As a kid, travelling for me meant going wherever my parents dragged me. While that may be the case for most kids, I did have friends who had the option to let their parents know where they wished to go next. That concept seemed so alien to me, I always believed those friends were lying. Maybe they were, or maybe they were just rich. I did have some very well-to-do friends, who went “abroad” and came back to school with “foreign chocolates”. Those chocolates were the litmus test of whether you were part of their friend circle or not.
Today, I go wherever I feel like. With a year of prudent living, I can visit almost any country on Earth. Except for North Korea, I think. Life is great. God has been kind. Rough estimates show that even today, 90% of Indians haven’t seen the interior of an aeroplane. In 2017, that number was around 97%. In the last decade, while airlines have failed one after the other like our Olympics strategy, Indian travellers have fallen in love with everything about flying. What the Maruti 800 was in the 1990s, the Airbus 300 is today. It doesn’t matter the colour of the airline logo, Indians, like their aspirations, just want to fly.
See we are still a grotesquely poor country. I like to insert this line in every post to remind everyone of the reality and cool down the embarrassing Vishwaguru rhetoric. Every month, you will see a video of some 80-year-old man who is being taken on a plane for the first time in his life by his children. If the man pretends to be scared of flying, the video gets 1 million views extra. Works well with our emotional audiences. However, it also shows how far we are as a country that can genuinely claim to be middle-income, forget rich. But while we are on track to becoming a genuinely major power by 2047, the ones who have done well, are not waiting to reap the rewards.
Indians are travelling in droves. Not just to the usual haunts of Goa and Manali or religious destinations like Tirumala, Amritsar and Jammu. We are now spending our hard-earned money on international vacations in Singapore, Thailand, Switzerland, Amsterdam, Germany and in some cases Iceland! After whatever is taken away by the generous income tax department, these newly affluent desis decide to spend months planning and applying for visiting countries abroad. Did I say applying? Yes, even here, the (above) average Indian must enter a selection process. JEE as a teenager, CAT as an early adult and Schengen Visa as a pot-bellied man.
As a country with a lower per capita income than Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, we are also blessed with 1.4 billion people. Yay! There’s no wonder millions of Indians, across class, caste, regional and religious divides, emigrate abroad every year, in search of a better livelihood. Our socialist politics combined with a straitjacketed capitalist economy has done wonders for our oligarchs and a few million urban Indians like me. But it has also left a massive chunk of the population numbering hundreds of millions to eke out a paltry existence. While we have soundly countered extreme poverty, the next level to that isn’t affluence. The once extreme poor are still two bad monsoons away from slipping back into the death spiral of gareebi.
Many in this cohort are armed with pure desperation to make it work anywhere in the world. For them, there is nothing legal or illegal about earning a livelihood in a better environment. Lakhs of Indians move to countries abroad illegally every year. They work as cheap labour in farms, malls, restaurants, factories and any place that would take them. Some, unsurprisingly even turn to crime. Illegal immigration has been and will continue to be the biggest bone of contention in elections in the Western world. There are literal riots in the UK right now protesting against immigration, both illegal and legal.
I understand their concerns. However, to counter this, many of these countries, especially in the global north have decided to show their force where it matters most. Not on their borders or coastlines, but in air-conditioned offices in metro cities. The hottest battleground to stop illegal migration is swanky Visa offices where someone will decide if you can flex on your friends via Instagram or not. They will ask for your bank details, investments, past travel history, family details, reason to visit, internal travel documents, and of course the most important detail – your return flight tickets! Every time I apply for a Visa, I feel like I am begging someone to visit their country. Oh, and we have to pay them for this privilege. If your Visa is rejected, well, you can say goodbye to the money.
Countries are earning Millions of dollars in Visa processing fees. It’s no longer a bureaucratic procedure but a fancy toll naka. I paid extra to get in the premium lounge while applying for my Schengen Visa. I could see Antilla in the background through the glass windows behind the lady who asked me to prove I worked for the company I worked for. Then she asked me to prove I actually worked for my last company too. I was relieved I wasn’t quizzed whether I actually shit my pants in 2nd grade or it was all rumours spread by another gang.
While Southeast Asian nations are slowly introducing no Visa entries for Indians, it’s because they need us. Their economy depends on tourism and we are willing partners. I don’t expect Western nations to relax Visa norms anytime soon, but it would be nice if those with prior international travel get discounts for future applications. Or some kind of refund for rejections? Something that’s less humiliating. Something that doesn’t remind me I am still part of a third-world country, no matter how many WhatsApp forwards tell me Modi is brokering a peace deal between Putin and Zelensky.
I don’t expect things to change anytime soon. For now, I feel we can just voice out our frustration and keep paying for the sin of being a poor country with world-class aspirations. And no, India doesn’t have anything even close to Europe or even Thailand. 100-metre street patches in Phuket have more personality than the entirety of Pondicherry. Forget Paris. India has its own beauty and attractions. But an international vacation is its own thing. And despite all this, I will be ready for my next humiliation ritual powered by my desire to beautify my Instagram. I am kidding. Somewhat. 😉
Pol Ke Bol! 