In November 2024, service users at the Agargaon Divisional Passport and Visa Office in Dhaka stood in physical lines to submit or collect passport documents. Others waited in an outside seating area, while Ansar personnel maintained order inside. What struck the reporter was the near absence of the middlemen who had once influenced priority and processing speed.
The queue had not disappeared. Instead, its significance had changed: access was becoming visibly ordered rather than brokered through extra payments and intermediaries. People talked with companions or checked their phones while waiting. Administrative complications remained, but the lines inside the office had become an everyday measure of whether a public service was being delivered more fairly.