Originally Posted by xobile

The reciprocity thing at least from India's side has always been a joke. A significant number or majority of the 156 countries eligibile for Indian e-visas require Indians to get visas before entry, even the UAE in most cases. India will not get visa on arrival in those places any time soon, based on the sheer numbers of Indians who overstay their existing visas, making it a non plausible situation for many countries. It is good that India has the Evisa scheme (though it can be significantly improved), but claiming it's based on reciprocity when it really isn't, is just unnecessary bluster. We saw the same with acceptance of vaccine documents from only certain countries, presumably based on whether they accepted India's homegrown vaccines, an unnecessary nationalistic approach to public health that did nothing to promote safety and was only used as a hammer to try to get countries to bend to India and to push up Indian companies. The air bubble disaster was a similar operation to boost Air India ahead of its sale.

The Mexico thing is similar to what India and the US are. Visas are needed for Mexicans because they have a high overstay rate in the US, as do Indians (if it's less than 2%, than they are eligible for ESTA to enter visa free into the US). But Americans are not going into Mexico to overstay, nor are Canadians or Brits going into India to overstay. So there's no practical or security benefit to require visas from them. And for non visiting friends and relatives traffic, any friction or hurdle in the entry process is another reason to go somewhere else that isn't as much of hassle. People can easily go to Indonesia or Maldives or Thailand and enter for free or very low cost using simplified systems, versus the multiple barriers and taxes that India imposes on anyone wishing to visit (eg charging $100 to Americans for Evisas and $60 to everyone else, that would add up for a family wanting to do their first visit to Asia, for example). India could and should have more visitors (a few years ago, they had only 6 million visitors, less than Syria before the war and 1/10th what China gets). There's lots to see and do, but putting these frustrating bureaucratic raj blocks does not show the rest of the world that India is open for business and tourism.