The FRRO Process:

March 5th 2008 - Since I entered the country as a foreigner I had to get myself registered at the FRRO. Shalini, the IOS consultant, was helping me out with the process. She helped us out in our relocation also and is a lot more than an IOS person to us almost like family. She gave me the good news that we don’t have to go all the way to old city for the process. Cyberabad has a new office now and documentation requirement is also a lot less. The form was to be filled online and it all seemed so 21st century until we reached the office. No matter how much technology and advancements you have once you have to deal with people not much changes. The ACP who is supposed to be a work around 10 never shows up till 11:30. We got there at 11:30 as Shalini knows the drill. Then you go in and the folks there validate information you entered online with the supporting document you carry. The person doing it seemed like he was seeing the computer for the first time. So after a painful half an hour and help from some other guys we got through it. One of the questions in the form is Place of birth, for which I entered SANGLI, my birth city. Now this moron is trying to match SANGLI with his document that requires INDIA. So I told him SANGLI is in Maharashtra. He goes: which COUNTRY is that. I didn’t know whether to roll with laughter or kick him so hard in his brain that he remembers some history and civics lessons. You really cannot make technology work with these kinds of jokers. Then they take a picture of your IRIS. Another half hour to figure out how to do that. The printer in the room was not working so they had to print it in some other room and fetch the documents. It took them 15 minutes to get the documents so I think it also includes a tea break. Then two other folks sign/stamp it and pretend to check it. After this entire circus we have to go to the ACP’s office for the final signature. He is a bit agitated as we were interrupting an important TV show he was watching. He looks at the documents and points out a mistake of the expiry date of the FRRO permit. Apparently the program has the classic developer’s bug where you don’t clear/refresh a field before populating it. If you don’t clear it and leave it blank then the old values carry over and that’s what happened in my case. At least the ACP justified his salary by pointing it out but what were the two morons being paid for. They signed, stamped and pretended to validate my docs. Our tax money working really hard. So went down and then they decided to do a manual override. But guess what, it was their lunch time by then. So another delay of about an hour and after several attempts they finally had the documents ready. So we go to the ACP again. Well he is still watching another TV show. Takes our docs and starts signing. After 3 out of 5 signatures another dude walks in. I am sure he was more important than me as the ACP starts a dialog in Telugu for good 5 minutes. Finally it is all done and we come down. So something that should have taken about 30 minutes took us 6 hours. The consolation was the manager below apologized for the delay by blaming it on lack or resources and technology. Wasn’t technology supposed to simplify life? It will, if the right people use it. Mera Bharat Mahan.