Indian airport security

India is often thought of in the US as a great place to outsource business processes. Some of the processes here though are absolutely ridiculous. I will describe the process for boarding a plane, which I have now been through 4 times and am just starting to understand.

First, to enter the airport you have to show your ticket to a military policeman at the airport door. If you only have an e-ticket, you have to go to a little stand that is setup for this purpose outside the airport and print a copy of your itinerary from the internet. Then you can show the guy at the airport door a ticket and enter the airport.

Upon passing the guard at the door, men have to go through a metal detector (#1). Women do not. To go through this metal detector, you do not need to take your bags off, you just walk through it, set off the alarm (luggage almost always has metal), get patted down and move on.

After entering the airport, you walk through the lobby towards the check-in counters. But to get to the check-in counters, you must have all your checked baggage x-rayed. To get your bags x-rayed, you need to put a bag-tag on them. Then you walk through the metal detectors again (#2) - both men and women this time, though there is a separate Ladies Line - get patted down and go to pick up check-in baggage. Check-in bags need to get stamped on the bag-tag by security or they won't be accepted for check-in.

Then you check-in. This process is not particularly unusual, except you need to get bag-tags for carry-on bags.

After checking-in, you need to go through security to get to the gates. To do this, you need
to go through a metal detector (#3), get patted down, and get the bag-tags on the carry-on bags stamped.

Once you find your gates, then you have the check-in baggage identification. All bags that are going to be checked for the flight get piled up by the gate for that flight. Before boarding, you need to go to the pile of bags and point to your bags. Then your boarding pass gets a mark written on it and your bag gets marked.

Here is my backpack with destination Jaipur (JAI) marked in chalk.
Finally, to board the plane, there is a final wanding with a metal detector (#4), a final x-ray of the carry-on bags, and an inspection of the boarding pass markings and the bag-tag stamps on the carry-on bags. If all is successful, you are allowed onto the bus that takes you to the plane.

Why 4 (or 3 for women) metal detector screenings and numerous stamps are needed to board a plane is not clear. I guess labor is cheap and plentiful but not especially trustworthy. Still, most foreign travelers find this process more than a bit confusing.

Some travelers, however, get special exemptions from the security process. Note numbers 17 and 19 below.