– Jason Overdorf writes for the GlobalPost, where this article first appeared. –

The instant that the fasten seat belts light went out aboard Cathay Pacific’s inaugural Delhi-Bangkok flight this summer, a chorus of metallic dongs erupted like a romper roomful of Ritalin-deprived 5-year-olds turned loose on an arsenal of xylophones.

The passengers were attacking their call buttons.

In seconds, flight attendants were up and running. By the time they began dishing out the special meals, tempers were beginning to fray.

“Whiskey!” demanded an old man with a white beard when the young Chinese flight attendant tried to put a meal in front of him.

“Sir, we are not serving drinks now,” the flight attendant replied politely. (Dong! Dong-dong! Do-Dong, dongdong!)

In the next row, another man, younger but no less eloquent, reached up to press his call button, and the flustered attendant caved and uncapped the Scotch.

“Arre, such a small peg she’s given you,” the old man’s companion protested.

Dong!

Once the world loved to hate the Ugly American — fat, loud-mouthed and blissfully superior in his utter cultural ignorance. But since the economic crisis put the kibosh on American and European travel budgets, there’s a new kid in town. India’s rampaging outbound travel market has thrown a much-needed lifeline to the tourism industry in Southeast Asia, Europe and farther afield.

For those schlepping bags and serving drinks, though, the Ugly Indian can be so demanding that the lifeline sometimes looks like it has a noose at the end of it.

“It’s a cultural thing,” said Pankaj Gupta, part-owner of Outbound Travels, a New Delhi-based travel agency. “In India, we have servants to do everything in everybody’s houses mostly, so people are just sort of used to getting stuff delivered to them.”

Culture conflict has already resulted in several public relations debacles. In May, for instance, a group of Indian passengers caused a minor sensation in the local press when they leveled allegations of racism against Air France — saying that when their flight was delayed for 28 hours in Paris other passengers were transported to hotels, but the Indians were made to wait in the lounge. (The distinction was not made based on race, but on possession of a valid Schengen visa, the airline maintains).

In a similar incident in 2006, 12 Indian passengers accused Northwest Airlines of racism when they were offloaded and detained in Amsterdam for what flight attendants called “suspicious behavior.”

“Imagine arresting 12 guys just because they were changing seats and talking on their cellphones when the plane was taking off,” wrote Indian humorist Jug Suraiya in his Times of India column. “Everyone does that in India all the time, and no one gets arrested.”

But just as the American tourist’s penchant for plaid never stopped France from chasing his dollars, the Indian tourist’s insatiable thirst for Scotch hasn’t made his rupees any less attractive. Tourism boards from a laundry list of countries have flooded Indian cities with delegations — or simply set up shop here. Airlines and hotels abroad have wooed Indian travel companies with bargain basement rates, and pulled out all stops to compete — throwing open their kitchens to traveling Indian chefs, topping up their in-flight entertainment libraries with Bollywood movies, and fighting tooth and nail for the right to host stars like Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan for the Indian International Film Awards.

The reason is simple. Despite the downturn, India’s travel market is still growing. According to the Pacific Asia Travel Association, more than 800,000 Indians are expected to visit Singapore this year, more than 669,000 Indians are expected to visit the U.S. and more than 625,000 are expected to visit Malaysia. Moreover, PATA expects the number of Indian visitors to Singapore, Malaysia and the U.S. to continue to grow rapidly through 2011.

“Since the economic crisis began, there has been a reduction in travel, but the reduction in travel by Indians has been very low compared to any other country,” said Gupta. “Indians are still traveling a lot. Maybe some people have downgraded, by say, instead of going to the U.S. traveling closer to home, but they’re still traveling abroad.”

Many of these Indian travelers, of course, are erudite, suave, charming, or simply humble and polite — it’s just that nobody remembers them. For every passenger aboard Cathay’s Delhi-Bangkok run with his finger on the call button, there were three or four who were fast asleep, mummified in blankets, or peacefully guffawing at the mindless in-flight movies.

Most problems result from simple misunderstandings, explained Thomas Thottathil, spokesman for Cox & Kings, one of India’s largest tour companies. “We sensitize our customers, our tour guides, and we also explain to our suppliers overseas — the hotels or whatever — that Indian travelers have their own needs, their own particular habits.” Because of that effort, Thottathil said his firm has not faced anything more serious than the occasional complaint that a hotel didn’t provide dinner after 9:30 p.m.

Thottathil may well be onto something. A quick lesson about Indians’ love of thrift, for instance, might ease international tensions in the air. What’s the multicultural secret to a tranquil flight, you ask?

Five dollar whiskeys.

More from GlobalPost:

India’s unfriendly skies

Can you outsource God?

The Mormons in India

I was stuck in a traffic jam on one of New Delhi’s busiest roads, taking in the sights and smells of vehicles idling in all directions, when my cab driver turned to me and asked — “Are you going to buy the Tata Nano?”

It’s a question thrown at me several times over the past few months and each time the answer has been “No”.

Tata Motors is launching the Nano, the world’s cheapest car, on March 23. Bookings open in the second week of April and the 100,000-rupee car is slated to hit Indian roads before July.

As D-day draws near, excitement is palpable among India’s middle-class. Dealers are reporting thousands of enquires daily. After all, buying a car is part of the great Indian dream and the ultimate goal for many a teenager.

With the Nano, it’s now slightly easier to turn that dream into reality. Many of the men and women zipping around on scooters and motorcycles would be eager to upgrade to a four-wheeler.

Those who travel by bus or autorickshaw would also be tempted to go in for a change. And don’t forget the rich — they wouldn’t mind having an extra car just to collect the groceries.

As for me, even my “No” sometimes veers towards a “Maybe”.

But my curiosity has been piqued by my driver’s question and I ask him if he has any plans of bringing home the Nano.

“I can buy it for sure but where am I going to drive it?” he said, pointing to the chaos around us.

I agree. I can hardly see the road. New Delhi is already bursting at its seams with cars big and small — and it’s a problem that’s fast spreading to other Indian cities.

And if, as I suspect, the coming months see long lines outside Tata Nano showrooms, I hope the wannabe owners of the “people’s car” will ask for a road-to-drive-on guarantee.

After a two-hour flight sitting a few feet away from four boisterous children who made enough noise to put a marching band to shame, emerging at Hyderabad’s swanky new airport for my first visit to the city proved very soothing for my frayed nerves.

The spacious terminal building, high glass walls, and the view, as you step outside, of palm trees and people leisurely posing for photographs in front of water fountains made me recall chaotic scenes back at Delhi’s airport, as I allowed myself a wry grin.

My admiration for what the aviation minister has described as India’s first truly “world-class” airport vaporized when on my return trip, a smiling attendant approached me at the terminal and directed me to a counter that collected 375 rupees from every passenger flying out of the city — courtesy a recently introduced toll called UDF or User Development Fee (International travellers were asked to shell out a thousand rupees).

A UDF is a toll collected by private airport developers to finance in part their project costs, provisions for which were introduced by the government recently with the advent of private players’ participation in development of the country’s airports, although there is no clear policy on how much a developer can charge passengers.

The argumentative Indian that I was, I protested that it seemed absurd to charge passengers so much every time they fly out of the airport, where the most they do is stand in queue to get their boarding passes, maybe use the toilet once and perhaps have a bite at a food joint, which by the way pays money to the airport authorities for operating on the premises.

Besides, I argued, we already paid for our air tickets, which are supposed to include all taxes and service charges. In any case, fees in other areas like road toll or parking charges on vehicles usually amount to double digit numbers, not in the hundreds.

Imagine my dismay when on my return to Delhi, I found out that DIAL, which is developing the capital’s airport, was asking the government’s permission to introduce a similar fee. On further research, I discovered that Bangalore airport already charges UDF and Mumbai airport authorities have also proposed charging the same.

And with plans to develop 35 more airports in the country through the public-private partnership model, all major airports in the country could soon be putting up requests for charging UDF on passengers to let them have a “world-class” experience at their terminals.

Not to argue about the larger economics of the costs and strains of building airports, but is directly charging a few hundred rupees from passengers every time they come to the airport fair or even commercially sound in the long term?

For thousands of citizens like me who can claim to see the inside of an airplane only due to the entry of budget airliners, paying so much just to catch our plane doesn’t make much sense (trains are starting to look inviting again).

Yes, we want big and beautiful airports like everyone else, but not by being forced into directly contributing not once but every time we visit the place.

Also, in these times of economic turmoil when consumers are increasingly getting thrifty, levying such a fee could lead to decreasing air passenger traffic with the lower middle class preferring to go, especially for short distances, by road or rail route.

This would directly affect airliners who would be forced to reduce flights, in turn decreasing the income of the airport operator because of decreased landing and parking fees of planes and service charges.

But as I said before, forget about the larger economics or the high-class jet-setters who would keep on flying anyway, is levying a UDF fair on budget travellers like you and I?

Riding home in the air-conditioned comfort of a gleaming red bus, I find it hard to believe I am travelling in New Delhi.

Squeaky-clean seats, no crowds jostling for room, automatic doors and huge windows offering panoramic views of the bustling streets — it’s a far cry from the torture I have endured in the past.

Buses in India’s capital are not known for being commuter-friendly. The state-owned ones are mostly rickety slowcoaches while the privately operated Blue Line buses zigzag their way through traffic, dangerously negotiating bends and racing each other in a bid to pick up passengers.

Their abysmal safety record led to calls for banning the “killer buses” but with the city dependent on CNG-fuelled public transport to counter the rising number of petrol- and diesel-powered cars, an alternative was needed and fast.

With a state-of-the-art subway already in place and expanding, a revamped public bus transport system could further showcase the city’s potential as it gears up to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

Swanky new low-floor buses were introduced in phases over the past year. Only around 500 of these non-AC (green) and AC (red) buses ply on Delhi’s roads right now — not enough for a population of 14 million. But more will be added in the coming months.

For many of Delhi’s long-suffering commuters who spend precious minutes haggling with autorickshaw drivers, it’s cheaper and convenient to hop on to one of the AC buses, which usually charge double fare compared to the rest of the non-AC fleet.

It’s also a good idea considering the city’s roads are crawling with cars and newer vehicles are adding to the mess (cheaper cars like the Tata Nano will only make it worse).

To encourage people to take buses more often, authorities are experimenting with the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor — with dedicated lanes for buses, cars and two-wheelers. A pilot project in south Delhi has met with limited success, with daily traffic snarls reported by irate car drivers.

I am not sure how the government will solve the traffic problem but if you are ever stuck in Delhi on a hot summer day, I suggest you take a ride on the gleaming red bus.

That’s one joyride you won’t regret.

Taking a cue from a popular 2006 Bollywood film, where the hero follows the path of non-violence to protest against injustice,  hundreds of travel agents in India sent sweets to airline offices on Monday to protest against a cut in their commission.

Come October, and most airlines in India will stop paying commissions to travel agents, citing rising operational costs.

This will effectively seal the fate of hundreds of agents who will have to close shop for good.

In India, travel agents get a five percent commission on basic fare from airlines and most of them do not charge passengers any extra money.

On Monday, about 1000 agents of the Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) dispatched boxes of sweets and flowers to offices of various airlines across the country.

An airline official admitted he was initially clueless to receive so many sweets for taking such a tough decision.

“We decided to follow the path of Mahatma Gandhi, as depicted in a Hindi film and tell the airlines that this is how we will protest everyday,” Anil Punjabi, chairman of TAFI says.

The film Punjabi is taking about is “Lage Raho Munnabhai” or “Carry on Munnabhai” which stars popular actor Sanjay Dutt.  He follows Gandhian values and the path of non-violence as preached by Mahatma Gandhi to protest when some aged people are thrown out of an old-age home.

The film won rave reviews and won four national awards, and people began emulating the Gandhian way briefly.

Now that it is back, I wonder whether this could be the new way of resolving corporate wars and disputes ?

Sometime ago a passenger in the United States was off-loaded when she jokingly asked the cabin crew if the pilots were sober.

But as a frequent flier I wonder if it’s an impertinent question to ask Indian pilots.

Why? Sample this: Around 50 pilots each year in India are grounded because they had consumed alcohol before flying, the country’s civil aviation authorities say.

This year around 20 pilots have already been grounded for a brief period.

As if pilots who love their bottle were not enough, last week we had a gaggle of monitor lizards, jackals and birds saunter on the Delhi airport runway, delaying around 100 flights.

And not to speak of mid-air near-misses that we keep reading about in newspapers because of cramped airspace, lack of runways and increasing air traffic.

Then there is poor maintainence of aircraft that result in frequent flight cancellations.

A pilot friend says he often gets requests from his company to fly at extremely short notice. “I have often refused if I am partying and they ask me to fly out of turn,” he told me.

But wait there is more.  Forget flying, earlier this month, a Ukrainian tourist found out how unsafe was walking, when his father died after he was hit from behind by a bus carrying crew members inside New Delhi’s airport.

First impressions count. That’s true no less with airports, the gateway to a globalised world for any country.

Which is why the United States and India may have more in common than they like to think.

I have been one of those thousands that have spent three hours in Delhi International Airport making it from check-in though to the boarding gate. Which is why I read with interest the recent spat between deputy planning chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and civil aviation minister Praful Patel over who is responsible for the chaos.

But this kind of controversy is not just confined to India. I read this piece in May from Thomas L. Friedman, the author who coined “The World is Flat”. The full article is here. But have a look at this paragraph.

“A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.”

Having lived in Washington DC before moving to India, I can sympathise with Mr. Friedman. Some of the worst queues outside India, I have seen at airports was at Dulles and JFK airports.

Are India and the United States two sides of the same coin?

I think one can draw up correlations between the state of a country’s main airports and its attitude to the globalised world. Travel to Chile and it capital has Latin America’s best airport, as befits a country that also leads Latin America in embracing globalisation.

Then look at Singapore, a country that depends on international trade for its survival. Or Beijing’s new airport, not surprising for a country dependent on export-led growth.

Which is why India’s airports, despite some improvements, show its ambivalent attitude towards globalisation. Whether its retail or financial services, India still feels it can shun the world. As my colleague Simon Denyer recently posted, look at how little media coverage was given to Myanmar’s tragedy. Perhaps U.S. airports, and the controversial immigration treatment that scares many travellers, also underscores how this country feels it does not need the rest of the world.

While there are improvements in India — Hyderabad, and perhaps Bangalore, it’s been late in coming. Some may be half-hearted. Bangalore’s new airport has no new access road, angering business leaders.

Rather like the United States, India still is a huge federal country that still looks into itself. Indeed, India has so many challenges for itself, from caste violence to separatist insurgencies, it may be understandable. For both countries, the outside world still isn’t top of the agenda.

Which is why global travellers here, like global business, may be in for a long haul.