Indian Bureaucracy for Better or Worse

It is funny how the greatest stories out of the author’s India trip have come out of flying in and out of the country itself.  After getting racially profiled on the way in as described in the previous post, now it is time to reflect on the exit…So the incident occurs at the immigration check at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, where the 6am line was the author, a white woman in front of him, and one operational immigration counter with an Indian family of three. 

The author arrived to find the white woman frustrated, complaining about how the family has been at the counter for “a lifetime.”  Another ten minutes pass when the woman gets her turn, and a further ten minutes before the author reaches the counter.  Frankly, in the author’s experience, he has never seen such slow successive checks GETTING OUT of a country as he has seen just now at the counter.  He was about to find out for himself exactly why this is the case.

Approaching the mustached, middle-aged officer and handing over the passport and boarding pass, the author expects the officer to start typing away at the computer to initiate the checks.  Instead, the officer opens up the passport to the India visa page and proceeds to stare at the page.  No typing, no double-checking with info on the computer, but just stroking his mustache and staring.  Five minutes pass.  The officer motions the author to lean forward, point to the India entry stamp next to the visa.

He blankly asks, “Which airport?”  The author blankly replies, “Mumbai.”  The officer, seemingly enlightened, blurts, “Ahh, Mumbai.”  So, as far as the author can see it, either the officer is testing the author to see if he can recall his memory or read the English word “Mumbai” on the stamp itself, or worse, he has not seen any entry stamp from Mumbai (or Indian visa, for that matter) and needed some help from the passenger to get his facts on the ground straight.

Either way, what is obvious is that this lone immigration officer managed to process five passports in about half an hour.  The author is very glad he showed up for an early morning flight, otherwise, he wouldn't know if he can make it for his flight on massive immigration check lines.  A beautiful conclusion on introduction to Indian bureaucracy, an institution that defines almost every part of Indian public life, and how the country seem to function, and more often, not function.

It is for better and worse.  If well-organized, it does manage to bring big projects forward.  The superb main roads and metro system at Delhi, in comparison to Mumbai, is a good example.  Despite much more capital in the hands of the Mumbai municipal council, the capital’s government has shown that effective planning and utilization can bring massive bang for the buck while minimizing the corruption amid bureaucratic chaos that is endemic to cities across the country, including Mumbai.

But for most, the bureaucracy, at least on the surface, is precisely what is wrong with the country.  The airport immigration experience, an equally slow reception at a government guesthouse where the author stayed in Delhi, and same at the foreign exchange counter at a state-owned bank clearly illustrate that it is not too exaggerating to equate Indian bureaucracy with inefficiency.  The delay associated with running the normal procedures undoubtedly causes massive opportunity costs at both the personal and collective level.

Still, though, back on the “better” side, the bureaucracy is a source of consistency for the country that has (and continues to see) frequent political upheavals in the hands of elected politicians.  Compared to the incessant political intrigues and deadlocks of parliamentary elections and their aftermath, the bureaucracy is a sea of calm and stability.  Ironic as it is, people do claim that it is the bureaucracy, much of the elite civil service established by the British, which keeps the country together.  It is an interesting notion, to say the least.