Orange is the new blue
NEW DELHI— In India, the rich and poor inhabit vastly different worlds. Now, many fear, new government rules will deepen that divide with different-coloured passports.
India’s Foreign Ministry recently issued new rules saying that citizens who require emigration checks will now carry orange passports, while those who don’t will carry blue ones.
The new orange passports are supposed to protect vulnerable labourers from ex- ploitation abroad, but critics argue that the orange and blue colour coding could lead to discrimination against poor and illiterate workers and effectively render millions of Indians second-class citizens.
India is the world’s largest exporter of migrant labour; one in 20 migrant workers worldwide are Indian-born — a number that has rapidly risen in the past 25 years. Indian émigrés sent home $69 billion (U.S.) in 2015. But many of those who travel, especially those who provide cheap, unskilled labour, are very vulnerable to exploitation.
To protect workers, India requires unskilled migrants to get clearances from the Indian government before travelling to a number of countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Malaysia and Yemen.
The new passport design, the Foreign Ministry said, would do away with the last page and instead use the coloured covers to differentiate so that it will make it easier for immigration and law enforcement officers to spot travellers who require vetting before they travel to certain countries. The theory is this would also make human trafficking more difficult as border officials would immediately know who needs the extra permission to travel.
Oomen Chandy, former chief minister of the southern state of Kerala, said, “the moment an orange colour passport holder lands in a foreign country, he will be treated with disdain, and it will have a telling impact on people’s character and individuality. This should not happen.”