Afterhours in Mantralaya: A Porn Story

Male employees at Maharashtra government headquarters use terminals of female colleagues to surf porn.

The allure of pornography does not differentiate between government and private sector employees. But while many private companies have some sort of policy on porn surfing (some even threaten to sack offenders), if you go by the Maharashtra government’s example, the state is still figuring out how to deal with it.

For some time, it was noticed, many male employees were staying back at Mantralaya, the seat of the Maharashtra government, after office hours. But there was reportedly nothing official about it. They were using the excuse of pending work to surf pornographic sites. But being babus, there was a little cunning to how they went about it. Instead of using their own computers, they used the terminals of their female co-workers to pursue their ‘passion’.

“One morning when I switched on my computer, horrible images popped up. I quickly shut it. I was embarrassed. Then it happened again. I kept quiet for some time and then told my female colleagues. A general complaint was made,” said a female employee.  Sources say many women were aware of porn sites being accessed on their computers, but chose not to lodge complaints for fear of ridicule.

Recently, the employees noticed that the surfing of porn had been checked. But, in an ironic twist, it was for a completely different reason. The general administration department had come to know that employees spent considerable time surfing sites related to the stock market. Flooded with complaints, they requested the information technology department to block some gaming and stock market sites. In the process, pornography sites also got blocked.

A senior bureaucrat, preferring anonymity, said this was done by installing software corporate houses use routinely. “We wanted to block the business sites initially, but then decided to block all the offending sites,” he said.

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Haima Deshpande