Indian visa
It seems almost impossible to get an Indian visa without going through a myriad of hassles and harassments! Hardest hit seems to be those of us who are either tourists or those who want to visit India for medical purposes.
What surprises me most is that the Indian High Commission had promised a sea of change in the whole visa process by introducing the e-token system. To a certain extent it has worked; I no longer see the lines of people queuing up all day in front of the High Commission. What remains a mystery, however, is how to exactly get an e-token off the Internet. I have seen people waiting till 4 in the morning to get one of those fabled tokens!
Getting an e-token is merely the first step. The date on the e-token tells you when you can submit your passport. But usually the date is at least two weeks from the day you get the e-token. This means that a visitor needs a minimum of 3 weeks. The irony is an Indian citizen visiting Bangladesh needs only 2-3 days to get the paperwork processed. Where is the justice in all this?
Good news is, in most cases, once you submit your passport, you usually get it back with an Indian visa. The operative word is “usually” since sometimes, you get your application rejected without any kind of rationale or reasoning, without any recourse to appeal immediately. And that's when another journey begins, which I call “the dance with the dalals” (middle-men)!
Patients waiting for their visas have it worse. Aside from the 3-week wait, they also have to submit “authentic” paperwork certifying their maladies, as well as the bona fide quality of the institution they are visiting.
The first part is easy enough, but providing “authentic” documents of the validity of thousands of medical centres in a huge country like India sometimes proves extremely difficult. Often, confusion leads to further delays, and eventually even visa rejection.
The mother of all ironies is that if a patient does get a visa and does land in India, he/she will have to fill a police diary within 14 days of arrival. In contrast, a holidaymaker has to do no such thing. Where is the logic in that?
In spite of all this, I have hopes that the Indian High Commission is aware of these problems and is thinking of doing something about it.
Most Bangladeshis would love to visit our beautiful neighbouring country without such harassments.
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