Big fight in UP over the ubiquitous white towel draped on the babu's chair: Everyone wants one

A towel, Douglas Adams says in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is just about the most important thing in the universe: it can be wrapped around for warmth, spread out on the ground to lay down on, serve as a mask to fend off noxious fumes, or used as a distress signal.

- Umesh Raghuvanshi

Adams was likely unacquainted with the eccentricities of power circles in Uttar Pradesh. The state, decades ago, devised a most unique use of the towel a spotless, white one hung off the back of a thick leather chair; an honour reserved for only the most senior officers, and a ubiquitous symbol of power.

To be sure, towels, not necessarily white, are a common sight on the chairs of bureaucrats across India.

Now, it emerges, not all is well with the towel in Uttar Pradesh as evident in an emergency video conference called by chief secretary Manoj Kumar Singh earlier this month. It was to ensure that administrative protocol, which places elected representatives above public officers, is followed to the tee (or to the towel, in this case). In simple terms, the government ordered that MPs, MLAs and MLCs be given towel-adorned chairs "of the same height and decor" at meetings across the state.