My pensieve

As usual, I took a KSRTC bus to college today. As usual, I bought the ticket from the conductor and as usual he wrote the change that he owed me on the back of the ticket. After one stop from where I had boarded, the Ticket Checkers boarded the bus. These are people who do kind of surprise visit to the bus and check if the conductor has given tickets to all passengers and if there are passengers who are travelling without buying a ticket.
Generally, passengers and bus conductors have aversion towards each other. I used to think that this may be because the conductor doesnt give change properly, or may be rude in the way he/she talks to passengers. Conductor also doesnt sometime stop the buses on the stop. I had always thought that it was due to these daily friction that passengers dont like the conductor.
Today as usual, the Ticket Checkers checked all the tickets of the passengers. The conductor was very prompt and had given tickets to all the passengers. Hence the Ticket Checkers did not have any complain against him and hence he did not have to bear any penalty. Usually if any person is found travelling without tickets, the conductor has to pay the penalty of Rs. 300 from what I know.
After the Ticket Checkers left, conductor like a student who had just passed his exam, sighed. Some of the passengers started talking amongst themselves and with him, saying that Ticket Checkers were very disappointed, they did not get any reasons for penalty and during the discussion, I could see amazing solidarity of the passengers with the Conductor. He also was talking to them nicely and passengers were abusing the Ticket Checkers as people who always want to loot, etc.
This is when I realized that the reason why there is aversion between passengers and conductor is not because of bad behaviour or something. It is because for the passengers, he is the face of the oppressor called government. Everytime there is a hike in ticket prices, everytime they have to travel in fully packed buses, they blame the government and they see the conductor as the person representing government.
In that moment when Ticket Checkers came to check ticket, Conductor also became a part of the oppressed and hence they were easily able to show solidarity with him. This solidarity takes the form of corruption, when the government employee, to a large extent oppressed himself joins hands with the general public.
People blame the traffic police who catch them for violations as they see them as the face of the government. However the same police may becomes a friend when he gets the job done going against the rules as there is also on the side against the government.
Say politicians who earned crores of ruppee in Coal Scam may be corrupt but because they get the work done through the government for the local people, their corrupt acts are completely ignored because for people these are people just cheating the oppressor.