In this piece Mahesh uses his poetic style of reporting to voice his frustration at the way people delivering services can sometimes have a tendency to tick boxes and the stereotyping this leads to. His style of reporting has a very singular way of imparting the way it feels to be on the receiving end of this stereotyping as we begin to feel like we are no more than a number on a list.  Mat Amp 

 

 

For the many emotionally oblivious bureaucrats one, so often, encounters in one’s delicate, fraught, subtly turbulent everyday life, this slow grinding by paper-pushing, box-tickers, makes not an iota of difference, it seems to me. 

Fundamental assumptions of claimants being lazy, conniving, fablists,
who need “watching”, seems to me, to be a basic pattern of their response. Glaring example, as our fellow reporter TJ, wrote on his column, that “… there are multiple points of internet access, in town, so you have no excuse for not actively looking for work, even if your abode is a shop doorway “… Such heartlessness, monstrosity…makes one weep in despair. 

I wonder how to “tweak” the bureaucrats’ emotional quotient, just a tad, ya know, just a tad, without overwhelming them into sobs, so that all concerned can be happy, not fraught. 

 

Mahesh takes a lot of pictures for Groundswell and the Listen Up project’s websites and social media. The picture featured in this piece is one of those photographs