Rahul Jacob: Are we destined to remain tangled up in red tape?

I could only nod in sympathy while trying to suppress my own post-traumatic stress disorder from complying with odd rules in the gilded fantasy palaces that our privately run airports have become. But privatizing airports and private airlines have not stopped India’s love of rubber stamping from turning into an epidemic.

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At Bengaluru airport, Indigo Airlines will place a sticker on the back of your passport if you are flying abroad. The only explanation I have received is that this helps airport staff prevent domestic travellers from heading for international gates. Just moments after this conversation, however, I passed through a smart-scanner turnstile for international-flight gates that would almost certainly prevent this.

Government agencies are even better skilled at complicating simple matters. Trying to send 20 custom-made Christmas cards as a gift, I went to a post office to mail them to a friend in Sri Lanka. 

I was told that an international shipment of anything other than a document requires both a PAN and Aadhaar ID card. Muttering to myself like someone on the verge of madness, I raced across to my friendly DTDC outlet to be informed that it needed the same documents but could accept soft copies. The DTDC franchisee explained that these rules are necessary, as people might otherwise send illicit goods abroad such as gold and drugs. This made no sense to me, but for many people this logic is unimpeachable.

Living in India for the past six years after returning from Hong Kong, I have come to believe that decades of diktats from Indian authorities have transformed our once nimble private sector into a bureaucratic labyrinth for consumers. It is as if companies collectively have Stockholm Syndrome, the psychological condition in which a hostage begins to identify with his or her captor. 

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Staying this week at an upscale hotel in New Delhi, a colleague and I were presented a document saying that if we did not sign a routine pre-authorization for expenses, we would have to pay for services every time we used them. No hotel outside India that I have stayed at presents its guests with such a declaration as a welcome pack.

Pity hoteliers, however, as they need more permissions than most from the government. This week, the head of a large hotel group told me about the company’s paper chase involving more than 50 permissions and assorted licences before a new property can open in western India. The process of getting clearances and constructing a hotel can take four to five years.

For middle and upper middle-class citizens, the creation of Aadhaar, now linked with PAN cards, has simplified life at many levels. Paying income tax online in India is almost as simple as internet shopping. But Aadhaar has become a default demand for companies going through their know-your-customer (KYC) paces. It is demanded even for checking in to stay at a club.

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In the process of redoing a KYC for an Airtel post-paid SIM card that a colleague has had for a couple of decades, she was told she must do this at the store she originally got the SIM from in Bengaluru. That shop had closed. 

Inevitably, her Aadhaar and biometrics were requested. The colleague pointed to the Indian Supreme Court ruling that ruled Aadhaar details cannot be insisted upon by private companies as a proof of identification, but the employee continued to insist on it. Rather than lose a phone number she’d had for years, the colleague eventually gave in.

Many of us experience this Indian equivalent of slow death by sustained pestering for supporting documents, but it is also the language of the government that wearies citizens. Consider this extract from a civil services communique: “The NPCSCB (Mission Karmayogi) aims at a multi-pronged strategy to achieve this objective that includes, inter-alia, a comprehensive training framework for civil servants with an active participation from eminent institutions of learning in both public and private sector. The foundation of this multi-pronged strategy for change will be laid through the Framework of Roles, Activities and Competencies (FRAC)." 

Now, I have worked as a journalist all my career, but must declare inter alia (more simply understood as ‘among other things’) that I am invariably intimidated by the prospect of reading government documents and their use of Latin phrases.

On such vague verbosity, ChatGPT promises salvation. Untangling India’s complex rules and regulations, however, might defeat several further new generations of artificial intelligence.

The author is a Mint columnist and a former Financial Times foreign correspondent.