Re: [FairfieldLife] Reflections on India

[Bhairitu]

do.rflex wrote:
> 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.)
>   

He must not have visited Cochin in Kerala. That is a very modern city 
perhaps the most I visited there. I was going to post on that "did you 
experience this in India" thread my experiences and the cool contrast 
Kerala presented. But I was busy and didn't have time to reply. Here's 
the thing: Kerala was the first state to go communist in India yet I saw 
commerce and business thriving. Beggars? Saw none on the beach in 
Kovalum, Kerala but instead vendors selling fruit and cigarettes and 
wondered if they just enlisted people who would have been beggars to do 
that. I only encountered one beggar outside of a cafeteria in Cochin 
which two of us feeling the hungries for fish and chips decided to go to 
a 5 star hotel restaurant and get some which was a welcome break from 
Indian and Chinese food (the latter for pitta types like me).

I do have to cut India a break because they were quite oppressed under 
the British and then the Nehru dynasty. Indians who have been successful 
in the west and have returned home have been initiating efforts to pick 
up the country by its bootstraps. Their current leader ran on a platform 
of extending the prosperity the tech sector was bringing to the rest of 
India. People comment, at least still in the 1990s, that a lot of people 
live on $1 a day there. How much is that an hour? 50 cents, because they 
only have to work two hours a day to make ends meet. We should be so 
lucky. And that income is relative as it bought a helluva lot more there 
than $1 here would. And a vast majority of those living on $1 a day 
probably didn't have to pay any rent as they were living in home passed 
down through the family (especially in the villages where this figure 
holds up).

The best ice cream sundae I've ever had was in Calicut at a penthouse 
restaurant. Freshly made ice cream with fresh cashews and pistachios 
topped with chocolate liquor.





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[FairfieldLife] Reflections on India

[do.rflex]

Reflections on India

by Sean Paul Kelley 


  [And People Wonder Why The Lights Go Out In Delhi So Often?] 
 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 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.


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. With out
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 sol