India loves red tape. I arrived in Mumbai this morning and was flabbergasted by the number of forms I had to fill out and the number of civil servants milling around doing not very much. There was a guy whose job it was to just pick up a small bit of paper from passengers exiting from the terminal. The swine flu screening was farcical because it involved me just giving a man a form promising that I don't have flu like symptoms. Surely some kind of thermal screening is necessary? South and East Asian attitudes to sickness/pandemics/endemics couldn't be more different. Bureaucracy at it's best/worst.
That's one extreme and the other being the impeccable service of the Taj staff. Service in India is almost overwhelmingly good when there is money being bandied about. Not my money obviously but I am fortunate enough to enjoy these privileges. I do feel fraudulent though when I am called Maam.