Today Indian PM Dr.Manmohan Singh left for a 3-day visit to few ASEAN countries. I saw now in the TV news a whole bunch of Senior people from Indian Government and Politics are there to see him off.
What is there to see off a PM who has done these foreign trips multiple times and he is not doing this trip for anything ground breaking. Right from Sonia Gandhi to a dozen Cabinet ministers and numerous number of senior bureaucrats where present to see the PM. I am sure each of them have tons of work to do, other than giving a bunch of flowers to PM and most of these people will be seeing people many times during a day as well.
If this many important folks appear in the TV Clip, think about the hundreds of accessory people and cars (like Police, Security, Assistants) that would also have been wasted the time, energy, road-traffic coming for this. Why is our government and officials not waking up to 21st Century and see that these are wasteful?
I am not sure any western countries follow these protocols – do they?