“Recently I had the occasion to see a long eulogy on U-Tube, on India by Mr Shashi Tharoor, on the rising power, or as he termed “SOFT POWER”
What a piece of rubbish! This is true India, where 40% of entire population has no toilet facilities in the house and they excrete in the streets.
Does Mr Tharoor know about it?
Next time he talks about INDIA, he should do his homework.”
If you are Indian, or of Indian descent, I must preface this post with a clear warning: you are not going to like what I have to say. My criticisms may be very hard to stomach. But consider them as the hard words and loving advice of a good friend. Someone who’s being honest with you and wants nothing from you. These criticisms apply to all of India except Kerala and the places I didn’t visit, except that I have a feeling it applies to all of India, except as I mentioned before, Kerala. Lastly, before anyone accuses me of Western Cultural Imperialism, let me say this: if this is what India and Indians want, then hey, who am I to tell them differently. Take what you like and leave the rest. In the end it doesn’t really matter, as I get the sense that Indians, at least many upper class Indians, don’t seem to care and the lower classes just don’t know any better, what with Indian culture being so intense and pervasive on the sub-continent. But here goes, nonetheless.
India is a mess. It’s that simple, but it’s also quite complicated. I’ll start with what I think are India’s four major problems–the four most preventing India from becoming a developing nation–and then move to some of the ancillary ones.
First, pollution. In my opinion the filth, squalor and all around pollution indicates a marked lack of respect for India by Indians. I don’t know how cultural the filth is, but it’s really beyond anything I have ever encountered. At times the smells, trash, refuse and excrement are like a garbage dump. Right next door to the Taj Mahal was a pile of trash that smelled so bad, was so foul as to almost ruin the entire Taj experience. Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai to a lesser degree were so very polluted as to make me physically ill. Sinus infections, ear infection, bowels churning was an all too common experience in India. Dung, be it goat, cow or human fecal matter was common on the streets. In major tourist areas filth was everywhere, littering the sidewalks, the roadways, you name it. Toilets in the middle of the road, men urinating and defecating anywhere, in broad daylight. Whole villages are plastic bag wastelands. Roadsides are choked by it. Air quality that can hardly be called quality. Far too much coal and far too few unleaded vehicles on the road. The measure should be how dangerous the air is for one’s health, not how good it is. People casually throw trash in the streets, on the roads. The only two cities that could be considered sanitary in my journey were Trivandrum–the capital of Kerala–and Calicut. I don’t know why this is. But I can assure you that at some point this pollution will cut into India’s productivity, if it already hasn’t. The pollution will hobble India’s growth path, if that indeed is what the country wants. (Which I personally doubt, as India is far too conservative a country, in the small ‘c’ sense.)
The second issue, infrastructure, can be divided into four subcategories: roads, rails and ports and the electrical grid. The electrical grid is a joke. Load shedding is all too common, everywhere in India. Wide swaths of the country spend much of the day without the electricity they actually pay for. Without regular electricity, productivity, again, falls. The ports are a joke. Antiquated, out of date, hardly even appropriate for the mechanized world of container ports, more in line with the days of longshoremen and the like. Roads are an equal disaster. I only saw one elevated highway that would be considered decent in Thailand, much less Western Europe or America. And I covered fully two thirds of the country during my visit. There are so few dual carriage way roads as to be laughable. There are no traffic laws to speak of, and if there are, they are rarely obeyed, much less enforced. A drive that should take an hour takes three. A drive that should take three takes nine. The buses are at least thirty years old, if not older. Everyone in India, or who travels in India raves about the railway system. Rubbish. It’s awful. Now, when I was there in 2003 and then late 2004 it was decent. But in the last five years the traffic on the rails has grown so quickly that once again, it is threatening productivity. Waiting in line just to ask a question now takes thirty minutes. Routes are routinely sold out three and four days in advance now, leaving travelers stranded with little option except to take the decrepit and dangerous buses. At least fifty million people use the trains a day in India. 50 million people! Not surprising that wait lists of 500 or more people are common now. The rails are affordable and comprehensive but they are overcrowded and what with budget airlines popping up in India like Sadhus in an ashram the middle and lowers classes are left to deal with the over utilized rails and quality suffers. No one seems to give a shit. Seriously, I just never have the impression that the Indian government really cares. Too interested in buying weapons from Russia, Israel and the US I guess.
The last major problem in India is an old problem and can be divided into two parts that’ve been two sides of the same coin since government was invented: bureaucracy and corruption. It take triplicates to register into a hotel. To get a SIM card for one’s phone is like wading into a jungle of red-tape and photocopies one is not likely to emerge from in a good mood, much less satisfied with customer service. Getting train tickets is a terrible ordeal, first you have to find the train number, which takes 30 minutes, then you have to fill in the form, which is far from easy, then you have to wait in line to try and make a reservation, which takes 30 minutes at least and if you made a single mistake on the form back you go to the end of the queue, or what passes for a queue in India. The government is notoriously uninterested in the problems of the commoners, too busy fleecing the rich, or trying to get rich themselves in some way shape or form. Take the trash for example, civil rubbish collection authorities are too busy taking kickbacks from the wealthy to keep their areas clean that they don’t have the time, manpower, money or interest in doing their job. Rural hospitals are perennially understaffed as doctors pocket the fees the government pays them, never show up at the rural hospitals and practice in the cities instead.
I could go on for quite some time about my perception of India and its problems, but in all seriousness, I don’t think anyone in India really cares. And that, to me, is the biggest problem. India is too conservative a society to want to change in any way. Mumbai, India’s financial capital is about as filthy, polluted and poor as the worst city imaginable in Vietnam, or Indonesia–and being more polluted than Medan, in Sumatra is no easy task. The biggest rats I have ever seen were in Medan!
One would expect a certain amount of, yes, I am going to use this word, backwardness, in a country that hasn’t produced so many Nobel Laureates, nuclear physicists, imminent economists and entrepreneurs. But India has all these things and what have they brought back to India with them? Nothing. The rich still have their servants, the lower castes are still there to do the dirty work and so the country remains in stasis. It’s a shame. Indians and India have many wonderful things to offer the world, but I’m far from sanguine that India will amount to much in my lifetime.
Now, have at it, call me a cultural imperialist, a spoiled child of the West and all that. But remember, I’ve been there. I’ve done it. And I’ve seen 50 other countries on this planet and none, not even Ethiopia, have as long and gargantuan a laundry list of problems as India does. And the bottom line is, I don’t think India really cares. Too complacent and too conservative.
Article Source : http://open.salon.com/blog/sean_paul_kelley/2009/03/26/reflections_on_india
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Very well written post. You’ve summed up almost all of the problems have with India – and I’m speaking as an American of Indian origin who lived in India for almost eight years. I can speak three Indian languages and I know how to go about my business without much confusion in India – nobody would dare call me a spoiled child of the West!
And yet I have the exact same opinions as you do. When I was in school it used to make me boil with anger. Now I’m just numb to it. Like you said, the present circumstances are too comfortable for India’s rich and corrupt – I feel stunned when I read about India giving away millions to Afghanistan (because it’s so important to make the Afghans like the Indians more than the Pakistanis), when most of India’s population lives in worse conditions than Afghans do!
And the corruption…don’t even get me started. Then there’s the racism, the conservative class snobbery, horrific bad judgments that governments make (I’m looking at you, Telangana), etc etc.
India is not going to become a world power any time in this century – the very idea is laughable. And I’d advise you not to go on anything Shashi Tharoor says – while he is a highly educated and intelligent man, he’s also a huge political sycophant who likes to talk the trendy talk. Quite a shame, really, because if he had more integrity and a smaller ego, he would be a man of quality.
Thank you for having the guts to tell it like it is, and don’t worry about political correctness – you might have noticed, Indians are far more offensive with that kind of stuff than the nervous Western world is! Far from being an imperialist, you nailed it. You got India spot on. And many Indians agree with you, by the way – yes, some of us don’t have delusions of grandeur and see the country for what it really is.
And I’ve reached the point where I don’t even argue about it any more – India may be fucked up and straight on the road to hell, but if you can’t see it, no power on earth can convince you.
some people can look only at the negative side of other countries as if in their country all anmgels live. they follow an entirely materialstic criterion of judgement while being deliberately obvilious of the terrible moral mess and break down of values in their country. anyway, we dont give a damn to such prejuduced views.i have been in the usa and i know what i am talking about.
well written article shows the poverty issue is rampant in India
A well-traveled, well-meaning and disgusted gentleman as you are, Mr Kelley, by some quirk of perspective, you missed two of India’s basic problems – Population and Illiteracy. This fits in with the rest of this piece, though, as you seem to have missed several other things like the internet railway booking system and the tatkal scheme for booking tickets within 48 hours of a train’s departure. It must have been horrible to stand in line for thirty minutes, to find forms to fill and look for train numbers. Most of us with the use of the internet have not had to do all this for about 5 years now. When we did, however, we did not have to go back to the end of the queue for a single mistake. We were allowed, quite humanely, to step aside, correct it and return. Your rather unique experience must have been extremely frustrating.
That unfortunate incident notwithstanding, the fact that 50 million people travel a day by train, Mr Kelley, is mind-boggling not disgusting – you are not used to such numbers because you are not used to such high levels of population density. Ethiopia has a population density less than one-fifth that of India.
The problem with high population density coupled with low education levels is simply that one feeds the other in a vicious cycle that acts like grime that slows down the functioning of every machinery in the country. And multiplies all problems many-fold. What strikes you, Mr Kelley, is not the existence of problems like corruption, bureaucracy and pollution – these exist everywhere – but their extent. Its like living in a large house with a rich couple and their two kids and then suddenly being thrown into a middle class, smaller home with 15 kids of varying ages. The difference in the levels of chaos, indiscipline and the sheer mess, is not related to whether the parents “give a shit” or not but simply the thin spreading of resources (including concern) across a larger group. And the concentration of these issues in a small space.
Concluding that you have witnessed “poor respect for India by Indians”, wondering how “cultural” the filth is and being sure that no-one cares sounds more like a 17-year old talking about world peace and how people don’t care for each other. It simply isnt that simple. The “upper class”, who you denounce for having domestic help and taking flights while the lower classes struggle in trains, do not care less for their country than people of any other nationality. They are simply dealing with problems to which there are no obvious solutions. So they dont give up – they look for solutions, they fight, they innovate, they help and they influence policy. But they carry on in their normal humdrum lives as well. Because they, too, like everyone else have to pay bills, and taxes and school fees and yes, air fares. So they pass by the garbage dump wondering what the solutions are, then quickly attending to their immediate, more pressing business.
Some set up organisations for social change, others join politics only to be faced by the deep, rampant corruption that eats into 80% of any effort made for anything. Politicians everywhere are keen to become and rich and powerful, are motivated by personal ambition and are richer than an honest audit would expect them to be. The problem in worse in India, much worse, fed inexorably by the population-education nexus. So many uneducated people dealing with such a fast pace of economic and cultural change – dealing with gadgets, technologies, urban culture and languages they had never seen or heard before – with no skill sets or training to cope with any of this.
If you compare cities and countries with the density of uneducated people per sq km, you would be closer to understanding where problems like pollution, corruption, poor infrastructure etc stem from. Not to mention the people crapping by the rail tracks. Kerala, which you approve of, had 75 illiterate people living per sq km in 2001. Bihar had almost 500 (yes, 500 uneducated, illiterate living people per sq km). 500 people who have not been taught to read and write let alone understand culture and appreciate civilisation.
The problems are still ours, and we know them. Only they run deeper than “people just dont care” and there are no easy solutions. Because we are a democracy, any solutions must come from within and must find their way within the existing system – must go through the muck of corruption, politics and rampant lack of education. And must work to whatever extent they can. Rub off just a little bit of the soot and let something shine through underneath. And hope that it counts. And that it speeds up the next effort just a little bit more.
How did we land here? Hmmm. Now you are asking the right questions. The answer does not lie in how much we care and in whether we give a shit it or not. We did not land up here because “nobody cares” – to find the answers, one must understand the political and economic history of India in the last few centuries. Beyond understanding, one must empathise, find and implement solutions and not get frustrated by how slow they move. I believe and most Indians do, that we are making progress. We may not “amount to much in your life time” in your perspective, Mr Kelley, but we think we amount to quite a bit already. You are like an exacting teacher that writes “can do better” on a child’s report card. The kids already knows that he has great potential. He is just doing the best he can, being himself. Pity that it’s not good enough for you.