Constant Bureaucracy

As my mother nicely reminded me, a while back I swore on a stack of Bhagavad Gitas that I would write about two constant characters, Indian bureaucracy and our homemade cinemas. Because this isn't a Lifetime original movie entitled "Broken Promises", I'll first talk about bureaucracy (can't give it all to you at once, Mom!):

Indian Bureaucracy:
First, isn't bureaucracy the trickiest word to spell? Maybe it's just me, but I can never figure out how to correctly organize the letters in this word. It doesn't help that I am a poli sci major, and the majority of my professors throw this word around like Ricky Martin throws his shirts off in concert, leaving me scratching "beureaucracy" or "beauracracy" in my notes. Despite its complicated mix of vowels and silent letters, bureaucracy is very important, kids, because it is the organizational structure, procedure and regulations that are used to enact policies and generally control stuff. Bureaucracies are supposed to be uniform and universal, kind of like McDonald's- you should expect to comply to the same rules and regulations at a DMV in Orlando as you would in Oregon. Uniformness is a Good Thing when it comes to doing things that require your passport.

Residing in the subcontinent for nearly four months requires an intricate dance with the bureaucracy of India, one which, unsurprisingly, does not consist of much across-the-board regulation. About a week and a half after we had arrived in India, CASI e-mailed us to tell us that we were to register with the nearest foreign services office. This way, the Indian government would know we were in India. I figured that this was what my visa, registration with the US Embassy, and utter compliance with airport officials at customs was for, but that was foolish thinking. No, I had to register, and I had 14 days once in the country do it, or else pay a hefty fine. Registering meant having to take the bus to Jhunjhunu, which we did that Sunday (exactly on the 14th day) only to realize that things closed on Sunday. So we went back on Monday.

First of all, there is no such thing as a foreign service office in Jhunjhunu, where maybe two foreigners pass by every year. Instead, we had to go to the police station. This made for a nice conversation starter on the bus ride over, when one interested rider wanted to know where we were going. "The police station," we replied. We let that sink in and remained silent despite his persistent pestering of "But why? Why the police station?" Much more fun to have him think we were Western fugitives in trouble with the law, or smugglers of exotic animal skins. Then we got to the police station, and realized that being a fugitive would probably require less paper work than registering in the country. The police station itself was in nice enough shape, minus the line of people who looked like they had been queuing for the last six years. The offices were stacked floor-to-cathedral ceiling with papers. Literally, stacks upon stacks of jumbled papers reached towards the heavens, aching under the weight of unorganization.

Very little is digital in India- the country is making moves towards putting things on computers, but we are at least 5 to 10 years away from that. Until then, it's handwritten paperwork. So we marched into an office, accompanied by Shrot (director of Source for Change) and talked to two dudes. One of them was a youngish guy, who was very nice and who we will call Friend. The other was a tall, old gentleman with a permanent frown and a singular desire to take our money. We will call him Not Friend. We handed over our passports to Friend, who examined them as though they were rare artifacts. At first, Friend told us that since we were a day late, we were going to have to pay a fine, which would be around"20-50 US dollars." Don't you love exact sums? Shrot talked to Friend for a while, and finally agreed to date the document saying we had come three days earlier, so as to waive the fee. This was good news! The bad news was that we needed six passport photos each, and we had to come back the next day.

Literally though, six passport photos. This meant going to the photo shop in a different part of Jhunjhunu. I'm actually really happy we went, because we met the most amazing man there. He couldn't have been more than 4'11, he only spoke in a thrilling lisp, and he was so excited! to be able to take "snaps" of us. It was like being photographed by Terry Richardson; I was convinced that at any moment he would take his shirt off and join the photo shoot. Meg and Lindsay's photos passed by with little excitement. Then I sat down, and crushed his dreams. He snapped my picture, looked at it, than sighed the saddest little sigh I've ever heard and said "Noooo....No, no. Again." I must have looked terrifying in the first picture, I'm not sure.

Next up was Siler. I actually thought this guy was going to lose his shit. Siler flipped his scarf over his shoulder and posed for his life, emotion seeping from his eyes. Terry was loving it. "YEEESSSSSSSS!!!!" he shrieked, in an orgasmic climax of creativity and beauty and childhood dreams to work in fashion, this was life, glorious, perfect, creamy-complexioned life at its best. And then, just like that, it was over. Siler got up and took off his scarf, leaving behind the trembling butterfly of what was, what could have been. Years from now, when Terry is old and gray he will sit in a mahogany chair wrapped in a striped pashmina, smoking a Gauloise (he always had a love for the French) and remember that moment, where for a fleeting instant, the camera lens was the only thing separating him from an internship at Teen Vogue.

Ahem, scuze me. Got a bit carried away there, but you see, the thing is that paperwork is just so boring that I have to come up with these exciting alternate realities to keep myself from crying. We had to return to Jhunjhunu the following day, armed with our passport photos and patience. It was going to be a long afternoon. We stayed there for around two or three hours, during which time Not Friend tried to get us to pay him some money. We took to ignoring him, and instead dealt only with Friend. And this is what Friend did. He took a big book full of pictures of foreigners that had passed through Jhunjhunu and registered at the office. He pasted a picture of each of us in this book, which we then had to sign. "That's your signature?" he asked, after I scrawled my name in admittedly easy to forge handwriting. "No," I replied, "this is the special autograph I use only when dealing with Indian bureaucracy."

The next step was hysterical. Not Friend ripped out a blank piece of paper from a notebook for each of us to fill out. Amongst other things, the information that was to be included was our father's name and occupation (but not our Mother's), our height and our eye color, because apparently is imperative that the Indian government know I have hazel eyes as oppose to blue eyes. We wrote all this information in slanting chicken-scratch, and handed it over. Next, we watched as Friend and Not Friend pasted each of our five remaining pictures onto five identical pieces of paper. Then we had to sign these all. The finale was Friend just staring at our passports for a good ten minutes. Finally, FINALLY we were allowed to leave.

I naively thought that my time in the paper gallows were done, but I was wrong. Aditi informed us that we would also have to "de-register," a process that must be done within a 14-day span prior to leaving the country, and must be completed at the office where you registered. Yes, the exact office where you registered. This is infuriating. I understand that in a country the size of India, it's important to keep tabs of foreigners who come and leave, but isn't that what the computerized system at the airport is for? Also, since everything is the opposite of digital, someone would have to really want to find out my eye color to go all the way to Jhunjhunu and dig through stacks upon stacks of forms. Apparently it is a 50-50 chance when you go to the airport that they will ask for your registration and de-registration form.

Once, there was a rather unlucky GDL-er who was at the airport hours from catching his flight, when he had to come all the way back to Bagar to get some paperwork done. When we were given our personal registration form, Friend told us that we had to show that to the customs official at the airport, he made no mention of a de-registration form. I am leaving Bagar in two weeks, and will be volunteering and travelling in places that are very much not Bagar. While I enjoyed my time here, I don't want to have to take a six hour bus from Delhi specifically to come back to Jhunjhunu to de-register. So, the new plan is to de-register in Jhunjhunu, re-register in Delhi when I get there, and then de-register in Delhi right before I leave. In all, I anticipate needing 18 more passport photos, and wasting 6-8 hours having someone make fun of my signature. I didn't think that bureaucracy would become a constant character, but it looks like it will be.

I would like to point out that the inefficiency of India's bureaucracy system has proved to be rather detrimental to the country's growth. The system is choking on itself, slowing down all sorts of civil issues that should be resolved much more quickly. In 2008, The Economist published an article on India's bureaucracy, which stated:

"Some economists see India's malfunctioning public sector as its biggest obstacle to growth. Lant Pritchett, of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, calls it “one of the world's top ten biggest problems—of the order of AIDS and climate change”....In India's corrupt democracy, the collectors' burden is made much heavier by interfering politicians. The problem is most grievous in north India, where civil servants tend to attach themselves to politicians for enrichment, advancement—or in despair of otherwise getting their jobs done."

Nantina, whatchu think about this? ;)