Are Indians too hard on India ?
... I think we are ...
Everytime I land in Chennai, I am inevitably one of the last people in the queue for Immigration (because I have this fixation for the emergency exit row in the back of the plane). And there is a long queue usually, because most flights to India are 747's. I am usually extremely impatient at this point and cursing India and everybody in the Bureau of Immigration. The longest its taken me is about 25 minutes.
And you know what, the shortest time immigration has taken for me in the US is 40 minutes ! And I have never ever complained about that.
I think we are too quick to criticize India and too slow to criticize the Western World.
Everytime I land in Chennai, I am inevitably one of the last people in the queue for Immigration (because I have this fixation for the emergency exit row in the back of the plane). And there is a long queue usually, because most flights to India are 747's. I am usually extremely impatient at this point and cursing India and everybody in the Bureau of Immigration. The longest its taken me is about 25 minutes.
And you know what, the shortest time immigration has taken for me in the US is 40 minutes ! And I have never ever complained about that.
I think we are too quick to criticize India and too slow to criticize the Western World.
Comments
I read your blog on and off and I think its really good.
Talking about immigration queues, I just wanted to share something.
I am a Malaysian Indian, studying in the US.
In Malaysia, we have this system, whereby the Malaysian passports have electronic-chips in them, pretty much like your credit card hv chips...
So, when a Malaysian holding his or her Malaysian passport enters or leaves the country, there is no stamping or anything of the sort.
We just place our passports on the scanner, and it electronically enters the passport holder's entry or exit info in the system.
There is not even an officer at the counter (for the Msian queue), so its really fast.
This is a very good passport system in my opinion.
Less pain for the freq. traveler esp.
One reason the whole passport-e thing came up was for security.
If the passport got stolen, an expert could forge the passport and use it - change photo,name etc.
(Malaysia has a problem with Indonesian immigrants)
I think what happens with the e-passport is that, if it gets stolen, then u inform the police, this automatically goes in the system in customs...so the system will recognise that its a stolen passport/e-chip, and refuse entry/scanning...and I think there will be an alert..
Thats my understanding of it.
There is loop hole in both systems, e-chip or not.
But if I stole an e-passport, I have a higher chance of getting caught for it, in a paper passport, if the picture is changed carefully enough, ie expert job, is much, much harder to get busted for years and years...
I guess its matter of opinion.
Also, while you cannot completely eliminate the loop hole with this system,
I guess you can reduce chances of stolen passports by random checks...
But really is there a 100% fool proof, loop-hole-less system for this?
I was too curious u see...my mum literally asked me whether I was so dumb...??
She said that they scan both your finger AND your passport, she just came back into Malaysia couple of months back after a trip to India. So there...sorry...I forgot to mention that!
Guess I will have to make do with the good ol'Rodeo pub :-)
We try to get the Dress, technology and knowledge from US but the main thing most of the do not care is the Courtesy.
Moreover, when anyone cribs about the system, one should think about what he/she did something to correct it atleast for that present time and situation.
Good that you brought out this point.