Sunil Sethi: A passport to the Great Indian Blockade

AL FRESCO

A recent article in The Economist looks at the revolution that is about to overtake passports in the western world.

It considers the pros and cons of a new technology proposed by America to fit passports with computer chips that will contain digitised photographs of the bearer, digitised fingerprints as well as scans of their irises, which are apparently unique to every individual.

Immigrant officials at airports will no longer need to compare the picture on the passport with the face of the passport holder; the built-in passport chip will operate a bit like the radio-identification tags used in mass rapid transport tickets.

In fact, the US expects such technology to become the norm, at least among those countries whose passport-holders do not require visas to enter the country.

India, naturally, will not be among them. Even under the tatkaal scheme, it recently took me many days and reams of paperwork to complete the form for a new passport: between four and eight mugshots on a seven-page form and endless identification.

This included copies of the permanent account number, voter's card, letter from bank or employer, and something called a verification certificate which can be supplied only by a government official of a particular rank.

In fact, there is a specimen page in the passport form that not only details what such a certificate must contain but also lists, in eight separate categories, the type or rank of government official who can issue it.

If the Indian bureaucracy is among the chief obstacles towards progress or reform, indeed the smallest effort at any forward movement, then ample evidence of the Great Indian Blockade is to be found at Delhi's regional passport office in Bhikaji Cama place, right behind the Hyatt Regency hotel.

Nothing has changed in this dark, gloomy, chaotic and squalid hole for ages. To come out with anything accomplished after one visit is a miracle.

On recent visits I found applicants who had spent remorseless days, even weeks, in trying to obtain what is merely a travel document and surely every citizen's right to have without undue harassment or hindrance.

Any given morning, there are a couple of thousand passport applicants, packing like sardines, milling around or being buffeted from one overflowing counter to another.

"Copies missing, go to the photocopying counter," barked the clerk with undisguised glee when I finally got to hand in my fat file of verifications.

This was easier said than done. In a Kafkaesque twist, there was a single photocopying machine to serve the beleaguered hordes and a queue that stretched a quarter of a kilometre.

In fact, there were so many queues, twining, intertwining and looping into one another, that people seemed to lose track of which counter they "belonged" to.

Irate tempers, shouting matches, and scuffles were the norm.

If you had forked out an extra Rs 2,000 for a tatkaal passport in the hope of quick deliverance, your hope, I discovered, would soon be dashed.

As if the endless paperwork in verifications was not enough, tatkaal applicants were now required to be personally interviewed by the regional passport officer.

Why on earth should this be necessary? Getting past squadrons of clerks, peons, and guards into the RPO's inner sanctum was a job in itself.

The poor harassed man, ticking off applications with felt pens in three colours, seemed utterly cowed by the goings-on around him. On average, he said, there were 1,200 applications received a day.

The system couldn't cope. It was collapsing all round him""he didn't say that but it was only too apparent.

Members of the All India Passport Employees Association are engaged in a fierce long-drawn-out battle over pay-scales, cadre issues, and foreign postings with the ministry of external affairs.

Suryakanti Tripathi, one of the ministry's capable senior diplomats (a specialist in economic issues, especially bilateral trade treaties), is saddled with the thankless job of negotiating with the passport employees union.

She was reported the other day as saying that despite endless meetings she hadn't got far. "I am tired of telling them that these matters are decided by the central government. We can only support their demands, which we have been doing."

Matters came to such a pass that she was forced last week to dispatch 30 of the MEA staff to help clear a backlog of 50,000 passports that had accumulated in three weeks.

But it was a temporary measure and there is no long-term relief in sight. Here in a microcosm is how basic, essential reform collapse in the face of the Great Indian Blockade.