A great step forward- getting hassle-free visas for India

India happens to be one from a group of countries, whose citizens are always treated with great suspicion, when they apply for a visa to visit a foreign country. But it was not so in the past, as I recollect from my experiences. It used to be very easy for Indians to get visas fifty years back. Even 30 or 35 years back, things were not that bad at all. In the seventies, no visa was required for Britain, Germany and Switzerland and for other nations travel agents used to get visas easily.

Things slowly changed, when affluent nations started fearing that because of no visa regime, large numbers of Indian workers may start migrating to their countries. As far as US was concerned, up to 1946, India was not even in the list of countries from where migration was allowed to USA. After that, it was given a quota of 100 immigrants. US also was the first country that started interview procedure for issuing visa and it was later picked up by UK. Other countries also have become very strict about issue of visa, over problems of immigration.

I do not really want to go in the reasons for such visa regimes and whether it is justified because issue of visa is really problem of that country. However,as visa regimes of other countries were tightened more and more and made more rigid for Indians, what was the Indian reaction? India also took reciprocal steps and tightened its visa regime. This step was perhaps the single most detrimental step from tourism dvelopment point of view.

As it is, India has a very bad image abroad, because of its high population, poverty, lack of infrastructure and pollution. The media world over add fuel to fire by mainly publishing negative stories about India, such as rape and crime. This instills even more fear and insecurity in the minds of tourists, who might want to try India.

Luckily, India's problems are not unique. There are many countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, or Indonesia, which face similar problems. These countries have however realised much earlier the potential of tourism as a business, which can bring rich rewards in terms of boost in local employment in the service industry and earning of foreign exchange. Countries like Thailand and Indonesia, neglecting the principle of reciprocity, introduced visa on arrival schemes. I have travelled to Indonesia and can vouch that this system works quite well.

No one can doubt India's potential as a tourism destination. There is such a wide variety available from beaches to mountains, religious places to remnants of ancient civilizations, jungles to deserts. Unfortunately, this potential has never been tapped. There are number of reasons for this but visa difficulty remains one of them.

Let us consider case of Cambodia. The country was war torn by series of civil wars for more than 10 years before peace returned in 1979. The country is poor but has tremendous tourism potential because of the 9th-11th century Hindu temples such as Angkor Wat. Cambodia gets between 3.5 to 4 million tourists per year and is a major foreign exchange earner for this impoverished country. The country has excellent infrastructure in tourist areas. But that is not all. It started offering electronic visas sometime in 2005-2006. Ease of getting these visas is one of the fundamental reasons for the stupendous tourism growth in that country. I can tell you from my experience in 2010, when I applied and received my travel authorization on line from Cambodia authorities, that the process really works well and hassle free. Perhaps the most important thing is that you can do all this from comfort of home and there is no anxiety in your mind, when you actually travel.

This week, finally giving up its long cherished reciprocity principle, India launched similar online visa facility for 43 countries including the US, Australia, Japan, Israel, Germany and Singapore. Travelers can apply for a visa from the comfort of their homes and receive a visa within 72 hours. The electronic travel authorization (ETA) will be valid for 30 days and the visa fee has been fixed at $62. Those traveling on leisure, short duration medical treatment, casual business visit or to meet friends and relatives will be eligible to apply. The facility will be made available at nine airports including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi, Goa, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Thiruvanathapuram.

Besides countries mentioned above, the other countries included in the first phase are Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, UAE, Jordan, Kenya, Fiji, Finland, South Korea, Singapore, Mauritius, Mexico, Norway, Oman and the Philippines. However Government promised that barring high-risk countries, we will extend this facility to almost every country in the world, phase-wise.

The new system will send an e-mail to the applicant after his application is approved, authorizing him to travel to India. A printout of this e-mail is all that would be required to be shown to immigration officer. Visa application can be made between 4 and 30 days prior to proposed date of arrival.

Besides, travellers of foreign origin, there are millions of people of Indian origin, who have taken foreign citizenship or are citizens by birth of that country. I can tell you from my little interaction with such Indian diaspora that travelling to India is a cherished ambition for many of them. Many of them find that getting a visa for India quite troublesome and avoid making trips to India. The new scheme is likely to be most beneficial to them. In coming years, I am confiedent that number of tourist arrivals in India are going to jump manifolds just by this single step.

29th November 2014

Visa troubles for Indians and Chinese

Recently, Henley & Partners, a firm that works on international residence and citizenship planning, has published in collaboration with International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade association that represents global airlines, a global index that ranks countries based on freedom of travel for their citizens. In other words this index tell us the number of countries that would allow Visa-free access to citizens of a particular country. According to this firm, “Visa requirements or the lack thereof are an indication of the relationship between individual nations and the status of a country within the international community of nations.”

It does not require great imagination to predict that India would be placed at a very low ranking on this index along with other poor and populous countries of the world. In fact, India has been placed at the the 74^th position with just 51 other countries giving visa-free access to their countries to Indian citizens.

There has been much discussion in Indian media about this and some consider it as damaging to the national prestige. Eric Neumayer, a professor of London School of Economics, writes in a paper and I quote “The poorer, the less democratic and the more exposed to armed political conflict the target country is, the more likely that visa restrictions are in place against its passport holders. The same is true for countries whose nationals have been major perpetrators of terrorist acts in the past.” India does not fit the bill here. There are no major terrorist organizations here, in fact country is a target of external terrorist threats.

Some experts believe that country’s low ranking could be attributed to the tendency of Indians to misuse policies or there is a tendency on the part of Indians to end up as economic refugees in foreign countries. Certainly there is some element of truth in this but what is wrong if a young man aspires to lead a better life and future by migrating to a country, where he might feel that he has a better chance? If you see history of United States, the country has been built by immigrants from east Europe, Africans and Hispanics with Chinese coming in later.

During years after independence, visa situation was radically different for Indians. No visa was required for Indians to travel to countries in British commonwealth including Britain itself. I remember that in 1975, when I had first made a journey to England, no visa was required and in fact there was a separate channel of entry at the ports for commonwealth citizens. In Europe, things differed from country to country. For Germany, no visa was required for Indians even up to 1980's. Switzerland and France required Visa but there were no restrictions and essentially it was a source of revenue for the Governments.

Things changed slowly after that and we have a situation today, where almost all developed countries require a visa for Indians. Many countries issue a visa only after interviewing personally the applicant. The principal reason for this is sited as Indians tend to enter these countries as tourists and then just stay on somehow. Britain is even thinking of a most radical step, when a few months ago, Britain’s Home Office issued a statement that visitors from India would have to pay a 3,000 British pound refundable bond for visas. India was placed among a group of “high-risk” countries that comprised of Bangladesh, Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Coming back to the global index I mentioned above, Chinese citizens have even lower visa-free access than India, with China placed at rank below India at 82, along with Cameroon and the Congo. Chinese are far more prosperous and have much more cash to spend. Even then, they need to apply for visa to almost all countries. Why is it so? It should be obvious by now that visa restrictions have nothing to do with poverty or richness of the applicant's country. According to me, there is a strange fear amongst most developed countries about Indians and Chinese, flooding in and settling down in their countries. Let me explain! For most of the developed nations, except for USA, the population growth rates per couple are actually negative or below population maintenance rate of 2.3. There is a shortage of labour and all these countries need to import labour. Many Indians and Chinese would be more than eager to migrate and work in the developed world because of much higher standard of living. The Governments of these countries are well aware of this fact, but the problem is that the ethnic populations of these countries, do not want to change demographic mixture in the country by bringing in Indians and Chinese, who form distinctly different racial groups. For this reason only, Britain prefers east European labour over Indian or Pakistani labour. East European labour is racially not much different from the native population of Britain. However we should note that this is not only an European phenomenon. Japan and Australia also have same worries. 

 

Recently Indian Government has announced visa on arrival for citizens of 40 countries, establishing an online application system for visas and facilitating visa on arrival for pensioners and those attending conferences. The countries under this regime also include the US, the UK, Germany, France, Brazil, Russia and China. This measure is to boost tourism and it is likely to remain just that. If some one is hoping that there would be some reciprocal concessions from these countries, he is likely to be disappointed. Visa regime for Indians, who want to travel abroad is unlikely to change and would might even become more and more restrictive in future.

Lastly to put things in proper perspective, out of the Indian population of 1.2 Billions, a very small percentage of people are really affected by whether Indians have visa free access to developed countries or not. They neither want to travel abroad nor can they afford it. For large majority of Indians, this might just be a remote difficulty faced by the rich of the land, and they are least likely to pay any attention to it. For them, the struggle for survival remains the biggest difficulty.

9^th October 2013