We are in 2023. We can move large payments, order any item from a shirt to a car, share our location, upload files, buy tickets, watch live matches, search court records take pictures and make videos all on our phone. And yet, despite all these cool technological advances, one process is still stuck in the 1980s – the process of applying a tourist visa for Indians, from any of the Western Countries. There’s the USA, UK and Europe (which grants the Schengen Visa) that are amongst the most popular ones for Indians. With growing Indian affluence, demand for travel to these locations has multiplied. However, much of the process to get a visa remains the same – a tedious collation of endless paperwork, xerox copies, redundant documents, passport photos set to specifications up to the nearest milimeter , a lot of money and a long, long wait while giving up your passport for weeks without any certainty that you will be granted a visa. You are supposed to know the precise itinerary in certain cases. For instance, for Europe, you are expected to give a day by day plan, and book every ticket including local inter-city train tickets before you ever get the visa. You cannot deviate from this plan, cannot make on the spur decisions to stay a bit longer or visit a new area, you cannot fall sick and postpone your trip, you can’t change your mind and you must spend all the money upfront on a ticket and hotel booking without any assurance of you getting the visa. It’s a classic example of the consulates holding all the power, and hence transferring all the risks to the applicant. There are tons of documents required to prove that you will indeed come back to your own country. The assumption being anyone visiting their country is a doubtful, sketchy, freeloader who will squat in their country and never leave, unless the person proves otherwise in their application. It is a mentality from the 1980s, when Europe was far richer than impoverished India. It was also a time that people could not be tracked with their digital imprint. Neither was it the era of digital records. Hence, the visa processes set up then were rigorous and involved tons of paperwork. There was then a real need to take a ton of paper documents to the consulate. A lot of these processes remain until this day. For instance, there is a need to have printouts of bank statements going back several months, on a bank letterhead with a bank stamp. Hence, every Indian who needs a visa must also make a trip to their bank. This, in an era where people almost never visit their bank branch. One bank generated QR code could solve this silly, outdated requirement of stamped printouts, saving thousands of man hours of labor of preparing and checking these documents. Please, dear European masters, we Indians are not crooks. We won’t submit fake bank statements. Also, a letterhead and stamp is not going to be deterrent for a determined crook anyway. Stop this silly, outdated process, please.
In fact, all the other document printouts required, can be uploaded as pdfs. This will also help the environment that many in Europe seem to care so much about. What do you do with these massive dumps of printouts anyway? Will Indians become more honest if they print things out versus give you pdfs?
A completly online submission, a few QR codes, simpler forms will make the process of submission fast. If needed, some people can be called for fingerprinting and a short interview. Some interviews can be on video calls. Ever heard of those?
The other issue with European visas they are often granted for short duration. There are stories of people going on an 11-day vacation getting only 11-day visas. Why not grant them for longer duration? This will ease out the perpetual rush and queues at the consulates. The US and the UK, to be fair, do have the option of 10-year visas. If they can grant them, why can’t EU?
European companies are perfectly happy selling their products – cars, electronics, chocolates – to Indians. Somehow, when an Indian wants to visit, he or she is humiliated with this cumbersome, outdated, risky and expensive process. It’s like someone wants to come spend money in your country, and you are demeaning them for it? It’s like going to eat at a restaurant, and the restaurant suspecting you and checking every document you ever possessed, and then some more.
India is no longer a third-world, extraordinarily poor country. It may be a surprise to some in Europe, but plenty of Indians make more money than European royalty. Europe is indeed beautiful to visit, and Indian visitors only want to visit it and return back home. And you can easily check that by modernizing the process, asking only for the minimum of documents required and granting really long-term, multiple entry visas once you have done your checks.
This is not as much a criticism as much as a cry for help, a request and plea to change. The visa process for many countries is simply outdated, causing pain on both sides – the applicants and the consular staff. Please make the entire experience of visiting your country special, right from applying for the visa. We Indians treat our guests as equivalent to God. At least treat us Indians like trustworthy human beings.
April 30, 2023 ()