The government removed common salt from markets to replace with mandatory sale of iodised salt throughout the country. The step was conceived as a measure to control goiter that afflicted poor in some parts of India. The incidence of goiter was more in northern and hilly regions but it did not affect poor in southern, eastern and western regions due to high intake of onions that was considered to be natural source of iodine. Yet the restrictive law was made applicable to entire country affecting the old practice.

A child of poor would and could rush to a retailer with a five paisa coin to get salt. The retailer used to dip his fist in the bag, take fistful of salt and deliver it is an fold of an old paper. The family lived on it for five days. Now the poor cannot get his supply as iodised salt is available only in a pack of kilo. Iodine has a tendency to evaporate as soon as it is exposed to atmospheric air. Hence it has to be sold in a packed tetra bag. Poor families have no facilities to store bags in airtight containers. Hence it turns into a common salt before it is used for the next meal. Poor are thus made to Pay Rs fifteen for a pack of one kilo iodised salt but what they consume is common salt. No arrangements are made to smaller packs or subsidise salt that had shaken the foundations of the British Empire.

The scheme was implemented in good faith but without concern for living conditions of poor. Bureaucrats recommended adoption of the scheme but had never seen through lives and conditions of poor in their hutments. They assumed that every family has air tight container. Politicians did not ask relevant questions as they have little time and insight into living of poor. The mismatch was evident between the cause and the effect. However Japanese firms made a neat pile of profits as iodine needed imports for making iodised salt.

Yet another example was introduction of mandatory need of a stamp from the labour ministry for intending immigrants for works in the Middle East. There were alarming reports of maltreatment of Indian workers in the Middle East. The stamping of pass ports of workers with permits to immigrate was considered to be safety measure though no one explained how it ensured a good treatment in a foreign land where the Indian law enforcement had no control. How the labour ministry stamp on pass port was to ensure a good treatment? Yet it became the law.
The practice remained in vogue for twenty years before it was scrapped by the Vajpayee government, not because it was not a solution but it was scrapped to end harassment of poor and need to grease palms of officials authorized to put the stamp on pass ports.

However in those two decades, Pakistan and Bangladesh were able to push more of their citizens as workers in the Middle East. A Korean firm was engaged to build up political pressure in India so that migration from India slowed down with new regulation restricting the numbers. Each immigrant had to shell out Rs. twenty to thirty thousand, depending on his urgency for the stamp. Long queue of poor and illiterates waiting for hours outside the office of the Commissioner of Immigrations used to be disconcerting view for many. The Korean firm had worked for three years to spread reports of maltreatment of Indian workers in the Middle East through Indian media. Instead of discreet inquiries into reports, the labour ministry bowed to the media pressure. There is no evidence to show why the labour ministry suddenly made u turn after resisting the attempt for three years with the change of minister to head the department?

The entire Income Tax law structure is based on assumption that every Indian who generates wealth through his enterprise, industry, business or shop though his hard labour or even earns through services is dishonest and should be subjected to stricter scrutiny by Indians occupying the seat behind the desk. The law structure thus created two different categories of Indians, one honest only because he occupies the seat with power to interpret law and the other as dishonest as they stand on o0therwside of the table. It is beyond comprehension. Politicians who presided over the finance ministry have never even given a thought to the basic assumption of their law and continue to be guided by officials in their ministry, a legacy of the British raj. Every Indian must be treated as disloyal to the Empire as a person guilty of devising ways and means against the Empire. In free India, why should citizens be subjected to so many laws and restrictive regulations on basic assumption of their dishonesty?

The transfer of power from the British has merely changed the skin of rulers but not their intents and systems. Instead of the white bureaucracy now tanned bureaucracy holds their life and fate under its shackles.

Indira Gandhi once remarked in jest, politicians do not make laws. They merely endorse what is written by bureaucrats. Hence every law has several ifs, buts and exceptions to facilitate the bureaucrat to interpret it the way he deems necessary.