As I step into the Patiala house courts grounds for the first time, I am confronted with a bleak reality. Amidst the deplorable state of cleanliness and the general disarray I am forced to face the thought that perhaps we need to awake to the need for a radical change –a radical shift in the functioning of administrative divisions.
Given my newfound optimism in life, I was able to cast a blind eye to the disorder at the passport offices, but a quick trip to the MEA offices for apostillization had me thudding back to reality.
Going with the optimistic tone that I am trying hold here, I will shed only minimalistic radiance on the reasons that compel me to think what I’m thinking.
An average citizen of the country in need for a basic service such as renewal of travel document, flutters to the passport office with much hope having taken the day off from work. He/She hopes he/she has all the documents mandated and progresses at snails pace to the window. Fast forward thirty minutes and he/she has been reprimanded for being in the wrong queue, with the wrong documents and for having created a commotion. The hopeful innocence has trickled down his/her forehead by now and all that is left are fractious fragments of doom.
Another dampner for the complete novitiate could be a sense of complete disillusionment upon arrival. With forms in tow and faith in his/her heart the fledgling arrives promptly at 9 am and looks around for a friendly face and sees none. If he/she could just ask someone -where to go and what to do? So without a scintilla of doubt that his/her resilience would pay off, he/she strides purposefully toward the mass of crowd that looks like a queue. Come, 10 am and our novitiate is standing in a corner sipping water, letting the five varied answers he got from the crowd do their own sordid dance in his/her head.
It would suffice to say that given the rapid development we are observing today in infrastructure (Cometh Commonwealth Games 2010) and other corporate miracles being witnessed everywhere, it is excruciatingly important that the administrative departments progress proportionately if not in tandem.
Perhaps it is time we develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Model Business Processes (MBPs) for these wings of the government. It would be interesting to wonder how this might be conceptualized. To begin with the Government can hire consulting firms to study the AS-IS processes of various departments involving interface with the general populace. Followed by which they can carry out a gap analysis and come up with a model process which would expedite the functioning of the department at the same time enhance customer satisfaction (After all we are paying taxes and a fee for the service!). Development of standardized practices all across would result in readily available information at various portals to the citizens of the country to prevent redundancies and omissions, which in turn further enhance the functioning of the departments.
A simplistic illustration; If there are large displays indicating the process of acquiring a new travel document detailing layouts, instructions and lead time, the time devoted to answer incessant questions at application windows could be avoided. Also, we observe that token numbers are distributed to applicants for which they are required to queue up hours before the counter opens up. Now, would it not be easier to install token dispensing machines and utilizing the excess manpower on other domains such as enquiry counter, extra form verification counters, helpdesks?
I would be wrong to say that things have not improved at all over the years-they have indeed. But if we are to say that we are fortified and liberal in our existence as a nation we must replace the hackneyed ways with a professional optimism.
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