Wishing my fellow Indians on Independence Day on Facebook, I referenced my Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card and borrowed from Nehru’s words 75 years ago to note that my own ‘tryst with destiny’ lies in both India and the US, where I now live. India’s warmth, wonders and diversities – however threatened and pummeled – will always be home. My janambhoomi.But there’s another India that lives on – that of the omnipresence of authority or sarkar in our everyday lives in India and its diaspora. This holds even for digitalindia.gov.in where we visit 21st century government websites or those of its contractors, including OCI services. The Modi government, however, did not altogether invent the incarnation of our sarkar that can be traced from post-colonial back to Vedic days, if not earlier.Modi continues, quite vehemently, an older tradition through his sarkar – that of hierarchy, ignoring the wishes of millions, and making sure that the intricacies of sarkar’s workings occupy the inner recesses of our heads – in my case whether I live in Washington, DC, or when I return to my village of Dedhgharat in Tehsil Kandaghat, Himachal Pradesh.The cultural hold of sarkar in everyday life of India is admirable – the ratio of government versus civil citizens in India is quite low, with only 32 lakh Central government officials, which includes railways. By contrast, there are 21 lakh government officials in the US federal government for a population that is about one-quarter of India’s. The sarkar’s imprint on Indian minds must be understood historically through the everyday acts of its authority.Also read: When It Comes to Digitising Healthcare – It’s the Government, SillySarkar in the digital ageMy experience renewing the OCI card, that I referenced on Independence Day, reminded me of the continuities of sarkar in the digital age. While OCI cards were issued for a lifetime when the programme began in 2003, the Modi government announced late in 2019 that OCI cards for some categories must be renewed and published new rules for those obtaining OCI for the first time. OCI cards can be denied for ‘unpatriotic and anti-national activities’. In short – sarkar did this because it could, and because it is among the many measures to quash dissent.My experience and anxiety about OCI renewal were informed less from fears of being viewed as ‘anti-national’ as it was about dealing with the ‘Digital India’ private contractors, namely VFS Global, that processes the OCI applications and thereby expands government functions. While conducting academic research on IT and e-government contractors in India, a senior government official in Himachal once told me that private-sector contractors are prone to behaving like government officials. His implication was that the privilege of acting like government must be limited to government. This begs the question: what does acting like government or sarkar mean?At first glance, it all seems so efficient: VFS Global has digitised the process of OCI renewal. But VFS, as one finds out through successive interactions, has taken on the mantle of being semi-sarkar. From colonial days, this has meant, as I have written elsewhere, taking on habits of authority in material and digital environments.The VFS website comes with pages and pages of instructions – a PDF file in fact, on how to obtain an OCI card and what to fill out at each step. However, there’s no button or tab for OCI renewal. The smart-sarkar-fed-and-reared potential OCI person must figure out that it must be the application for “miscellaneous services”. That’s the easy part. The uploaded picture must be of a certain size, and departs from most global norms. This takes some digital acumen and infrastructure on the applicant’s part. There are many supplementary documents to be submitted along with the physical application that must be printed out and sent to VFS. Many of those supplementary documents are not mentioned in the instructions.This boring laundry list of bureaucratic minutiae is important: the Indian sarkar has lived in our heads through these micro intrusions. The intricacies and opacity of rules is such that applications for anything can be denied, rules reinterpreted and justified, and the supplicants blamed at any stage. An email I sent to VFS Global about the total charges for the application included a list of unspecified charges that it called “etc.”My OCI application was returned once because they could not find a record of it on their computers. It magically reappeared when I chose to pay by credit card rather than money order. Although the website offers both possibilities, the credit card ‘functionality’ was not easy to find on the website, and therefore I had opted for a money order (returned to me). I had to send supplementary documents three times by courier as VFS officials finally realised what they deemed missing. VFS-sarkar had the authority to make me comply if I wanted my OCI card renewed.While a great deal has been written about the recent changes to OCI card and the Modi government’s agenda, we need to equally understand another continuity here: the workings of sarkar in the everyday life of Indians where every new micro rule change has produced headaches and anxieties, and a sub-class of contractors and sub-contractors. Economics calls this high transaction costs, but these calculations ignore the psychological and cultural dimensions of governments.A few scholars call this the ‘neo-liberal state’: Indian historians can easily remind them of similarities with the Vedic or Harappan state – in the evolution of the caste system, patterns of land ownership, religion and governance, or the habits of written records that justify many means to no end. Many of us grew up with government offices being surrounded by black-coated advocates, clerks, and auxiliary services for filling out forms and photostatting papers (or carbon copying them in an earlier era).Of course, if you have ‘connections’, you can bypass these intermediaries. My mother, an Indian citizen determined to always follow the correct procedures, lives in my head – she railed against authority but forbid us to bypass it. I got used to standing in lines.Also read: Government Assault on Digital Media Reflects Modi’s ParanoiaMy experience is not just that of a complaining NRI or OCI, sometimes derided in India’s media. Unlike these media, usually situated in metros and big cities, my home in India is in village Dedhgharat that I mentioned above. Trips to India often mean spending time at the sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) or tehsil headquarters in Kandaghat where most services are now digitised, but the new building carries old icons: quite literally that includes a giant statue of Shiva that now sits in its main lobby. Himachal is Shivbhoomi, after all!As with OCI and VFS services, the SDM’s IT-centre services staff can turn you away because you printed out the electronic application on the wrong-sized paper, or it wasn’t single-hole punched in the upper-left-hand corner and duly tied with a pheeta (tag), or placed correctly in that inimitably Indian file that can be purchased for Rs 10 outside the offices.In 2018, my driver’s license application could not get approved for days because the SDM was on pooja duty. I am not sure if he was on leave or whether pooja duty is now required of SDMs.I submit that there is a direct connection with the culturally repetitive everyday life of sarkar and the kinds of new threats the Modi government makes against Indian citizens, overseas or domestic. Habits of authority die hard. It is only through consciousness and protest against these micro aggressions, from the tehsil to the global levels, that we can change this culture. I miss my mother: She was masterful at this!I also submit that any potential OCI or OCI-renewal person who successfully completes an OCI application online should be immediately granted an OCI card. Only a legitimate person of Indian origin can figure out the application’s intricacies. You possibly cannot be a deshdrohi if the love of Bharatbhoomi drives you to endlessly indulge in arcane and time-consuming habits of authority bestowed from sarkar and its ancillary contractors.While deeply troubling, the changes in OCI rules are consistent with the workings of former sarkars. There is continuity in the driver’s license, citizens’ quota, or sundry permit Raj in India. Ultimately, the continuity is the deep cultural impression, and both the frustration and resignation to the working of sarkar in our lives.Sarkar will always have a special meaning for everyday life in India. Notice we call each other sarkar when we are being polite and respectful – or, for people like my mother, being diffident.J.P. Singh is professor of International Commerce and Policy at the Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, and Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow with the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. His research addresses issues of culture, technology, and political economy.
