3rd Time's the Harm--Indian Bureacracy Part III: The Dreaded DMV (RTO)

As you know from previous two interactions with Indian Bureacracy (one, two), the result is always the same: Too slow (them), too furious (you). Going to the ultimate bureaucracy even by Western standards--the DMV/RTO--you can imagine my apprehension.

However, to my great surprise, the day was all simplicity and expediency: the whole process took only 15 min.* A few observations:

1) They gave me a license without my taking a written or driving test (I just showed them a US license)
2) Video explaining road rules of Maharashtra was in Punjabi with a hilarious host which is ultimately more farcical for the reason that very people speak Punjabi in Maharashtra
3) Bombay RTO is more advanced than most US DMVs: they even took my finger prints electronically!
4) I got excited to see a slice of real Bombay given that there are few places more democratizing than the DMV, but alas the majority of the people getting licenses were teenage brats from Malabar hill in Diesel tees and madras shorts
5) For some reason, as part of getting my license, I was interviewed by the Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) of South Mumbai. Notice, on below graphic from the RTO website, he doesn't actually report to anyone! Good thing he decided not to go all power-trippy on me.

* It might be worth noting here that I paid other people do all the work for me for the license so all I had to was show-up and get printed and photographed (I didn't fill out a single form or wait in a single line). In the good old days, you didn't even have to go to the RTO to get a license!