
The Policing, altogether needs an overhaul. Police for Criminals and police for general law and order cannot be the same. General policing has to be the extended hand of Government, which is helping the public. At the outset, it should have a Uniform change. Because the current uniform whatsoever only brings a stereotyped personality of the user. A rather long subject and I will write more about it later.
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