http://anuradhagoyal.blogspot.com/2007/07/short-travels-rail-vs-air-thought-for.html

-Anu

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2007/07/03/Avoid-Heathrow

Shefaly, your articulation is contradictory. You talk about “the casual observer who may not have visited the US and therefore not known” and then talk about “striving for excellence…a solitary journey where one must only compare with oneself…”. Ofcourse, I wholeheartedly agree with your latter articulation of comparison with oneself while striving for excellence.

We must realize that though India’s move towards excellence in areas such as infrastructure may not be as fast as, for example, China’s, the reason is that things happen in democracy rather slowly and by consensus. This is the price you have to pay for democracy. The question is whether we want to give up on our democratic institutions and STABLE growth - be the turtle or the hare.

Ofcourse, if you have got used to good service, the service at Mumbai airport may seem cumbersome right now. But the service culture is catching on in India and soon you will not have to wait at the counters - the only question then will be whether you are willing to shell out the commission money for the same. As of now, we don’t get good service in India because we don’t value service and often assume it to come for free - a carryover from our enslaved past where the British and their babus got free service from their slaves.

As for comparisons with other airports, my ‘home’ airport is Heathrow. Enough said! To me, it does not matter what others do. ‘My neighbour beats my wife’ is never an excuse for beating your own wife!

Striving for excellence - whether as an individual or as a country - is a solitary journey where one must only compare with oneself, and where one must, to follow that old adage, ‘charaiveti, charaiveti’…

And yes, infrastructurally, India still has a long way to go. Airports are just one part of the story.

Or mysteriously jacking up ypur credit card rates ?

As Saumitri says, US corporations are master’s at putting a spin on something which is patently unethical and unfair..

So just blaming Indians isn’t fair. Its the same all over the world !

Saumitri, I try to be even-handed in my evaluation, when I do it. The first part of my post is actually complimentary to what Mumbai airport has done. But since this post wasn’t an examination of honesty around the world, just a description of my experience at the airport, I can’t be faulted for not looking at dishonesty around the world.

Atleast Indian airport security doesn’t strip you till your shoes (and yet make you go through scanners) everytime you need to board an aircraft, domestic or otherwise, as the American airports do.

And then, everytime I have landed in Baltimore, all my Indian sub-continent co-passengers and I have been retained for over 15 mins (some for 45 mins) and asked the same questions over and over again, while all the others were allowed to go through in less than a min, irrespective of the country they had a passport from. So paranoid is America of immigration and terrorism.

On the other hand, people have immigrated to India for ages and still do from our neighboring countries. Terrorism is something we deal with everyday. Yet, we still deal with it without paranoia, and don’t discriminate as blatantly as they do in the US.

And as far as shortchanging is concerned, if we were willing to pay the services industry their due commission in India, I guess the motivation to short-change would have been missing. But then, while the Japanese taxi driver in San Francisco decided to “voluntarily” keep $7 as a tip for a $40 ride and smile at me to inform me that I shouldn’t object to it (which i did), I see no reason why this basic human instinct of “cheating” should be so indignantly opposed by Indians in India, just because its not called a “tip” or “commission” and therefore not made sufficiently dignified.

My experience has been that human instincts are same everywhere - just that our economic situation is yet not as dignified where we can cook up dignified methods of cheating. Once we become sufficiently dignified economically, we will obviously adopt the more dignified cheating methods employed in the US and other places.