During the "last 2000 days" India changed its HDI ranking, amongst 177 countries ranked, down from 126th to 127th or up from 126th to 127th? That's of course not to deny that while India reportedly has higher level of malnutrition among children as compared to even sub-Saharan Africa also undertakes lunar expedition. And lobbies for a "permanent seat" in the UN Security Council. The greatest change that India experienced ever came on August 15 1947. And that laid the foundation for subsequent changes. The author seems to have never heard of it. Tagore had somewhere talked of (in Bengali) bottomless ignorance of the learned! And is it Amartya Sen: "Rational Fools"? Sukla
On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 9:12 AM, sugrutha <sugru...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/weekinreview/05giridharadas.html?_r=2 > > Farewell to an India I Hardly Knew > By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS > Published: July 4, 2009 > > Ruth Fremson/The New York Times > > *COMINGS AND GOINGS* A Calcutta bus reflects confidence among Indians. > Much has changed in a generation. > > MUMBAI, India — The first thing I ever learned about India was that my > parents had chosen to leave it. > The country was lost to us in America, where I was born. It had to be > assembled in my mind, from the fragments of anecdotes and regular journeys > east. > > Now, six years after returning to the country my parents left, as I prepare > to depart it myself, the mind goes back to the beginning, to my earliest > pictures of it. > > India, reflected from afar, was late-night phone calls with the news of > death. It was calling back relatives who could not afford to call you. It > was Hindu ceremonies with saffron and Kit Kat bars on a silver platter. > > India, consumed on our visits back, was being fetched from the airport and > cooked a meal even in the dead of night. It was sideways hugs that strove to > avoid breast contact. It was the chauvinism of uncles who asked about my > dreams and ignored my sister's. > > It was wrong, yet easy, to feel that we did India a favor by coming home. > We packed our suitcases with things they couldn't get for themselves: Jif > peanut butter, Hellmann's mayonnaise, Gap khakis. These imports sketched a > subtle hierarchy in which they were the wanting relatives and we their > benefactors. > > My cousins in India would sometimes ask if I was Indian or American. I saw > that their self-esteem depended on my answer. "American," I would say, > because it was the truth, and because I felt that to say otherwise would be > to accept a lower berth in the world. > > What it meant to be American was to be free to invent yourself, to belong > to a family and a society in which destiny was believed to be human-made. > > I looked around in India and saw everyone in their boxes, not coming fully > into their own, replicating lives lived before. If only they came to > America, I told myself, so-and-so would be a millionaire entrepreneur; > so-and-so would be as confident in her opinions as her husband; so-and-sos' > marriage would be more like my parents', with verve and swing-dancing > lessons and bedtime crossword puzzles; so-and-so would study history and > literature, not just bankable practicalities. > > I moved to India six years ago in an effort to understand it on my own > terms, to render mine what had until then only belonged to my parents. > > India was changing when I arrived and has changed dramatically, viscerally, > improbably in these 2,000 days: farms giving way to factories; ultra-cheap > cars being built; companies buying out rivals abroad. But the greatest > change I have witnessed is elsewhere. It is in the mind: Indians now know > that they don't have to leave, as my parents left, to have their personal > revolutions. > > It took me time to see. At first, my old lenses were still in place — India > the frustrating, difficult country — and so I saw only the things I had ever > seen. > > But as I traveled the land, the data did not fit the framework. The > children of the lower castes were hoisting themselves up one diploma and > training program at a time. The women were becoming breadwinners through > microcredit and decentralized manufacturing. The young people were finding > in their cellphones a first zone of individual identity. The couples were > ending marriages no matter what "society" thinks, then finding love again. > The > vegetarians<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/v/vegetarianism/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>were > embracing meat and meat-eaters were turning vegetarian, defining > themselves by taste and faith, not caste. > > Indians from languorous villages to pulsating cities were making difficult > new choices to die other than where they were born, to pursue vocations not > their father's, to live lives imagined within their own skulls. And it was > addictive, this improbable rush of hope. > > The shift is only just beginning. Most Indians still live impossibly grim > lives. Trickle down, here more than most places, is slow. But it is a shift > in psychologies, and you rarely meet an Indian untouched by it. > > Grabbing hold of their destinies, these Indians became the unlikely cousins > of my own immigrant parents in America: restless, ambitious, with dreams > vivid only to themselves. But my parents had sought to beat the odds in a > bad system, to be statistical flukes that got away. > > What has changed since they left is a systemic lifting of the odds for > those who stay. It is a milestone in any nation's life when leaving becomes > a choice, not a necessity. > > My parents watch me from their perch outside Washington, D.C., and marvel > at history's sense of irony: a son who ended up inventing himself in the > country they left, who has written of the self-inventing swagger of a rising > generation of Indians, in a country where "self" was once a vulgar word. > > At times, my mother wonders if they should have remained, should have > waited for their own country's revolution instead of crashing another's. And > as I leave India now I can only wonder how history would have turned out if > the ocean of change had come a generation earlier. > > Because it came between their generation and mine, the premise of our > family story has been pulled out from beneath us. We are American citizens > now, my family, and proudly so. But we must face that we are Americans > because of a choice prompted by truths that history has undone. They were > true at the choice's making; in India, I saw their truth boil slowly away. > > They don't crave our mayonnaise and khakis anymore. They no longer angrily > berate America, because they are too busy building their own country. Indian > accents are now cooler than British ones. No one asks if I feel Indian or > American. How delicious to see that unconcern. How fortunate to live in a > land you needn't leave to become your fullest possible self. > > And how wondrous, in this time of revolutions, to have had my own here. > > I grew up in America defining myself by the soil under my feet, not by the > blood in my veins. The soil I shared with everyone else; the blood made me > unbearably different. Before I loved India, I loathed it. But that feeling > seems now like a relic from a buried past. > > I leave now on the journey's next stretch, with sadness and with joy, > humbled by India, grateful to have been at the revolution and to have known > the revolutions within. > > > __,_._,___ > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to greenyouth@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to greenyouth+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
