Ten Lost Tribes Challenge - India: Indian airports spell chaos

The airport has been overrun by paramilitary forces. Oh wait, no, these soldiers actually work here.

I'm used to seeing civilians working at airports worldwide, with police and army units providing security. Well, at Indian airports, the soldiers do everything. There are soldiers printing out your boarding pass, other soldiers checking your boarding pass, still others ushering you from place to place, frisking you, soldiers at the scan machine, metal detector, and there was even an officer who offered to write down my name and address on the little tag you tie to your hand luggage. What beautiful handwriting for a colonel.

I can only assume that the Indian government needs to find jobs for all these people, and what better outfit to run a logistical nightmare like a busy international airport than an army? This is also the only place in the world where I have seen military men wearing gold rings with pink stones on them.

Quite the same story at Calcutta's airport, except that here, in addition to all the military and paramilitary [who can tell the difference?], there are so many other uniformed employees mulling about that I get the impression they are just creating work for each other. There are about a dozen workers with walkie-talkies criss-crossing the floor of the departures hall at Calcutta airport. And at several moments, like fish in an aquarium swimming on their own and then colliding, violently, briefly, they remove their walkie-talkies from their mouths and argue with each other over who is actually moving these people and to where, until they are joined by a third walker-talker who has come to sort it all out. They are creating confusion for themselves to solve. "Job well done, let's go for lunch," I imagine them saying after a particularly busy day solving all this chaos.

Amir Mizroch is the News Editor at The Jerusalem Post, a writer and an award-winning blogger. For all of Amir's blogs and articles, visit his personal blog Forecast Highs.

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