- I Paid A Bribe
- 13 years ago
- 359 views
Inefficiency of Police department caused me to pay bribe
- Police
- Police Verification for Passport
- Paid INR 400
Recently I got my Passport renewed (yes the old one had got damaged due to oil stains and i had been to US even when it had stains; however now all of a sudden i was denied a trip as AAI started calling it as damaged) and a new passport for my wife. None the less, the story here is about how candidly does the police officers ask for bribe when you go for Police verification and involvement of agents.
At first, i got irritated with Police's behavior; however later thought about it and realized that it is inefficiency of Govt. officers which cause them and us to corruption. Ideally, police is supposed to go to your address and verify your living there and if you are no there they will send you a letter or call you. If they couldn't establish a connect they will send your application form back to Passport office. Say, in a day they can do this for not more than 10 applications and hence in a week they can do 60 application; however they receive in access of 100 application in a week creating backlog and hence the delay in the verification process. To make the scenario worse, @ time there may not be a dedicated officer for this and even if there is one, there is no back up for him/her.
To speed this up, we go to Police stations even before they could have gone to our house to verify if we live there and times even before Police contacting us. This is treated as a favor to us and hence Police ask for bribe because he/she is processing our application ahead of many others. Also, the work pressure and volume is too much on them with respect to their salary and hence the need for more money converting into greed for more money.
While I understand the rational behind this; however I am startled to realize the black money this generates. on an average 200 per applicant * 20 applications in a day makes it Rs. 4000/day * 6 days a week makes it Rs. 24000 a week * 4 weeks in a month makes it Rs. 96,000 per month * 12 months in an year makes it Rs. 11, 52, 000 in an year by one police stations. No imagine the impact across the country or even across 10 big cities in India and you end up generating millions of black money every year, which directly/indirectly funds terrorism, human and drug trafficking.
No let's talk about agents involvement in the process. I had my old passport with me and was applying for the new one and wanted to do it in tatkal; however the exact information on the tatkal process is not available with any one. I kept searching for a class 1 officer but every one denied to help. The inquiry counter @ passport office is equally useless and doesn't help. This forced me to go to agent, though I had all of my documents done on my own even before reaching him, he helped me out with the process and to my surprise told me that i don't need Character certification from anybody when i already hold a passport. I had to pay him Rs. 4000 for his consultation for which obviously he could not give me any receipt which again means black money. And again image this for the entire country or top 10 cities and you know the what amount we are talking about.
Clearly government's inefficiency to deliver is causing all of this. I understand it is not an easy job to manage this big a population; however there is certainly poor management and lack of vision @ execution level.