War on Terror, India Style

I'm still living in a hotel at the moment - I picked a flat but it is not exactly move-in ready, so I've got a weekend of youth hosteling. So I thought I'd share a bit about Delhi's hotel culture.

Now, back when I was in my turn-down-the-high-thread-count-sheets-for-you hotel, I was not bothered by such unsightly blemishes as notices of the Indian state. Having moved down market, however, the first thing I saw above my new innkeeper's desk was a sign reading: "Hotel and Boarding House Owners - Use Caution when Registering Guests: THEY MAY BE TERRORISTS" That last bit is actually underlined, too, but blogspot doesn't seem to have that formatting option.

Frankly, the Indian government is fighting a war on terror that makes even that ridiculous "3 oz bottles in a 1 gallon zip lock bag" rule seem positively accommodating. Similar innkeeper signs were not in place when last I visited, which strikes me as a bit odd because there have not really been any big terrorist attacks since that time. They've also added new regulations for the insidious "Cyber Cafes" of Delhi. Not only must one submit a photo ID before using a computer, the shop must record the exact computer I use, my precise time slot on the computer, and my contact information in my own handwriting (so says the notice on the wall -- the clerk actually skipped this. He is watching a DVD, though, which I'm sure the Delhi police would understand). Oh, and in addition to all this annoyingness, as a foreigner I have to register myself with the government providing a notice from my landlord saying that I am, in fact, living where I claim. Then a clerk will come and verify that I am living at that address.

You might think that, given my interest in India's wars, I'd be more sympathetic to the notion that there might be a looming threat to the state. But all this recording of me is, as far as I can tell, at best designed to be able to find and prosecute me after the fact and at worst purely cosmetic. Because all of this info -- at the hotels, at the cyber cafe, and, I can only assume, in the back offices of the government -- gets entered by hand into these massive Bob Crachet style ledgers. Bigger than atlases and cracking at their seams, these books record row after row of visitors in largely illegible handwriting. Now what, may I ask, is the ace Delhi police force going to do with those? No doubt they are diligently filed somewhere for some poor future graduate student's coding project, but is this their plan for tracking those who might wish India harm? (Adding to the silliness is that among the acceptable IDs for these registrations is a ration card which, what with being attached to free food and all, has a fairly brisk black market circulation. Something like 80% of all circulating ration cards, in fact, are thought to be illegally obtained.)

I don't mean to make fun of the Indian state for its somewhat inadequate capacity. But this program has all the earmarks of mediocre governance: the generation of pork barrel jobs due to the program's requirement of thousands of hours of civil service time and the unassailableness of those jobs because, after all, shouldn't the state be fighting terrorism. But a nimbler program that aimed for less would almost certainly accomplish more. Stupid politics.