While this doesn’t have much to do with an Indian passport per say, I would frequently find myself transiting multiple Indian airports many times a year. And the incredible inefficiency that is the Indian Security at airports there would put the TSA to shame.

Security to enter the airport (I sort of get that…though its insane that once you enter you cannot leave the airport except on a plane….you guys do know flights get delayed right? Sometimes by a lot!), followed by a true waste of manpower….the security screening to enter the secure area where your bag needs to have a tag which has to be physically stamped as having being screened. Forgot the tag? Woe be you….make the trek back to the check in counter to grab tags (though I noticed lately that the security belts used to now have blank tags kept at the end for precisely this). Grab your bag before it got stamped? (Because, yes this would happen). Well shit, now you are really screwed and in jeopardy of missing your flight. Oh, don’t forget you also have to walk through a metal detector (Still not sure why since nobody pays it any attention….I look at it as the gateway from the unsecured part of the airport to the secured), then get a manual pat down aka massage, followed by 2 physical stamps on your boarding pass.

So 3 stamps and a massage later, you can head over to your gate. (No, there is no way to skip this, there is no pre-check or expedited security irrespective of cabin of travel). At the gate the inefficiency continues…A boarding pass check, and a bag stamp check before you can even get on the jet bridge. Followed by one person standing by the plane door to do another boarding pass check and collect one half of the pass and then a final bag stamp check before you are let on. What a colossal waste of manpower!

And this doesn’t include domestic transit security! Why do you need transit security on a domestic to domestic flight? After an xray screen, a pat down, 3 stampings, a pre board check and a plane door check, are you telling me that you have no faith in your own security procedures so now you need to do security for a transfer from a secure area to another secure area?? WTF! Keeping aside the manpower costs, I cant imagine what this costs the airlines in delays since the transit security is almost always backlogged leading to tons of wasted hours spent in line.

Thankfully, someone out there seems to have come to their senses. As of April 1 2017, the following airport no longer do this. Those are

• Mumbai (BOM)
• Delhi (DEL)
• Cochin (COK)
• Bangalore (BLR)
• Hyderabad (HYD)
• Ahmedabad (AMD)
• Kolkata (CCU)

However, the rest of India still does. The following airport are now in trial mode (why trial? You already know it works based off the above airport having been cleared for it. Oh, and the rest of the world!)

• Chennai
• Patna
• Guwahati
• Thiruvananthapuram
• Jaipur
• Lucknow
• Goa
• Varanasi
• Vishakhapatnam
• Bhubaneshwar
• Pune

Here’s hoping that by the end of the year, India is free of this inefficiency.