Wired says that after a long day of shaking down motorists for C notes and beating on random street kids, the average Indian cop still doesn’t make enough to buy his own computer:

In July 2001, Mumbai’s Cyber Crime Investigation Cell launched its website, and a few days later it was hacked… police squads were known to confiscate evidence… returning with monitors and leaving computers behind…. cops in Mumbai seized pirated software floppies and stapled them together as though they were documents…

Last month, a Mumbai tabloid… asked a constable to use his ATM card and photographed his every step. He did not know how to use the card and the machine swallowed it… “The cop who checks your car license does not own a car… The passport official who checks your passport does not go abroad. The cop to whom you go to register a credit card misuse does not own a credit card… how can he fight cybercrime?”

As the Net roars by in a bright shirt and dark shades on a brand-new Hero Honda, the government’s business babus are left with bags of mooli and karela in hand, abusing a slow-moving rickshaw-walla with a bad attitude:

When he wanted to register a firm called Pinstorm Online last year, the Registrar of Companies “refused to grant me the name because the government officials out there did not comprehend the word ‘online,’ ” Murthy said…. “I had to change the word ‘internet’ to ‘computer network’ because the officials did not think (the) internet was a credible medium for business.”

In the Delhi sex clip brouhaha, the court wasn’t even aware of Indian law recognizing electronic signatures:

Bajaj’s lawyers applied for bail.. with a printout of the portal’s terms and conditions… the court rejected the bail application… “stating that since there was no ink-based signature, it is void.”… “That means, according to the court, all of India’s e-commerce is illegal. The Information Technology Act… clearly validates electronic signature. But the court was not aware of it.”