A Drop in the Bucket

Listen to Today's Edition:

The Indian government fined a food inspector this week after the official ordered the draining of a dam to retrieve his smartphone, an incident that prompted anger over the abuse of power and wasting resources, the BBC reported Wednesday.

Last week, the official, Rajesh Vishwas, dropped his Samsung phone into the Kherkatta Dam in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh while he was taking a selfie. After local divers couldn’t find his phone, he paid for a diesel pump to drain around 880,000 gallons of water.

Vishwas told local media that he had verbal permission to drain “some water into a nearby canal,” adding that the phone carried sensitive government data.

After a few days, he retrieved his phone, even though it was too waterlogged to work.

But soon after the incident, authorities suspended Vishwas from his position and ordered him to pay a fine of around $640 for pumping out thousands of gallons of water without proper permission.

It called the inspector’s action “illegal,” saying it was “punishable under Chhattisgarh’s Irrigation Act.”

The dam’s draining sparked outrage in India with many politicians criticizing the official. They added that the water could have been put to better use in a country where water shortages are widespread during the hot summer months.