I read the below article on the blog of my friend The unsure ascetic and it speaks for itself, without me adding a
prelude. I feel it explains the sorry state of our country, the dirt, the
pollution, the crowd, and most importantly ‘the mindset’. It seems we have been
exposed to so much of negativity around us that we have started to believe that
its all normal and natural, and these
sights fail to move us any further. Please read on…..
Sean Paul Kelley is a travel writer, former radio host, and before that
an asset manager for a Wall Street investment bank that is still (barely)
alive. He recently left a fantastic job in Singapore working for Solar Winds, a
software company based out of Austin to travel around the world for a year (or
two). He founded the Agonist which is still considered the top international
affairs, culture and news destination for progressives. He is also the Global
Correspondent for The Young Turks, on satellite radio and Air America.
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
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 to
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 to 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. 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.)
More after the jump..
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 waitlists 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 status. 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.
