Incompetent Indian consulates...

This will come as no surprise to Indian readers, but for non-Indians, planning to make a trip to India, this is a cautionary tale. Unfortunately, one geom blogger was harmed in the making of this story.

I guess that implicitly I assumed a certain level of competence from the consulate people, which was not there. I thought that their work is to give me (and other people) visas to India. Judging by their performance, I have no clue what they think their work is. Probably they think of themselves as some kind of form verifiers, that should verify that the applicant filled correctly his name/date of birth/etc on the form.

I've lost track of the number of times I've raised this plaintive cry to the heavens (replace "consulate" by "government office", and "visas to India" by "service"). Typical low-level government functionaries view themselves as protecting their precious job against interlopers like us, who actually might want some help. Anything that requires them to do real work either does not happen, or needs to be appropriately "greased".