Bureaunia Chronicles: Episode 14
Last episode had Aithorix reminisce his first time at a passport office in Bureaunia as he waited more than eight hours to collect a passport form. This week, he concludes his memories about the entirety of the passport process and how he felt as he left Bureaunia to go for higher studies.
After my eight hour long ordeal at the passport office, I had finally received the form. I had to come back a week later to submit the completed form with a passport-size photograph and a small fee. In between, there were other queues in which I had to stand: at a studio for passport-size photographs, a bank to pay the passport application fee and at a collection booth to obtain a paper receipt to submit to the passport office. If I made a mistake on the application form consisting of 4 pages with 50 odd questions, I’d have to go through the process all over again from scratch, starting from collecting a new form.
I was lucky. I did not make a mistake on the form and got the approval from the passport office after standing in the queue only twice! I could not be happier, but then I learned that I was only part of the way through. I would have to apply for a police verification to validate my address. So, the next application was to the police station.
Was the police station not part of the government machinery? Did the government not have that information somewhere?
I guess the police station did not have it because I had never been arrested, and the passport office certainly did not because it was my first time applying for a passport.
However, the obvious thought did not escape me: to get one document, I was shuttling back and forth to the passport office, bank, police station, and God knows where else.
Weeks had passed since I had applied for the police verification at the local police station. One day, a policeman arrived at my home and promptly asked for a bribe. By then, I was half prepared for it. My belief that the Bureauniai civil service was inept at its best and corrupt at its worst was fully realized.
I will skip the details about how I handled the bribe situation. I finally received my passport and got out of the country. I vowed never to deal with the Bureaunia civil service ever again.
In fact, all my high-school friends, with an exception of one or two, used whatever means they had to go abroad for undergraduate or graduate studies, settling into professionally productive, familially comfortable, and financially secure careers outside of Bureaunia.
And isn’t that a familiar story in almost all low-income countries? Governments serving people poorly, and societies not offering opportunities to maximize human potential. Brain drain, they call it. An issue that perpetuates with no sign of stopping any time soon.
Bureaunia is imaginary, but the brain drain is real for every developing nation. Next: Episode 15 — A Familiar Story… That Only Gets Worse for the Poor
Anir Chowdhury
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