As a kid, I was lucky to have had many oppurtunities to experience long road trips through the heart of southern india – the bustling commercialism of the Bangalore – Chennai route; the shimmering heat haze and inviting canals on the Coimbatore – Bangalore route; or the seemingly never-ending villages on a road journey through the length of Kerala.
In all these trips, certain things always seemed constant – weatherbeaten brick houses dwarfed by the big Indian sky; thier walls painted with fading advertisments for forgotten brands of cement and bicycles. Or fields of low bushes and trees, framed by low hills in the distance.
During this year’s annual vacation to India, I had the oppurtunity to relive one of of those road trips – on the new “Old Road” between Chennai and Bangalore.
So on a cool, overcast morning we set off from Chennai ; my dad and the family driver in the front seats of the family car and me in the backseat, staring out at the familiar yet different landscape. At first, it really did seem like everything had been transformed:
- The “Old Road”, once a bumpy two-lane blacktop, now a smooth four lane toll highway
- Sriperumbudur a sleepy little town more famous as the site of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination; now bustling with activity as the site of large automobile factories
- Giant factories still under construction, hinting at even more astonishing development, slowly creeping out into the hinterland of Tamil Nadu.
It seemed like the quiet rural landscapes of my childhoold had disappeared. But as the hours ticked by, I began to see the familiar markers of my childhood:
It seems the ripples from India’s 15-odd years of liberalization has yet to spread beyond its cities – the rural landscapes of India remain much the way they were when Manmohan Singh first threw open the gates for FDI in India. The sentimental part of me takes comfort in the fact that the happy memories of my childhood are undiluted. Another part of me wonders when exactly will most of India actually feel the benefits of the “economic miracle” that educated, white collar India has ridden to new heights?
A follow-up from the previous post.
I have no idea if the sort of thing I am about to describe is common in other countries, but it’s another annoying trend.
I can fairly confidently predict in a very short while, a email will be forwarded to me pointing out all the amazing things that Indians have accomplished in recent years.. and Amit Singhal’s name will be added to that list.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I admire what the guy has helped build, but there is a deceptive logic in these sort of emails that bugs me – the philosophy goes “Look at the cool stuff that Indians are doing! So.. we don’t need to feel so bad about the state of our country”.
You know what? We do need to feel bad about the state of our country.
What these people have accomplished is testament to something else altogether – that in the current labour market, people with intelligence and ability are able to find jobs that would better utilize their talent that would have been possible 20 years ago.
But the endemic corruption that India suffers from isn’t improved one bit because of these accomplishments.
The atrocious state of the infrastructure in India doesn’t get any better.
The criminal amounts of money thrown away on incredibly inefficient state enterprises isn’t changed.
The lack of any social security in a country with a huge population of elderly and traditional social structures unravelling isn’t improved.
And let’s not get started on child mortality, infanticide, farmer suicides and education.
If any of these factors show any (and I do mean any) improvement, then that’s a list I will be happy to read.
Lists like these are just placebos – dulling the outrage that we should be feeling.
Okay it’s incredibly late at night… I’m tired and over-worked and this post is probably going to mortify me tomorrow.
So I’m gonna shut up now.
An article by JD’s girlfriend on self-sustaining gardening, lead to a small discussion on JD’s blog about the fantasy fruits we’d like and any other tips that anyone could remember.
I mentioned that some vegetables and cereals can attract wild animals and in passing mentioned elephants and how they could demolish walls to get what they wanted.
To prevent that discussion from going too off-topic, here’s that story on elephants
Back in the ’80s, my dad worked for the tea division of Unilever India. We were staying in the estates where the tea was grown and these were typically in isolated hilly areas in South India.
Just before the rainy season started, the company would stock up on several hundred kilos of urea fertilizer. Unfortunately, this was also the time when the elephants went on their annual migration from one forest range to another and the estates along with the shed storing the fertilizer was right in the middle.
The elephants could smell the salt used in the fertilizer and would head straight for this shed. Shed locked and made of brick? No problem – just knock it down!
So by the next morning when everyone went back to work, there would be no shed left, only rubble, mostly empty bags of fertilizer and lots of elephant poo and elephant pee all over the place.
The company eventually moved the shed to another place far away from the elephant trail 