Foreign trips are a common feature all over the world. Presidents and Prime Ministers or any head of the states along with Members of Parliament, journalists, businessmen, academicians etc., visit various countries as part of the diplomatic missions. They also serve as attempts to resolve and help in understanding the many international issues, developments and culture of the visiting countries.
Many a time, Members of Parliament or expert groups or committees are sent abroad to study a particular project or aspects of some issues and improve upon our own.
In India, members of the legislature, are sent to other states in the form of Subject Committees to study the functioning of certain policies or schemes in those states. This also reminds me of our study tours during college days where in, they used to take us within the state in the pre-final years and outside the state in the final year to visit the places of interest, institutes and research centres. This helped us in our project and  assignments.
The whole purpose of all these visits is to see, learn and probably implement wherever it is possible in our system. For example, The Bangalore Metro project was conceived after many beaurcrats, ministers and chief ministers visited places where similar projects had been implemented and felt that such a system would be useful for us too, and we are now implementing it in Bangalore city.
Coming to our MLAs and MLCs visiting Europe and China in batches, it certainly is a welcome thing. This will expose them to the changes in the world and give them an  opportunity to meet their counterparts and understand various aspects of governance, developments, their work culture, etc. For instance, when the present Chairman of the Legislative Council Prof B K Chandrashekar and myself toured China on our own, we visited the city municipality of a place called Chendu in Central China of Hunan province. We studied the drainage system and the garbage disposal methods.
During another visit, we went on to study the water conservation that was taken up in the villages. There are many things we can learn in Europe and America in the field of Education. There are universities par excellence and the success story of our own Information Technology & Biotechnology industries can be compared with their establishments. Many a time there are commonalities between those countries.
The present issue of our legislators’ visits may have a negative feeling on the part of the public that the tax payers’ money is being wasted, and they go to such places to enjoy rather than learn. I personally think that these are small issues and we should begin to have a broader outlook rather than pay importance to trivial matters.
Of course, the legislators have to uphold the dignity and respect of our country when they go abroad.