The outrage against officials of a bank in Odisha’s Keonjhar district, who refused to release Jitu Munda’s sister Kalara Munda’s savings because he did not furnish the required documentation, is, at best, myopic and, at worst, a convenient moral deflection. It rests on the premise that the bank officials committed an arbitrary act, harassing Munda into doing what he did — exhuming the skeletal remains of his sister to offer proof of death. But was it arbitrary, or was it adherence to an impersonal order that defines the modern bureaucratic system? It is far simpler to pin the blame on half a dozen of its agents, manning a bank in a small town, than to confront the leviathan whose primary beneficiaries are, by design, those who conform to it. This is not to absolve the bank completely. Not being sensitive to Munda’s poverty and illiteracy, not doing more to help him understand what he needed to claim the money, going about their day instead of taking extra time — these are all choices.…