<b>Rahul Jacob:</b> Reforming our civil service

The rigidities of the Indian bureaucracy make lateral entry for specialists very difficult

A friend recently described an all-morning encampment at Punjab National Bank in New Delhi while she tried to help open a bank account for her maid. The problem was that her domestic help’s Aadhaar identity card showed her home to be in a village in Jharkhand. Banks reject the Aadhaar as proof of residence — and thus reject it de facto as a proof of identity — for someone seeking a bank account in a city that is not their hometown. To complete the KYC (Know Your Customer) requirements, the bank manager demanded a rental agreement between my friend and