COMMENTS

The following is a report by Sean Paul Kelley 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, <http://www.agonist.org/> in 2002, which is still considered the top international affairs, culture and news destination for progressives. He is also the Global Correspondent for The Young Turks, <http://www.theyoungturks.com/story/2008/11/10/25449/781/Diary/An-Introduction-Of-Sorts> 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.

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.)

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.

Last week, I met an NRI friend of mine, who has been living in the US from long. Talking about the advantages of rail travel over air travel, specifically between Bangalore and Chennai, with the Bangalore airport now a safe 2 hours drive away from the city, she refused to even entertain the idea, considering the filth you generally come across in railway stations. I thought she was being unnecessarily fussy. But, after reading this piece, I begin to appreciate her view. Will we ever change?

 

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I think Sean Paul Kelley has explained India very well without exaggerations.

The evidence is visible all around us, but we keep failing to recognize the symptoms & accept the filth & squalor around us as routine. We keep claiming that we are the world's largest democracy, that our economy is growing at the 2nd fastest rate, & that we respect every individual in our so-called democracy - what a joke this has made of our country!

Nobody seems to want to study other countries or to draw comparisons since everyone is certain & so cock sure that we are doing great that they do not want to know anything more, period. If they care to look for it, there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary & about the mess that we are in when compared with almost all other countries, including many in Africa.

Thus, depsite the worst infrastructure, filthy streets, very high levels of corruption in public services (by both, the concerned agencies & almost all of the citizens), the rickety, pathetic life here is being referred to as great!

Take the example of Singapore or Malaysia - these were countries that had been far more backward than us in the nineteen sixties. Today, they have far surpassed us, & are on the way to become what the world refers to as "developed" nations. This development never came easy for them, & the citizens there had paid a heavy price for it - they had to sacrifice their freedom & endure decades of harsh measures, but today, they are winners. Barring the two years of emergency during Indira Gandhi's time, we have never known any harsh measures & simply refer to those years as "very sad" for India.

The fact is - & nobody realizes, nor accepts this, is that we need harsh measures to respect India more, to respect our streets & railway stations more, to respect our country's laws much more than we are doing today.

It seems impossible to turn this dirty country around in any other way - other than a period where people are severely punished for littering, for bribing, for spitting, for defecating in public spaces, for violating laws. Instead, we, the people are forcing our authorities into submission for condoning our crimes such as building violations with the likes of aakrama saakrama.

Are we really deserving of the powers entrusted upon us as citizens ? Our own filthy ways & weaknesses are thrust upon leaders & authorities, who we use as scapegoats & hold responsible for the filth on the streets or for all of the corruption that exists. I think we should hold ourselves responsible for the mess that our country is today.

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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.

Very Very true. I have always maintained so many things we do are worse than sub saharan africa, especially the way we fix public utilities. BBMP must have some of the most incompetent people on its rolls. They dont know how to run a city and they dont want to admit it. Look at all the dust & debris. Look how they repair streets leaving debris around during construction. look how they dig up streets and not asphalt or clean the road with water. Look how they cant have people get dumpsters to keep their construction material. Look how the sweepers just collect garbage around corners and not cart them away. Look how they dont know to mark lanes on roads or make sidewalks fit for walking. Look how generally incompetent they are.

Its ignorance & apathy all around. It requires knowledge of what quality of life exactly means because most city administrators only travel around enough to see a hotel and visit a theme park on official expense. They havent lived in a place with a good quality of life to know what it means. Unless there is a generational shift we are wasting our time with these people. We shoud stop paying taxes run our own streets like independent corporations.

We have become a Jugaad country, and we put it down to culture.

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I am going to ask my wannabe corporator to conduct his campaign by walking on the footpath without setting a single foot on the road. Let me see how he goes past the barking domestic dogs, electric poles, live wires, broken tiles, locked private gardens, COnstruction debris, Dumped garbage, untamed household shrubbery scratching his face, abupt end of footpath without zebra crossings road signs for continuing and 1 foot high foothpaths which need a step ladder to climb. And the administrators think people are fools to accept such work as "footpaths" which have been completed.

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As for the urban areas, perhaps this could be a solution

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