A visa system that casts a shadow on India’s image in Bangla

When recently Md Touhid Hossain, a former Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh, wanted to send her daughter to Bengaluru, she was forced to take the services of the e-token providers that dot Dhaka.

Billboards reading “Bharoter visa e-token kora hoy” (we provide e-token for Indian visa) or variations thereof are a common sight on many a building in the Bangladeshi capital.

Ask anyone, and she will tell you that the e-application system for Indian visa, managed by State Bank of India (with bank-end technology support from the National Informatics Centre), is rigged.

The official process is simple: You fill up the visa form online. The system will generate an OTP (one-time password) with which you can try a maximum of three times a day to get a date for appointment with the issuing authorities at the Indian High Commission. But in reality, you are unlikely to get the date unless you go through the many private agents and pay up Taka 3,500 (approximately ₹3,000). This ‘fee’ rises in proportion to your urgency.

“E-token agencies started springing up in the city some three years ago, but till about six months ago it was possible to get the appointment date by yourself. Now, it is all in the hands of these token providers,” says Avijit Chowdhury (30), a network engineer in a Dhaka-based IT company.

The Indian establishment in Dhaka blames computer glitches for the problem. The system errors, they say, have been brought to the attention of the IT solution provider, NIC.

Yet, the E-token agencies appear to have no great trouble getting a date! No wonder the widespread allegations of rigging. According to establishment sources, even if the IT issues are resolved, the problem will not go away as the High Commission suffers from a serious capacity constraint.

The sources say that against the daily demand of nearly 7,000 visas, only 3,500 can be processed. A permanent solution will need at least 30 more visa officers. But South Block is not expected to oblige anytime soon. Recently, the High Commission invited all but tourist visa applicants to appear in walk-in interviews. But that hardly dented the problem.

The visa fiasco is not just earning the country a bad name but is also cheating it of tourists and visitors, who are also liberal spenders.

The rising prosperity has turned a large of Bangladeshis into travellers, and India is a favoured destination due to the geographical and cultural proximity.

The majority of seven lakh Bangladeshis who visit India every year end up spending big sums in India’s malls and shopping complexes. Bangladeshis also form the largest group of healthcare tourists to the country.

There is no official data on their contribution to the retail sector, but last time Avijit Chowdhury and his young IT colleagues, Maruf-Ul Haque and Golam Murad Chowdhury, visited Kolkata, in 2014, they spent ₹40,000-50,000 each, buying leather products, shoes and accessories, watches, apparels and so on. And, not to forget the thousands of rupees they spent on food and watching movies in Kolkata’s multiplexes.

Now, the visa issue is turning Chowdhury away from India to vacation in Bangkok.

“Getting an Indian visa is tougher than getting the US visa,” Dhaka University professor Eusuf, told at a recent seminar in Dhaka.

Easing of the visa procedure is also the key to the success of the motor vehicles pact where a Bangladeshi national can drive via India to reach Bhutan or, people from India’s North-East can take a short-cut through Bangladesh to reach Kolkata.

The writer was in Bangladesh at the invitation of MCCI, Dhaka

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