Don't worry, neither of us was in an accident, rather our scooter was a tragic casualty of over-zealous bureaucracy ...
I'm sure you remember our Neverending Story post, well the story has finally ended with us needing to resell our scooter back to the store we bought it from. Apparently, word from up above was that there is a new policy by which foreigners are not allowed to own property in India ... and somehow the scooter qualifies as property ... and so we would never be able to register it in our name (more on this below), so no scooter for us. To add insult to injury, we couldn't then sell the scooter to a friend who would at least let us rent it for our last two months in Lucknow ... because in order to sell it we would have had to have registered it.
So we had to sell it back to the store we purchased the it from .... who really, in all honesty, should never have sold it to us in the first place. Obviously we took a loss on the purchase price, which ended up being equivalent to having rented it for 100 rupees a day.
Allen made a valiant effort ... he bargained and haggled, he threatened and harassed, he called and came in person, he even pulled out some big guns by bringing one of his teachers with him to negotiate... but in the end there was no legal way for us to hold on to this scooter for the remainder of our time in Lucknow.
I don't think the full impact of the loss of the scooter has really hit either of us yet --- but the burden will definitely fall heaviest on me, since it was my primary mode of transportation. With summer heat rapidly approaching (it is forecast to be 90 degrees today) ... there is no way I can cross town for appointments in an open air rickshaw (or a bicycle!) during the hours of 10 to 5pm .... which is effectively the entire day. I definitely won't be able to take my Hindi lessons with the institute or with my tutor anymore, which bums me out because I really love my tutor (a lovely retired teacher who made me feel like I was part of an old-lady's-club).
I'm bummed and I know Allen is bummed... but even in hindsight, would we have made different decisions? Should we have just bribed someone like one friend we know...? Should we have gotten a neighbor to register it for them like one friend we know...? Or should we have just bought a scooter that had been registered three owners ago like another friend we know...? We thought we were taking the legal route and that obviously failed.
But this is just one policy in a string of policies that have come out since last fall that are basically saying saying to foreigners "You're not welcome."
First came the rule that foreigners could not be hired unless no Indian candidate could be found. For several friends in the NGO industry, this has prevented them from returning to their livelihoods in India.
Then came the rule that visitors on a tourist visa have to stay out of the country at least 2 months before returning. Let me explain this: previously, although you may have had a 10 year tourist visa you were still obliged to leave the country after 6 months. Most long term foreign residents in India would just pop up to Nepal for a weekend and then come back down for another 6 months. Regardless of the wisdom of the original policy it most definitely encouraged long term residence of ex-pats. The new two month rule definitely discourages them, but it also discourages travelers who were not planning on staying indefinitely but may only have been using India as a stable base in the region.
I've heard of similar policies (particularly regarding work permits) in other countries. India is a country with staggering unemployment - it makes sense that the State would want to see their citizens hired first. I even see some of the logic of changing the visa requirements.
What I can't understand is why these rules are being applied inconsistently. It wasn't as if we were prevented from buying and driving the scooter in October. There was no document, law, or website that we could do research on this rule.... that we even knew this would be a problem for us. Hell, the scooter store was dragging Allen back and forth to the RTO office for MONTHS when this simply could have been "No, this isn't allowed" from the start. We only found out that this was the RTO's final decision from the scooter store.... probably from their "inside guy"
What does that even mean!?
.... (grumble)
The loss of the scooter was a real blow, but the nearly inexplicable reason for why this should be so difficult is going to sting for a while.
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