Farrukh Dhondy | OCI card trauma: Tortuous forms & IT procedures must be reformed

“Ugliness, crime and disaster

Proclaim Darwin the master

Of theories of creation.

If these three are attributed to God

It should seem to believers pretty odd

That these are things of divine gestation.”

From Sticky Stuff, by Sue Puglu, Tr. from Esperanto by Bachchoo

My UK passport and my Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card were taken from me during my recent visit to Spain. I won’t say stolen because I carelessly left them in a cotton shoulder bag on a seat as I went to retrieve baggage from the carousel at Majorca airport, where I was on a work trip.

I came back from Spain, having got a temporary passport from the British consulate, and now thought I have to get a new passport and a new OCI card as I am invited to the Tata Literary Festival in Mumbai in mid-November and then a week later, to the Goa film festival to conduct a master-class. I set about applying for both documents.

The application for a replacement UK passport took half an hour to fill and send. It was immediately acknowledged and the fresh passport arrived by post within five days.

And then the saga of the OCI card began. I asked Google what I should do and was directed to an online form to fill. This form didn’t just require a photograph of my lost OCI card and a few personal details. It asked me for a copy of my report to the police about the theft. I went to the cop shop and got one. First step done.

The form then reasonably asked for my name, gender, date, country and town of my birth. It then asked for “distinguishing marks”. I took this to mean not the pirate’s eye-patch that I constantly wear to declare my maritime inclinations, but whether I had a red birthmark between my eyebrows, like a bindi. I said “none”.

Then my father’s name and profession and my mother’s name and profession (?) and of course both their nationalities. The next question was “Relationship with the Root Indian”. What??? I chose daddy and filled in “Father”.

Then the form demanded not only my present passport number but my previous passport numbers, my occupation and my employer’s name and address. A third sheet asked me 16 questions. Some pointedly absurd.

The second of these asked: “Have you surrendered/got your previous Overseas Citizen of India card cancelled?” if, gentle reader, you were filling in a form which started with your reporting your OCI card as lost or stolen, what would your answer to this question be?

There were other questions about criminal convictions, engagement in “human trafficking/drug trafficking/child abuse/ crimes against women/economic offense (sic) /espionage/genocide/cyber-crime/financial fraud/ terrorist activities/ political killing/other acts of violence?”

Genocide?? Are Putin or Netanyahu applying for OCI cards?

Then the form asked, in “Section B”, for a photograph and signature to be uploaded. I tried uploading both, which were stored in my computer, but was repeatedly told that neither of them was consistent with the very obscure, undecipherable (by me at last) technical specifications for the size and quality of either. I thought I had to seek the help of a friend who was a bit of an IT-walla and so I’d have to resume filling in the form at a later time. I pressed the “resume later” option and a reply came giving me a twelve-digit number to use when recalling my incomplete application to the screen.

When I resumed my quest, I tried using this number. Nothing. The computer directed me back to the very start. I started again. Yes, all the same absurdities and dead ends!

Gentle reader, I did this seventeen times. No exaggeration. It felt like what Delhi University males called KLPD. My IT-walla friend came over and spent four hours with me encountering the same problems, but finally got all the docs uploaded and sent.

Great! I got an appointment the next day to go to the visa-issuing office of the Indian high commission. I went, carrying the filled-in forms which they had acknowledged and returned, and the documents such as my passport and cancelled old passports, etc. The bureau was being stormed like the Bastille.

After an hour and a half in a queue, I presented my filled in forms, etc, to the lady at the single desk devoted to OCI applications. The queue behind me was, by then, at least thirty strong. Would the last man or woman get home by dinner time?

My turn came and the lady at the desk looked at my application and remarked that the spelling of Pune as my city of birth had suffered from a typo and was rendered “Pube”. I leant over and corrected it in pen.

No, that wouldn’t do. I had to start all over again. When I protested, she relented a bit and sent me to another operative who said nothing could be done and I should return in a week with the same papers. I didn’t point out that the form they had made me fill in and now rejected because of a typo, also had a spelling typo: “offense” instead of “offence”!

Of course, I appreciate that with more than a billion citizens, the Indian bureaucracy is overstretched, but doesn’t this tortuous format of forms and this relentlessly frustrating IT procedure urgently require intelligent reform?