Public-private partnerships are presented as a way of giving the public a more efficient, private-sector interface with government. Private contractors, we are told, will reduce delays, improve service, and free citizens from the worst excesses of bureaucracy.
But there is something perverse about this argument. Outsourcing a dysfunctional administrative process is an admission that the government itself cannot deal competently with the public. Instead of repairing its bureaucracy, it inserts a private company between itself and the citizen.
The bureaucracy does not disappear. It acquires another layer, for which the public must pay.
In many countries, front-end services for Indian passports, visas, consular matters, and identity documents have been outsourced to either BLS International or VFS global. The Indian government continues to make the rules, but BLS/VFS Global receives the applications, checks the documents, collects the money, and deals with the public.
In our experience, the arrangement did not reduce bureaucracy; it multiplied it. Meanwhile, incidental sums demanded along the way had to be paid in cash.
Between us, we dealt with BLS/VFS Global offices in three developed countries. Outside those offices, life worked as one expects it to in a developed country. Inside was the chaos and confusion one expects in India. It was difficult to know where to stand, whom to approach, or what procedure was being followed. Exasperated applicants talked over one another, while people pushed, shuffled, and sometimes shouted merely to get someone’s attention. The online application process is supposed to be easy, yet the websites of these companies frequently failed to work. Even logging in was a major ordeal. Sometimes, just to schedule a simple appointment, we had to wait for weeks for a website to come back online and finally allow us to log in and book it.
Indians frequently take pride in the country’s reputation for producing IT experts. Indeed, Indians receive a large share of IT-sector work visas issued by countries such as the United States. Yet, ironically, many of India’s own websites still struggle to function efficiently and reliably.
At almost every visit, we were told that we needed new photocopies, new photographs, or something else that had not previously been mentioned. These ancillary services had to be paid for in cash, without receipts explaining precisely what the money was for. Outside many of these companies’ offices, much as we often see in India, vendors offering services such as notarization and photo editing have sprung up. One cannot help but suspect that, at the end of each business day, these vendors pass a share of the day’s legalized loot to the company employees who help sustain this arrangement.
They felt like legalized bribes: payments made because the cost of resisting them was greater than the payments themselves.
One of us spent nearly two years—and made about twenty visits—trying to obtain a routine document. The process appeared simple: complete the application online, assemble the documents on the official checklist, visit BLS, pay the prescribed fee, and submit the application.
But each visit produced another requirement.
The underlying legal facts had not changed; the paperwork had. The newly demanded certificates had not existed when the relevant legal act was completed years earlier. No allowance had been made for historical cases.
The Indian mission must bear much of the responsibility. BLS or VFS Global did not invent the underlying requirements. But outsourcing made matters worse. BLS was merely an intermediary. Had the applicant dealt directly with the embassy, an official might at least have told him during his visit what was missing. Instead, he submitted his documents to BLS, waited for BLS to obtain a response from the embassy, and then returned when another requirement emerged. In one of our cases, VFS employees took it upon themselves to decide that a legal document we had submitted would most likely not be accepted by the embassy. They therefore refused to accept our application, even though we had fulfilled every stated documentation requirement. Yet they did so only after making us pay one of those shoddy vendors to “fix” a perfectly legitimate photograph, claiming that its lighting was unacceptable. The same photograph had already been accepted without issue through the Indian embassy’s website, but the VFS employees still found fault with it.
If they knew they were going to reject a document that they themselves had verified during our first visit, why did they make us spend money altering the photograph? We all know the answer: legalized loot.
Far from reducing the number of visits, the additional layer multiplied them. BLS and the embassy bore none of the cost. They require a personal visit every single time. The applicant’s lost time was not their problem.
On two occasions, he was instructed to obtain additional documents directly from the embassy. Each required a separate application, another fee, a return visit to collect the document, and yet another visit to include it in the principal application.
These retrospective certificates function as cash cows for Indian missions. They might collect another $100, while the applicant lost an entire day with every visit. The waste of the applicant’s time was of no concern to either the embassy or BLS/VFS.
After nearly two years, the applicant was finally told that his application was complete. He paid the application fee. Then came another telephone call.
A further document was now required. Obtaining it would have meant traveling to another country—not India—and dealing with the Indian embassy there. This, too, was a new requirement.
At that point, the applicant gave up and requested a refund. The document was no longer worth pursuing. The process seemed endless.
The BLS representative told him that he would have to visit the office to obtain his refund. Once again, the applicant would bear all the inconvenience.
He demanded the refund in writing and asked why another physical visit was necessary. BLS agreed to return the money, without clarifying whether the full amount would be refunded.
The refund did not arrive. Several further requests produced nothing.
Finally, he served BLS with a formal legal notice. BLS might appear to applicants to be an extension of the embassy, but it remains a private company answerable through ordinary legal process.
The refund arrived in full two hours later.
Online forums contain many similar accounts. Applicants describe repeated visits, unnecessary photocopies and photographs, miscellaneous charges that are difficult to reconcile with official fee schedules, and documentary requirements that change from one visit to the next.
This public-private partnership has not removed bureaucracy. It has created another layer of bureaucracy and expense while further obscuring responsibility.
BLS and similar contractors are not sovereign bodies. Yet, from the applicant’s perspective, they occupy a monopoly position over compulsory state transactions. The government retains the authority, the contractor collects the money, and the citizen bears the delays and costs imposed by both.
We eventually stopped chasing the documents. We will find our way around the problem without further dealings with Indian embassies or BLS/VFS Global.
We hope never to have to enter either again.
