Bizarre bureaucracy at the Indian Embassy

Take any international forum – such as the WTO or the Earth Summit – it is the Indians who make a hue and cry of everything despite their own country being the filthiest, uninhabitable mess it is. 

Every river, lake and pond is polluted and at least 100,000 people, especially children, die every day because of related diseases. Still, India’s politicians and bureaucrats blame the Western powers for the mess.

I went to the Indian Visa Application Centre to renew my 10-year-old son’s passport. The officials at the Indian Embassy are too busy with their “work” nowadays, so have gloriously outsourced the task to this entity. US President Obama might not like outsourcing, and has made every effort to stop it, but the Indian Embassy is sitting on a treasure trove, looted from all expat Indians. No chance is missed to milk Indians and foreigners. A passport that was just Bt500 a decade ago costs around Bt2,500 today.

No wonder that even an embassy clerk stays in a five-star apartment. One ambassador, who could never gain entry at the exclusive golf clubs in India, had a field day here, teeing off at one posh club after another. He didn’t improve trade relations between Thailand and India but did improve his handicap. His successor carried a massive weight, not on her shoulders but on her poor legs, as she was busy hopping from one party to another. 

Now, for renewing my son’s passport, they say that my work-permit copy needs to be attested to by the Thai Foreign Ministry. I showed my actual work permit, but they wouldn’t accept it.

How ridiculous can it be? If you want your passport renewed at your own embassy, you need to have a letter from a foreign country. Imagine, you’re an Indian in Pakistan, a perceived enemy country; you need to get a letter from the Pakistan Foreign Ministry to renew your passport. It’s a joke only Indian bureaucrats are capable of playing on the people.

Even more ridiculous is that my son has had to write a letter explaining why his signature has changed from five years ago. These morons do not understand that he was just five then and hadn’t started cursive writing. What can you expect from a geriatric leadership with a septuagenarian foreign minister reading from another man’s script at the UN?

Indignant Indian

Bangkok