TNN, Jan 8, 2011, 11.07am IST
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Right to education: Responsibility of diaspora
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NEW DELHI: Many NRIs attending the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas conference were left frustrated and fuming on Saturday morning as they were not allowed to enter the hall where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was speaking.
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As there was hardly anyone to guide the delegates through the maze, that is Vigyan Bhavan, many of them had to run around in circles for nearly an hour before they could manage to reach the hall where the Prime Minister was to speak. "Whoever we ask says 'don't know'," Srinivas Rao Kaveti, a delegate from New York, said.
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When they reached the gate of the hall, the security man standing there told them that there were no vacant seats inside and some people were even standing, so they would not be let in. The NRIs insisted that they had paid for those seats. "How can somebody else be occupying a seat I have paid for?" said KP Girish, another delegate from New York. The security man advised them to talk to his senior, who told them that that they should talk to the organizers. A group of people from the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), which has organized the event along with the ministry of overseas affairs, appeared on the scene. While promising that they would try to let them in, the CII representatives also told the delegates that they should not have been late. One of them took out the invitation card and showed them that it was mentioned on the card, of course in small print, that they should be in by 8 o'clock.
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Some of the delegates who managed to find the entrance had to stand in long queues for security checks and frisking. At the security check point, many of the delegates were asked to go back and check in their hand bags at a different counter on the other side of the building. "If hand bags were not allowed, they could have placed instruction boards somewhere at the entrance. They gave us this information right at the security check point after we had stood in the queue for almost half an hour outside the building," lamented an old American woman of Indian origin.
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A few delegates who complained to a security officer about the lack of organization and clear guidelines, were yelled at. "The Prime Minister's security should be trained in public relations and ettiquettes. The rudeness with which they spoke to us is only an indicator of how badly they would treat common citizens in India,"a young NRI from the UK said. She observed,"This is where advanced democracies are ahead of India. After organzing such big events, they (Indians) screw up the whole achievement over such small but significant things."
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The rude behavior of organizers did not go down well with the delegates. They pointed out that the previous day they had been made to wait for speakers. One of them said to the CII representatives: "We wasted all our time here asking for directions. You are not even showing remorse." The CII people then spoke to somebody in security and told the delegates that they would be let in. They were taken to the gate again but the security man refused to let them in. He said there was no place for them to sit and no one could be allowed to stand in the hall where the Prime Minister was speaking. Meanwhile, a senior man from the security team arrived and a heated exchange started. He told the delegates: "You should have some respect for the Prime Minister. You should have come here by 8 o'clock." The delegates insisted they had not been told in advance that they should be there by 8 o'clock. "Is this how you treat us? Don't talk like a bureaucrat," one of the delegates told the security officer.
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At this point, the CII representatives offered to take the delegates to Hall No. 6, where they could watch the Prime Minister's speech on a big TV screen. The delegates said that if they had to watch the Prime Minister on TV, they could have done so from their hotel rooms. "I paid them Rs 13,500 for registration, apart from paying for my ticket and hotel stay. Is this what we have come here for?" said Kaveti.
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