Independence Day!

26th January, Republic Day. This day 57 years ago, India became a republic after gaining independence from the British. But their legacy lives on… the language, roads, railways, judiciary…… and of course, the persistent malaise of bureaucratic red tape. But India at with a mere 60 years of experience is a mere novice in the arena of bureaucracy unlike Great Britain, where it has been lifted to the level of a fine art. Since moving to London in late 2004, I have been at first been stupefied, as a result of seeing things through Indian eyes, where ‘developed’ ought to be better, and then gradually enraged at the most ridiculous and unimaginable delays brought on by the stalwart bureaucratic bulwark here. When we arrived, it took us a month to get a BT phone connection. I could get one in Bombay in a days time, so what could BT possibly be doing for the remaining 29?

Next came the unanticipated challenge of the bank account. A simply procedure (given that in India in the past one needed to be introduced by 2 existing account holders, citizens of worthy standing, above reproach) of opening a bank account has to be experienced to truly appreciate the finer points of UK’s bureaucratic supremacy. In hindsight, I was one of the fortunate ones – being an exalted ‘premier’ customer with the bank in India, I had a superior status to any normal applicant, already having been vetted to be worthwhile the bank’s time to assign a ‘relationship manager’ – apparently cultivating me was important enough to them in India, so it wasn’t even a matter of my suitability or my presumption to open an account with the erstwhile HSBC, but rather a matter of formality to have me introduced by HSBC India. Not rocket science – but naturally, copious amounts of paper work must be involved. It would be gauche of me to expect such an old and venerable organisation to just do things electronically….. in this day and age and in shuddering bad taste. So, I wait patiently to be summoned by the bank… and after a week, greatly and justifiably miffed given my exalted status in Bombay, vent my frustrations on my relationship manager in Bombay, only to be told the paperwork had been dispatched just after my email ….. and that too by courier (yes, I did ask if they had entrusted it to the Indian postal system with its endemic reliability problems). So you’re possibly wondering, what could have happened? Quite simple really – even elementary you could say…. The paperwork was in London as a matter of fact, but hadn’t reached the desk of my new relationship manager…… !!!

Now why I would have assumed they’d automatically check incoming post, is beyond me and only emphasises my lack of comprehension in these weighty matters. So eventually, after two excruciating weeks was I grandly bestowed with a savings account in the UK and I’ve been assured by other expatriates, that I was very fortunate to get it done so quickly!! Boggles the mind….. but what made me think about the past, is of course, the present, and yet another brush with the delicate fronds of UK’s inscrutable government – a whole new level of bureaucratic inefficiency. If only this was a category in the Olympics, you wouldn’t be reading nearly as much about Britain’s hopes or rather the lack of them in the 2012 Olympics! But I digress – so easy to do when there’s steam coming out of ones ears. Having arrived on a dependent visa on the coattails of my erudite spouse, a student, it now came time for us to extend our visas. The Home Office website, optimistically (and now in my mind entirely untruthfully!!) states that most applications – almost 70% are processed within 4 weeks. So, instead of writing this from my Mom’s place in Bombay while enjoying a display of nationalistic pride watched over by the Russians and eating something deliciously spiced, I’m negotiating my way through an indifferent sandwich in the grey and freezing London weather. We submitted our application on the 2nd of January as soon as we got back from our Christmas break, and promptly received an acknowledgement from the Home Office stating that they were indeed in receipt of our request and that they would assign it to a case worker who would get in touch with us if our application was deficient. Most impressive thus far… and being a gullible fool lulled by the false sense of security brought on by this missive, I rebooked my ticket to Bombay for March 8. Enough room to manoeuvre even around the home office or so I naively thought.

Well, it’s my duty to inform you, that I was sadly mistaken – why? Oh I don’t know – a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ perhaps? Or could it be the call to the Home Office this morning to check the procedure to expedite an application as I now had a business meeting fixed in Switzerland at the end of February? After being bored to tears by the automated system, a rather anaemic male voice hesitantly introduced himself as Steve – while I gave him my spiel and the all important reference number, there was absolute silence form the other end, making me wondered if I’d lost my tenuous connection, but that was not to be – instead my blood pressure steadily climbed north, when, after noisily consulting with his computer, Steve reported that our application hadn’t yet been assigned to a case worker ….!!

I’m still taking deep breaths, but my ears still feel warm. At the end of a month (70% processed according to their libellous website!!) they still hadn’t gotten around to allocating the file to someone to review. Beat that. Back home, I could have paid someone to move my file from one desk to another….. corruption you say – hmmm, but then again, could it be a commercial interpretation - introducing the alien word ‘efficiency’ to the otherwise thriving bureaucracy? To be fair though, the Passport Office in India has progressed by leaps and bounds – they have a fixed time it takes to get your passport back, whether it’s the same day, a week, month or 3 months, but by God – they do deliver. But to be blithely told that my application was just languishing there after nearly a month – the GALL!! I have this tremendous urge to slap someone – preferably several people at the Home Office – justifiable remedial therapy as it were. But instead, I’ve come to the sad conclusion, that this is now the time for me as an Indian to just bow to the masterful hand of the British Bureaucracy and admit out loud to the world and more so to my Indian brethren, that we take a false pride in our inefficient, corrupt, laggard and supremely useless public and government sectors.

We are but chelas….. merely aspiring to greatness….this is the birthplace of bureaucracy and any upstart colonist with grandiose visions of having surpassed their guru is merely to be pitied as delusional. So now, I’m off to another favourite British pastime – dashing off an indignant letter to the Home Office berating them from their gross ineptitude. But I lie. It’s a letter humbly requesting them to expedite my application and return my passport in time, naturally, duly supported by the firms senior partner, on the company letterhead. After all, I am from the colonies….