Reflections on India By Sean Paul Kelley

[Guest guest]

Reflections on India By Sean Paul Kelley

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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, 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, 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.