Communication today is quick and cheap. People make phone calls all the time in India, even though they cost a little bit; for anyone who has an internet connection, sending an e-mail is free of cost. The result is that people in offices spend much of their time communicating. Bosses have to find time to work without interruption, and worry about how much of the time their subordinates spend on internet is fun and how much is work. It is difficult to imagine administration in an age when communication was slow and infrequent.

But that was not so long ago. An administrative manual was written by Richard Tottenham when he was collector of North Arcot in Madras Province in the last years of World War II. It was meant to instruct officials in small, out-of-the-way offices in work procedures. At that time, the prime medium of communication was the post — tappal, as Tottenham called it. The postman delivered it in the morning. It contained information and instructions from the secretariat in Madras and other government offices. If it was not dealt with expeditiously, letters would be stacked away and get lost. Hence it was important to handle it correctly, with dispatch. It could be dealt with only if staff were present. So everyone was supposed to come not more than 10 minutes later than the office opening time of 10 o’clock.

The tappal was received by a clerk in the presence of an officer. As soon as he opened the letters, he had to do two things: he had to list them in the personal register and give them numbers based on which section of the office was to deal with them. The number began with the file in which the letter was to be filed; if it related to new business, a new file was opened for it. But the clerk could not create a new subject on his own; he could only choose one out of a common index. Then the personal register together with the letters went to one section clerk after another; he acknowledged receipt of the letters relevant to his section, and passed on the rest. The personal register was closed and a new one opened on 1 April every year, but its first few pages were left blank to enter matters from the old register that would flow into the new year.

A file had a hole in the top left corner. All papers filed in it had similar holes; they were all strung in the file, but could be removed or reshuffled with ease. Every file was really two files under one cover: a current file, and a note file. It had two sets of pages in it: the current file contained letters and other outside documents, and the note file contained comments and instructions, called notings. Documents were paginated in red ink, and notings in black or blue ink. Government decisions had to be consistent with laws, orders and precedents. References to them were entered in the margin of the notes in pencil. If a previous file was relevant, it was put together with the current file in a single pad, and “flagged” — that is, a stiff little piece of paper was attached to its top. It had to bear an alphabetical letter; this letter was entered where the reference file was mentioned in the current file. But flags were not to be attached to durable documents such as acts or books; they were to be preserved intact.

The file went to the clerk of the relevant section, who made notings and passed it on to his superior. This went on till the file reached the highest officer in the place. If no further action was required, he would initial the notings page, and the file would go back down the way it came up. But anyone might propose action on the file’s way up; if the top officer approved it, the file went down to whoever was to act. The action could be a letter, a memo or a summary of proceedings; if so, the clerk made a draft, and the file passed up for each officer to approve or modify. The draft had to bear a title related to the file, followed by references to relevant files and to documents received from outside.

Once the draft was approved by the concerned officer, it went to the superintendent of the fair copying section, who would get one of his clerks to copy it out on white paper in a good hand. It then went to the relevant officer, and once he signed it, to the dispatch clerk. He entered the details in a fair copy register, and passed it on to the postal clerk. He would put the letter in an envelope, put a stamp on it, and enter the fact in a stamp register.

All mailed documents would be listed in the dispatch register. But if documents were sent within the same town, they would not be posted; for them, a separate local delivery book was to be maintained.

Superintendents of sections were supposed to call for and inspect the registers kept by clerks, which would show all documents received by them for disposal. They were to spot all documents undisposed or wrongly disposed, and note them in the note file attached to each register, and make sure that the clerk acted on them within 48 hours. Each clerk had to have a diary; if he did not act within two days, the officer had to note the fact in his diary. In addition, the personal register had to be accompanied by an arrears list. This was not the end. The title of every file was entered on an index slip, together with the file it went into and the date. The list of index slips must be made in duplicate; one would stay with the personal register, and one with the clerk in charge of it.

There were a few other registers that must be mentioned briefly. Just as the distribution register recorded all incoming documents, all outgoing documents were recorded in an outward register. It did not cover files lent out; for them, there was a record issue register. Once the telephone came, a call book was introduced. All cash inflows and outflows were recorded in a security register.

This panoply of registers did not prevent mistakes or delays; but if they occurred, the registers could be used to locate them and fix the responsibility for them. With their help, an officer could monitor his office without having to spend all his time in watching his staff. I did not last long enough in the finance ministry to become au fait with the filing system, but the system that Tottenham wrote 68 years ago was more or less intact till the 1990s, and probably continues to this day. The British have computerized their administration and abolished files; but we will continue this 19th century tradition into the 22nd century. It is an extremely well designed system for its age. I wonder if another Tottenham would create a system for the internet age.