Why
can't the loss making post offices of India start issuing passports in
the country? Getting a passport in India is a tough job indeed, even
though it has gone online.
Almost 22 crore people in Uttar Pradesh
live and work under the rule of the Yadavs of the Samajwadi Party or
the Mayawatis of the Bahujan Samaj Party. In this state there are only
three passport offices, one in Lucknowthe state capital, the other in Bareilly and the third in Ghaziabad.
The
external affairs ministry may say they have made the procedure simple.
The application has gone online and the dalals are out of the businessfor
applying. However there is a problem here. The multiplicity of
documents required is confusing to the common man, who even after
applying online for a passport from Gorakhpur or Deoria or Azamgarh, will have to tread down to Lucknow to the local seva Kendra to finalize all his details.
Here
he will find, that having an Aadhar Card is not enough, as the Aadhar
Card is not a proof of age. He will have to submit his High School
Certificate once again, as he had done earlier to the Aadhar Card making
authority. In case he has forgotten to bring it, then a trip back to
Azamgarh or Gorakhpuror Deoria is warranted. Now who said the procedure has become easier?
Once
these documents are submitted then the applicant has to wait for a
policeman to come to his house, to verify the claims and documents he
has submitted to the passport office. The policeman collects several
papers and takes notes and takes self attested copies of Aadhar Cards,
Pan Cards and Election Id Cards and passport size photographs of the
applicants. He also takes a copy of the High School Certificates of the
applicants as well. So much so, for going to the passport office and
applying there in the presence of an officer or appointee of the
department.
This
entire rigmarole can take ten to fifteen days at the end of which, a
passport does arrive or is canceled, in the process a much wiser
individual who has interacted with both the external affairs ministry
and the home ministry and the state government, has a document that will
facilitate his travel abroad, where he can holiday in Switzerland, go
for Haj to Saudi Arabia or study in Australia and Canada and the United
Kingdom or the USA. Life can now be lived kingsize.
In
this process no one says that police harass them for money in the name
of verification, and the police and the external affairs ministry are
groping in the dark to find better ways and means to issue a passport,
but the same passport is handed to British citizens in London by the
post office within 24 hours. The same happens in former British colonies
like Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore and at the most, the process
takes 48 hours and if you are lucky, the travel document will be
available the same evening, if you apply in the morning. All because the
post office handles this work.
To
get a similar process begun in India, the Ministry of External Affairs
has to link up with the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information
Technology, which oversees the work of the India
Postal services. This is not a big task, but it may help in reducing
the losses that the department is incurring every year. Even though
Aadhar Cards and the Unique Identification Number work was given to this
department, its financial loss was around Rs. 6,800 crore in 2012
alone.
The
situation is unique, as despite the fact that the postal department is a
losing proposition, its staff has to be given increased salaries, as
they are central government employees and the Sixth Pay commission took
the lid off salaries. So while their work has reduced, their pays have
increased.
The
government in this case can neither shut down the post offices nor can
it dismiss the staff. At the same time several postal services are being
discontinued or have already gone into the pages of history. The
Telegraph office is now a thing of the past and was killed by the SMS
and the Email.
Whatever
was left was destroyed by Facebook and WhatsApp. The government
employees who work in the postal department will despite all this, get a
major hike in salaries when the next pay commission comes along. It
would be better to generate work for them by allowing them to issue
passports, as is done in several other countries.
In
the old framework of things, when nations lived in isolation, it made
sense to have bamboo curtains and iron curtains. Now the passport is
just a travel document and easier access to passports should be
possible.
However
something in our procedures is lopsided. While it is easy to get a
driving license even if you do not know how to drive a car properly, and
could end up endangering the lives of several persons, it is tough to
get a gun license, even though it is vital to have a gun for self
defense in a country, where law and order is a big problem and criminals
are easily accessing guns and bombs.
Similarly
when economic liberalization has become the order of the day and
boundaries between nations are vanishing, with the average Indian
becoming an international citizen, getting a passport should be in the
hands of post offices, to make things easier and justify the high
salaries paid to the postal staff.
Source : http://www.merinews.com/
