Although I’m not willing to credit this until November 27 rolls around, the headlines are quite explicit:
India is launching the e-visa system (electronic authorization) on November 27, and the US is on the list of countries to be included, along with Germany, Israel, Palestine, Russia, and Brazil….making some 43 countries in all.
I sincerely hope this is the real thing, since we’ve had a number of false starts, trial balloons, and gaseous PR emissions from 2012 onward about the new visa system.
US citizens of Indian origin, a hapless lot, routinely fleeced by their motherland through every-changing visa requirements and hefty fees can shove some of that mountain of bureaucratic paper they usually need into the waste-bin.
This is no exaggeration.
To get a simple, garden-variety 6 month tourist visa to India requires (at last count) one detailed online application that asks for your parents’ birthplaces; four administrative forms (a declaration, an order form, a waiver, and something else I’ve forgotten); proof of your residence proof of your former Indian citizenship; proof of your renunciation of your former Indian citizenship; your passport, as well as copies of your passport and copies of your former passport; two checklists, one to be submitted in duplicate; a complex form for payment which costs $50 just for the postage.
The whole thing sets you back about $150, which is almost 25% of the cost of a cheap-cheap round-trip fare to India.
And THAT fare is made up about 30% of government fees.
The “for-profit” devils of the airline industry somehow manage to shuttle you across ocean and continent in record time, feeding and entertaining you all the way with various local lovelies at your beck and call, all for the price of an upscale room in a major city….whereas the “public servants” manage to spend nearly as much just to get through some increasingly nosy paper-work.
Meanwhile, who is running this consular snoop-fest which Indian-origin US citizens – and no other – must go through?
Her Britannic Majesty’s travel agency: Cox and Kings.
Which somehow is the inexplicable choice of super-nationalist Hindu patriot, salvation of middle-class India, Narendra Modi.
Hmm. What am I missing?
Here’s Wikipedia on CKGS:
“Timely alliances with the great banking families such as the Hammerlseys and Greenwoods secured an established position in London, and by the end of the 19th century most regiments used Cox & Co as their agents. As the empire grew, Cox & Co met the demand for officers to be looked after. The company set up five branches in India between 1905 and 1911.
At the start of World War I, Cox & Co employed some 180 staff, of which one third joined the army. During the war some 250,000 men were on their books, 50,000 cheques were cleared a day and a special department was set up to deal with the influx of American soldiers in 1917. By the end of the war some 4,500 people worked for the firm. Cox & Co suffered a downturn in business as a result of the end of the war in 1918.
After the war, Cox & Co. expanded to Alexandria and Egypt (1919 and 1920) and Rangoon (1921). In October 1922, Cox & Co bought Henry S. King Bank, who had a large network of branches in India. They also moved into new offices in Pall Mall. However, in 1923, still suffering from the 1918 downturn, Cox & Kings was forced to sell to Lloyds Bank.”
Empire, war, British banking families, London HQ, Lloyd’s, overseas colonies – it’s all here in the history of CKGS – outsourcing agency of choice of the nationalist BJP government.