- I Paid A Bribe
- 14 years ago
- 1146 views
Bribe required to issue India passport to Indian citizen in Kolkata
- Passport
- New Passport Application
- Paid INR 2,000
In 1980, as an American-born U.S. citizen, I married an Indian national in Calcutta (now Kolkata). I returned to my country and my husband took about six months to wind up his affairs in his home country and then traveled to join me. He was a well-paid, well-educated professional person, a Government of India employee, with no criminal background. After arriving in the U.S. on a green card, he admitted that he had paid a bribe for the first and only time in his life. A Calcutta official, while conceding that my husband's papers were in order, had required him to pay a bribe of several thousand rupees to get his India passport issued so that he could come to the U.S. My husband later became a naturalized U.S. citizen and never had to pay anything for that privilege, other than the normal fees. India makes itself a laughingstock among nations by permitting widespread official corruption. I hope the website "I Paid a Bribe" achieves its objective as paraphrased from the words of the American John Basil Barnhill: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."