Gara’s Weblog

The 21st Century and the general establishment of the Internet, with all the practical advantages that it should imply when dealing with things such as paperwork, hasn’t made things easier but in fact much worse.

Quite surprinsingly, the queues in front of embassies, foreign offices, consulates and organisations of the sort haven’t become shorter or faster, and the procedures of the employees are somehow still stuck in the 19th Century, or at least that is the impression when one lives in London and tries to solve these sort of things.

It was two months ago that I started the process of applying for an Indian visa. I did it through the Internet, through the High Comission of India, which I am sure by now must be one of the less efficient organisations in the world. The application did go through, but nothing was ever done about it. After one month of not having any news I thought it was time to ring them up; these people make sure you only have the option of calling to a premium number, which costs 95p per minute. As a matter of fact, they probably don’t deal with the paperwork so that people have to call every other day- it’s a nice way of making quick money.

Anyway, when you realise there´s nothing to do about your application, you are directed to the Refunds Department, a mysterious place where nobody EVER picks the phone. I must have called both numbers about twenty times (each!), until I was lucky enough to have an efficient person at the other end of the line, who actually managed to cancel the application and process the refund for me. I could have kissed her feet out of gratitude- a gratitude which already cost me £60 down the line, between fees and phone calls.

Having solved this, I was told I’d better apply again through the traditional system: that is, queuing up from 8am in front of the Consulate. I really wonder what the Internet is there for. But here comes the best: because I don’t have a British passport I am asked to bring a one year bank statement as a proof of my having lived in the UK for over a year. I tell them that this bank statement they are asking for is over 600 pages long and that I can´t bring it, but they refuse to see reason. I try to explain that my bank refuses to print such a thing, that I don’t have a printer at home, and that I will not be as cheeky as to monopolize the office’s printer for a whole morning. Instead, I offer to bring an official letter from the bank, in which they can state I have been their client for over two years, but this is not good enough either. I then offer to print one sheet out of each one of the last twelve months- but no, they need the full statement. “You can bring your resident permit instead”, they say, and I explain that as a citizen of the European Union I do not need such a document and therefore I don’t have it. “We then need the utility bills that have been addressed to you during the past year”. On the verge of crying out of anger, I explain that I rent a room in a shared flat and all the bills are addressed to my landlady. “I can bring other documents which have been sent to me instead, just anything”. “No, we will not give you the visa”. I hang up in desperation.

One would think that these people would want to encourage tourism in their country. In fact, they manage to put people off the whole intention of visiting.