India's missing tourists

Despite all our backwardness and unprofessionalism, I think India still commands a lot of love and admiration amongst all the tourists who visit this place. Apart from the shameful acts of rapes committed by Indian men on the unsuspecting female visitors, I think most go back with a new outlook and more knowledge of the world.

Then there are tourists who come here for purposes other than seeing and travelling the country. They come here to spread their viciousness, they come here to wage a war against the state and there is very little that is being done to stop them. Of course, I would attribute a lot of this to the pusillanimous character of our national leaders, but much of it is also because of our very, very weak internal system of checks and balances. Which again goes back to the gutless and visionless character of our politicians to not feel the urgency to do anything about it.

That India's borders are porous is not news. Those who have been following the news will know there are Maoists going in and out of the porous Ulta Pradesh border. Then the border at Jammu & Kashmir has always been a preferred route for the Jihadi mincemeat. I mean if you follow the various measures that the army has been taking recently, it doesnt look so bad, but till a few years ago before the electic, concrete fences and thermal imagers came out, it was a bleak picture.

Then comes our dear old Bangladesh, an ungrateful friend if there ever was one. We fought with them to rid them of the tyranny of the Pakistan Army, we fought with them to free them of the torture and the rapes committed by West Pakistan, and we thought we had a great ally in them, but we were never so wrong. Apparently Jihadism is stronger than honor. Their land is used to train and abet the terrorists who are waging a war in our north-east, of course firmly denied by the Jihadist Government. Terrorists who plot attacks on all parts of the country have a very common route of being from Pakistan but entering India from Bangladesh, or if you want to terrorise the north, Nepal is a good route. Earlier the terrorists trained in Pakistan itself, but with all the US troops sniffing out OBL out there, I think those camps are probably on holiday right now (or underground).

But thats no problem. The authorities simply shifted the high school location to the wide open arms of the Jihadis in Bangladesh, and look, its even easier to sneak into India because the worthless and traitrous Ministry of Home doesn't give a flying fuck about the north-east, because they don't consider it to be an important part of their agenda, which is basically screw this country in every possible way. So yes, there you have an underfunded and fatigued BSF, with absolutely no help coming from the center, and the huge illegal trade opens many routes for infiltration. But wait, let me save that for another post.

What I wanted to say is this: there are numerous instances where foreigners who come here on perfectly valid visas, either as tourists or as parts of special groups, go missing. An example is that some of the Pakistanis who crossed the border at Wagah to watch the India-Pakistan series are still missing. And such missing persons have often been apprehended indulging in terror activities against the state.

India's passport office was in shambles too. Very backward technologically and our passports were pretty easy to forge too. Like I had a new passport made in New York 3 years ago and they wrote all my information with a pen, as opposed to a computer generated passport.

So finally the Home ministry is out with something called the Advance Passenger Information System. This is from Da Tabloid.

Tracking terror: New guideline for check on foreign tourists

The home ministry has decided to enforce the Advance Passenger Information System (APIS), making it mandatory for all airlines to supply information about passengers arriving in India. The new guideline, lying in limbo since it was notified in March 2005, will come into effect from May 1.

The exponential increase in passenger traffic over the last year has also made it necessary to implement APIS, which is aimed to reduce delays at immigration counters in airports. The scheme has been operational in the US from October last year, allowing authorities to make checks to identify anyone who could be a potential threat.

Under APIS, airlines would be required to prove details of passengers on board their carriers within 15 minutes of the plane taking off to India. The information, transmitted electronically, will include personal information of the passenger like passport details, nationality, visa details and information on duration of stay and address.

According to the rules, if the pilot of an aircraft contravenes the provisions, he shall be liable for imprisonment for a term, which may exceed to five years and shall also be liable to fine as per the provision of section 14 of the Foreigners Act, 1946.

The proposed system will also be applicable to ships entering Indian waters. The APIS is in place in 10 countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, South Korea, Mexico, South Africa and Bahrain.
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So all these fine countries implement this system, and I think they have a fairly decent tourist inflow right? So why does the Hindustan Times say the Indian tour operators and airlines are against it? After reading the report below, I see that Times of India hasnt really updated its information on the subject. The clause of holding the pilot responsible for lapse in data reporting has been altered.

Passenger data plan runs into trouble

The system -- by which an India-bound flight would have to provide Indian authorities with data on all its passengers within 15 minutes of take-off -- would have made life easier for customs and immigration officials. But airline operators say it will only lead to a big mess, even hit Indian tourism in a big way.

With the operators up in arms, the ministry has been forced to alter its plans and will activate APIS only on Air-India flights on May 1 as a pilot project. Within a month, other airlines will be asked to do the same. On July 1, APIS will be formally implemented at IGI and then at other international airports in India.

According to a ministry official, airline operators said, “Not all countries issue machine readable passports. There are citizens who possess older passports that aren't machine readable.”
However, six months down the line, airlines will have to provide three more categories of information, “Country where passport was issued, country of permanent residence, visa number and date and place of issue”.

Irate airline operators say this whole move would mean additional personnel would have to be provided at airline counters in foreign airports whenever there's an India-bound flight. Check-in time would also go up as the data has to be collected then.

Airlines are also uncomfortable about the legal technicalities that make them liable for “ensuring transmission of accurate information”. But this is nowhere near as bad as the original notification, which sought to make pilots liable for punishment if accurate data wasn't provided.

Operators are also worried about APIS implementation from countries like Afghanistan and Nepal which lack computerised departure control system facilities. The National Informatics Centre has been asked to device an alternative system but till that’s ready, total APIS implementation won’t be possible.