Update on policy making

I witnessed few very strange things.

1. Tatkaal line had more than 20 people while normal line had no one.
This points to two things:
---One, people do not mind paying more money if they are getting a better service.
---Second, People are getting impatient. They need quick service.

2. There were nearly 1000 people inside a small hall. At 5'o clock in the evening, Nearly 300 people were inside the hall.
This indicates:
---Officials and staff members who are working in the office are significantly burdened and regularly doing overtime. Thus any expectation of empathy or gentle communication is misplaced.
---The standards of service are not matching with the money charged with the consumer. The normal quota fees is 1500 while for Tatkaal it is 3500 rs. This means nearly 25% Indians (BPL) can never get their passport.
---This indicates a poor trend of "data-less policy". How:

Firstly, a common man can not afford to spend so much of their time on getting one identity card. I am young, I can stand for 6 hours but what about so many elderly. The number of seats installed for seating are disproportionately less than the scale of crowd present in the small hall of passport office in Ghaziabaad. And it is not very hard to imagine that Air-conditioning is rendered ineffective in such situation. While government is crying so much about "ease of doing business", I wonder why there is no focus on "ease of living" for a common man.

An informed policy maker has many levers to deal with this situation:
a. Increase the number of seats, office space, number of officer and Air-conditioning capacity.
b. Decrease the number of people you are inviting for service delivery.

However, it is easier said than done,
Take option b, If they decrease the number of people then It'll increase the delay in service. A person may have to wait for 6 month to 1 year for getting passport so clearly this option is not very futuristic.

Now option a, This requires money. Now one might wonder what about 3500 they have paid for Tatkaal. Is it not sufficient sum of money? The problem is, Government has outsourced some of the software to private companies who charge exorbitantly for those software pieces thus in order to compensate for such large tender, government charges more from people.

Why does software company charge exorbitantly? This is because most of the time there is nexus between bureaucrate-politician and businessman thus such tender processes are compromised. The large amount of corruption money which company pays to officials and public servant is recovered from the public at large. This is true for all the tendering processes and service delivery models. In fact, it would not be inaccurate to say that tendering and quality monitoring are the two points from where corruption seeps into the system.

Now why does official and politician take corruption and show favors? Simple, Apart from all moral reasons, firstly family welfare, nepotism etc influence the system. Second and more importantly, politician take money to recover the expenses in the election. He spends huge sum of money to party leadership and distribute good amount of alcohol and rupaiyaa to illiterate population in order to buy their vote. Thus He take bribe to recover the money.
Why this is not checked? Because, election commission officials are firstly not trained, secondly over burdened, thirdly fearful of being beaten, and fourthly have compromised their work ethics and job quality standards and fifthly take money for not doing their job properly.

Now why officials take money? For Politicians we understand that they have spent crores to satisfy the un-quenching power thirst of top leadership. But officials have come through competitive exams. What about them? The reason is most of the exams are compromised. Most of the state PSC members have political connections. They are appointed by politicians. Politicians take money from PSC members or give monetary targets to PSC officials in order to recover the money invested in the elections. PSC officials in turn charge money from the aspiring candidates. Aspiring candidate after becoming officers charge money from common man or the corporates. Corporates pass the burden to common man. Whoever is able to take the burden will have access to services and whoever is not in the position to pay will end up at disadvantage. Thus creating inequality in the system.


Any way coming back to the topic of passport office.
So for informed policy maker, It is essential to have data. How many people are getting their passport ready? How many people are expected to come? What are the places from where people are more likely to come?

On basis of this:
Either increase 5 days to 6 days working
Open regional offices so that person does not have to travel 500km twice in a week to get his passport
Increase the passport validity period from 10 to 15 years
Rent out more space and open additional services like cafeteria to recover their money

And most importantly, tell your officers to be strict but not obsessed, to be vigilant but at least be informed about the rules and not be fearful in accepting a clear cut case of valid passport.


Many other things, But time is an issue. I hope I had a machine which would read my mind and write down my thoughts but sad I dont have one yet.

Good night