 "Mr Modi, first tell your officials to stop harassing NRIs")
Enthused by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Madison Square Speech, in which he welcomed NRIs to work for India, I came to set up rural projects in electricity and sanitation in India for free but was surprised to see what was in store for me at the New Delhi airport.
I left India in 1998 and moved to the United Kingdom from the Netherlands in 2008 and have been living in London since. My passport has over 50 stamps of arrival and departure stamps from various countries, including Finland, Sweden, Italy, Romania, France, Belgium, UK and at least ten stamps from India, including my arrival on September 17, 2014. My passport also has visas for Italy, UK visa and the US. My UK residence permit is on a separate A4 page with at least five UK Immigration stamps on it.
Still, I was shocked by the strange behaviour of an Indian immigration officer who seemed hellbent that I should miss my departure flight to London. Either he was ignorant of the laws or he was just trying to cause trouble for me.
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This incident happened when I was travelling from Delhi to London on October 14, 2014, by Jet Airways flight 9W-122 with a departure time of 13.45 p.m. and boarding time of 12.45 p.m.
The officer, who did not give me his name, asked me about my separate visa on paper. I told him it was given the by UK Home Office when a person cannot leave his/her passport with them for six months. Even after I told him the reason he was not ready to believe me. He asked me why my passport number was not on the visa. I told him this was a Permanent Residency visa, on which a passport number is not required. I was surprised that an experienced officer did not know this!
The Indian Embassy in the UK had made a mistake in my passport number, adding an extra zero for which they made an observation with an Embassy stamp. The officer then went on to ask me why the mistake was made! After 20 , he referred me to his senior, one Mr. Paul who also apparently could not see the genuine stamps and visas on the passport. They then decided to then call the UK Embassy via a Jet Airways officer. Ultimately, after an hour I was allowed to board – after final call and after some urgent calls made by some journalist friends in Delhi. I wonder what would have happened the flight was at 2 am in the morning?
I do not mind the scrutiny but through the entire experience, the officer treated me as if I was a fraud. He kept sneering at me and was cracking jokes with his other colleagues looking at me. He was very rude and also made sure I was humiliated the entire time, even making me stand in one place for an hour.
How can an immigration officer and his supervisor not even have the basic judgement to detect a genuine person from a fraud? Even if there is something wrong, can they not speak politely? Immigration officers are the first diplomats of country and if they behave like this – rude, cracking jokes, and asking one to stand in one place for an hour – what impression does it have on a foreign visitor or even an NRI? I have never experience this kind of behaviour in the past.
At the end, when everything had been cleared up, he still made me wait another five minutes in front of him, besides speaking rudely to the Jet Airways officer who was with me.
Whatever the message Mr Modi is giving to NRIs to invest and help re-build India is being negated by such officers at airports. If Mr Modi wants to get NRIs’ support he must first make sure all airport officials including Customs don’t make visitors feel unwelcome and unwanted. Indian officers come across as unprofessional, especially for those who come from abroad.
It’s time Mr Modi spends some time changing attitude of his officials at India’s entry points. Just giving good speeches at the Madison Square will not work any more.
(Mr Chatterjee is a clean energy advocate, an entrepreneur, and funds solar power and sanitation projects in India on a charitable basis)