Done dirt cheap

Immigration outsourcing

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In George Orwell's dystopian 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the citizens of Airstrip One live under constant surveillance. Each room in every house is fitted with hidden microphones and cameras so that nothing of what his citizens do escapes the notice of the all-powerful 'Big Brother'. In Nepal the bogey of Big Brother is raised whenever India tries to meddle. At least part of this suspicion is warranted: starting with the first term of Manmohan Singh in 2004, India sought to actively shape events in Nepal through South Block bureaucrats and RAW spies. But India's unwarranted attention on Nepal dates back even further, to the times of British India which was keen to check the influence of China and Tibet in Nepal, and, whenever possible, to play on differences between Nepal and Tibet. Given this long history of Indian adventurism on their soil, Nepalis are rightly wary of the Koirala government's reported attempts to hand over a vital part of our immigration system to an Indian private company.

Or that, it seems, is what Nepali Congress ministers want. Home Minister Bamdev Gautam is said to be keen on contracting out the task of 'upgrading' Nepali immigration system to a Malaysian private player instead. Whatever the case, the manner in which such a sensitive issue has been handled is troubling. Our ministers have also played fast and loose with the law. All public works must be contracted out by stepping on the Public Procurement Act, which provisions for bidding by interested parties. From this pool of bids, one is picked. This ensures transparency, and selection of the most suitable candidate. Yet attempts are underway to bypass bidding and award the contract to a handpicked company; and thus the parliament's Public Accounts Committee's directive. PAC has asked the government to stop the process of outsourcing visa processing and ordered the government to submit all related documents.

It has a point. How can we entrust a foreign company (chosen through dubious means) with vital information like who comes into the country and who goes out; the length of their stay; and personal details of Nepali citizens like citizenship and passport numbers? In its defense, the government says that it had no option since the manpower and technical knowhow that is needed to digitize Nepal's visa administration are unavailable here. That may be true. But if so, why not send Nepalis for training on 'e-visa' in one of the 100-odd countries which already have such a system? The returnees can then train more Nepalis. That is the right way to go about it. The current course is not just misguided but also dangerous. It threatens civil liberties and impinges on the country's security.

Big government agencies like the National Security Agency (in the US) and the Center for Development of Telematics (in India) have become extremely adept at mining people's data. Many of the Muslims spied on by America's NSA have landed in torture chambers in Guantanamo—wrongfully, it turned out. India's growing surveillance system, Human Rights Watch fears, could "target critics, journalists, and human rights activists." Why go down such a perilous path?