• Interviewed by Prof. Indrajit Saluja
• Chief Editor, The Indian Panorama

Ambassador Randhir Jaiswal is a career diplomat. He joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1998. In his over two decades of diplomatic career so far, he has served in Portugal, Cuba, South Africa and at the Permanent. Mission of India in New York. In between his overseas assignments, he served in New Delhi at the Ministry of External Affairs, first as Deputy

Secretary looking after India’s relations with the United States of America, and then as Joint Secretary managing India’s relations with West European countries. In the middle of 2017, he was deputed to serve the President of India as Joint Secretary managing his international  relations portfolio.

Randhir Jaiswal is passionate about sports, environment, culture,monuments, old cities and cuisines. He is deeply interested in strategic, sustainable development and public  policy issues. He has been part of India’s delegation at various Climate Change Conferences and was the lead negotiator  for the G-77 countries at the RIO+20 Conference held in Brazil in 2012.

He holds a Master’s degree in History from Delhi University, India. He speaks Hindi, English, Portuguese and Spanish and is conversant with several dialects of Bihar, India, the State he comes from.

He is married to Dr. Abha Jaiswal, a public health expert. The couple has two daughters.

Ambassador Jaiswal was kind enough to accept our invitation to sit for an interview which was conducted in his office on March 24, 2022.

TIP: Good morning! Thank you for giving The Indian Panorama  your valuable time to speak with  us. It has been more than one and a half year since your last interview to The Indian Panorama. I am keen to get your valuable views and comments on certain issue.

Consul General: Thank  you very much your gracious invitation. It is always a pleasure to speak to the Indian Panorama and through you to the larger Indian American community and the  diaspora in the United States. It is a privilege I would say, to serve India,  to  fly the flag of India and serve the larger Indian American family that we have here. In spite of COVID We have tried our best to stay connected, tried our best to keep our service delivery   on a smooth and inefficient track. And I would say that on that account, I’m very grateful to the  team here.  By  my own judgment we have done a decent work and hopefully others in the community would also think so.

You know, we have been,  in spite of COVID,  open since May of 2020. Not many consulates or other government establishments here in New York and some other cities can talk of that. But we have done it. We have 70 people here who have been coming every day since May of 2020. And that has allowed us to keep us doing our best for the community and  maintain the connect with India. We have done, I think a decent job in staying connected with the community and we received excellent support. And in spite of the  limitations, let me tell you I have been able to go and meet them, give  my regards to them, pay my respects to them, and to learn from them and to share our joys and happiness with them.

TIP: Thank you so much. Community has always been a priority with you. You have always tried to see to it that there are conditions  created in the consulate to make people happy with the services.  There may have been  conflicts  here and there, and  despite the fact that there are sometimes very unpleasant people or unpleasant circumstances, but then by and large what I have heard from people is that they have been getting good service,  and I think,   you deserve to be complimented on that. But then  there are so many areas you know where may think that there is something more to be done. Do you think you are aware of the areas where some more work is needed for better functioning of the Consulate?

Consul General: There are several aspects to functioning. We have to maintain healthy community relations. We have to have an efficient delivery of consular services.  We have to have greater engagement or deeper engagement with the economic stakeholders so that we can strengthen the India US economic technology and trade connect. And also, you know, in general,  support India s  friendship  through conversations with other stakeholders that are there. So, there are several aspects to our work here. Because of COVID,  yes, there have been limitations in terms of meetings. We had to do with a virtual engagement even as we would have liked to do more physical engagements. We wanted to do more work on that account but because of COVID we have not been able to do so. But now that the COVID is going into the background, we look forward to doing more of that. Also, because of COVID, we had to stop people from  coming  into the consulate for health reasons. Now we have resumed walk-in  services. So, hopefully many of the challenges that people encountered earlier will not be there.  There is  a range of stakeholders who come into play once you put your documents into the mail. With walk-in  they  can get the services and go back home. We also have now opened  ourselves for open house so people who have issues to discuss they can come on a  particular day announced by the Consulate and discuss the issues. So, it will help us.  We are now  going back to the normal duty that we had as far as consular services are concerned. We have now restored long term 10-year visa. People will not have  a problem  anymore.  So is the case with E visa now. All that has been restored. So hopefully all that, you know, will help in better services or better engagement of the diaspora and the community with the consulate and with India in general.

TIP: Would you like to elaborate for our readers  this reopening of various visas now?

Consul General: We had the long term 10-year visa which was issued to a large number of people here for the United States. We had,  and several other countries you know, had  put restrictions on the long-term  visa because we wanted to  know exactly and have some predictability in the number of people coming into India because of COVID concerns. Now we have restored them.  So,  10-year visas that were issued to people are good enough. They don’t have to reapply. That was one of the fears in the minds of the people.

So, 10-year visa, if you  had, say,  in 2017 it was valid till 2027.  You’re good to go. We are also  some time back started one year tourist visa  which is free of cost -first half a million tourist visas free of cost. It  is free of cost one year tourist visa to be utilized in  120 days, which is four months. We also have a tourist visa for one year and a tourist visa five years. All the visa regulations that we had, prior to March of 2020, which were  suspended because we were in  COVID , they  all have been restored.

TIP: How about the OCI Card? What are the latest rules? How long does it take to get an OCI Card?

Consul General: From the day the application comes to the consulate, on  the 22nd day we are in a position to issue the OCI card.

TIP: There is a one that is one particular situation that has been described to me by many people. There are people who left India, say 20 years ago 15 years ago, somewhere on the way they lost their passport. A police report is required in the case of a lost passport. But then there is nobody living now at the India address given in the Indian passport. How can the police report from India be obtained?

Consul General: In that case we will ask from  him for more details. If  he’s able to provide the information,  we’ll see how to reverse that situation. In certain cases what happens is that  people have been staying here for long. So, we have in our system, automatic trigger, that verification is sought from your  hometown or the place of residence that you’ve inquired and then you’ve entered. If we get a report back that a person is not there,  then we see how best to deal with it. So,  we are able to deal with the situation and find a solution to help our people. So, it’s  not a problem.

TIP: We have a large student population in your  consular jurisdiction.  I’ve been watching there is  not the kind of connection between the consulate e and those students. And I think when last we met, I did ask you a question about these students. Have you been able to apply your mind to how best you can, you involve them  with the rest of the Indian diaspora or how best you can utilize their services for the nation?

Consul General:It’s a very valid question. So, one, I would like to tell you is that in spite of limitations of the COVID whichever function we have here students have been involved . There are   50,000 to 60000,  could be more students in the 10 States under New York Consular jurisdiction.  The second thing we want all students and Indian nationals to register with the embassy,  with the consulate in our jurisdiction.  We have put a registration link on our website. It is important for cases of emergency that we are able to reach out to student community and we urge all of them to come and register so  that we can stay connected. We have

consular camps , consulate  at your doorstep every month. And it is our idea at least, to try to do two every month. So,  we are reaching out to all the 10 states.

And also a lot of our services now, especially in  the visa site are available. Nobody needs to come to the consulate physically You can sit in the room, take your visa and go to India. So, a lot of it is because of digitization, a lot of services and we will move in that direction more and more, as we move forward in the digital age. We have a large diaspora and a growing diaspora. So, in the days to come possibly we’ll have more consulates  here. But it’s a work in progress

TIP: Now coming to 75 years of independence, which is, of course a landmark event for this year, all over the world preparations are being made.  What are the preparations being considered here?

Consul General: We launched India at 75 in New York last year with a remembrance of  the sacrifice of all our freedom fighters. And since then we’ve had a series of events, cultural programs, talk shows, virtual programs. We have a long list of those programs and many people have actually participated in them. We had a conversation on Gandhara art at the Met Museum on March 19th.

TIP: Talking about all those challenges  may require probably a book. But  I will request you to at least   identify one biggest challenge that you faced ever since you came to New York less than two years ago.

Consul General: So, you know, the responsibility here is large because we’re dealing with a large population size in 10 states. So,  I would say COVID itself has been a challenge, a major challenge  that physically you’re separated. There are several limitations which come into our way.

You know, one of the biggest complaints we received was that I have sent you have received, but from your side we have not received after the service has been delivered. Now, every time we had to explain to people that  we have dispatched it, but people would say, each time the delay was on the part of  the service provider, it was put on our account. We did try to get in touch with the FedEx or UPS or whoever to please try and see if they  can barcode it but they have their own system. . The person who picks it up from here is not the person who just has to barcode it. People should also understand that this is a situation which  we encounter.   You know, the world is still going through the pandemic. It happened once in 100 years. The last big pandemic that happened was in 2018. So, it was a very unusual situation and time zone challenge. But, again, we are almost back to normal, difficulties, inconveniences, challenges notwithstanding.