On February 21, 2015, the Indian government launched (Help), an online grievances monitoring portal for Indian citizens living abroad. MADAD, which stands for MEA in Aid of Diaspora in Distress, allows members of the public to directly register their grievances on the portal so as to effectively monitor the handling process of the grievance until it is redressed.

MADAD gives NRIs an effective way to submit and monitor the status of their complaints online. Grievance categories include compensation, court case, domestic help, imprisoned abroad, marital dispute, mortal remains, repatriation, salaries and dues, missing cases, and others. The maximum priority will be given to cases related to bringing back mortal remains of a national.

If the complaint does not receive a response in a timely manner, the complaint will automatically be forwarded to senior officials.

Key Features of the MADAD Portal

The MADAD portal is a combined effort of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) to increase collaboration and contact with Indians abroad. This new grievance monitoring facility will help:

• Fix greater accountability on officials and help improve accessibility for people.
• Speed up the forwarding and handling of complaints, improve tracking and response, and escalate unresolved cases.
• Maintain entire history of the complaints registered online.
• Allow users to file complaints on behalf of another person by simply providing that person’s details.

The portal uses a color-coded system, following a red-amber-green pattern for tracking the complaints. Green color indicates cases that are cleared, while the pending cases will be indicated in red. The MADAD portal color-coding system will also:

• Automatically change in color to ensure the accountability, accessibility, and responsiveness of consulate officials or Embassy of India.
• Change to red color if the response is not given within a specific period of time and forward the unaddressed grievance to higher officials.

Indian citizens, those living abroad, can now reach the Government of India for any complaints with a high degree of accountability. The program is planned to have a customer service call center that will be linked to the Ministry of Overseas India Affairs. Visit the Portal at Madad Portal. The online consular grievance platform is presently available to India citizens living in the GCC Nations – Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE – and Malaysia.