Return of the Native 2

I left India in 1961. Over fifty years of my life as immigrant in four countries I have returned on average every four years for about three weeks each time. I was there for nineteen days this year in November and December and my previous visit was in the same months of the year 2007. I was keen to see how the country has changed during this interval. According to the media reports the economy there has grown annually by 10% for many years. It has been pointed out by some that the middle class has expanded while others have insisted, and I shared this opinion, that just like the West, rich have grown richer while poor have grown poorer and also more numerous because the economic growth has not kept pace with the population growth over the long term. The population has indeed grown at an alarming rate; at over one billion it is three times it was at the time of independence in 1947. Although there is a small decline in the growth rate, population is no where near stabilizing. An unfortunate side of this growth is that it is concentrated among the poor who have no incentive to limit the number of children they have and more of their children now survive, thanks to the availability of better basic services and medical care in the villages and slums.

To get some idea of the real situation, and to spend time with the family as well, I spent four days in Delhi visiting relatives, a week travelling in Kerala at the southern tip of the country with my social activist nephew and his wife and a week in Uttarakhand in Himalayan foothills to attend a wedding in a village near Dehra Dun, my home town and enjoy the beauties of Nainital, a celebrated mountain resort since the glory days of British Raj. India is known as a country of contradictions and true to form it offered many surprises. It was pleasant to find that there were very few beggars except near the temples where begging is big business operated by the Indian mafia. There was little cow dung on the roads because most of the unclaimed stray cows have been exported to the Middle East. There are fewer mangy stray dogs but plenty of well-fed monkeys. Contrary to my fears, poor in cities and villages I visited or passed on my travels were better fed and clothed than ever before. Majority of women now wear salwar (baggy pants) kameez (knee-length long tunic) rather than cumbersome sari, jeans are worn by some teenage girls and a few young women in major cities. Niqab (face covering) is rare indeed, even in villages. A simple proof of trickling down prosperity is that there were very few bare feet on the streets and children looked healthier and cleaner. Groups of teenage girls in school uniforms going to or coming back from schools were a pleasant sight every where. Even the coolies proudly talked of their children, girls as well as boys, going to private schools at their expense. One of our cab drivers had a post graduate degree but he did not complain about his lot. He is happy that that he and his school teacher wife can afford to send their two children to private schools. The sad aspect of this story is the general distrust in public schools who suffer through siphoning off by corrupt officials of already meager funds.


The other side of the happy economic situation is that even the medium size cities like Kochi and Dehra Dun are choking with ever growing vehicular traffic clogging their narrow streets. Large cities like Mumbai, Calcutta, Delhi and Bangalore with population exceeding ten millions are virtually at a standstill for many hours in a day. Thankfully, majority of buses and trucks have converted to natural gas from diesel and ancient cars have largely disappeared. Therefore, obnoxious fumes these cities were notorious for in the past are now rare. But breathing is not any easier anywhere in India, not even in pristine Himalayas. The air is heavily polluted with dust and invisible but deadly gases emitted by stalled vehicles. Fogs are a constant presence throughout the year making air and rail transport unreliable. A heavy mist almost completely masks the Himalayan peaks which were a sight to behold only a few years ago in Nainital. The sewerage is dumped untreated into the streams which people use to wash themselves and their clothes and to draw water for cooking and drinking. The ground water level in areas surrounding the cities is dropping fast; for example the wells go down to more than four hundred feet in suburbs of Delhi rather than a hundred feet a decade ago. Major population centres have uninterrupted electricity most days but towns and villages are lucky to have power supply for eight hours. Therefore, professionals like doctors and teachers stay away and hospitals and schools can not offer services citizens need. The solution of the shortages appears to be a long way off since the plans for nuclear power generation are facing insurmountable local opposition after Fukushima disaster.

Indians are generally outgoing people. Yet, although there is great awareness of cleanliness inside the home they do not see the dirt, dust and human and animal refuse beyond the front door. In spite of economic boom, most streets have more dilapidated appearance than on previous visit. Beautiful temples and mosques which are visited by thousands of visitors daily are spotless inside but their surroundings are repulsive to any one concerned with hygiene. To add to the hardships of dense population, residents live in constant fear of theft which is rarely reported due to a general distrust of law enforcement officials. Rule of Law is embedded in the constitution bit it is of little practical value for general public.

Corruption is visible at every level in India from an orderly who must be tipped for a message to be conveyed to the receptionist to cabinet ministers, even senior judges. Ironically, educated and intelligent persons claim to be honest while taking pride in how they avoided taxes or secured other favours by cozying up to the right officers. A new high in two-faced attitude was reached when Rahul Gandhi, son of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who was murdered (martyred?) by Tamil Tigers and Rajiv’s Italian wife Sonya who now runs the government through her puppets. Rahul is next in the dynasty which has ruled ‘democratic’ India since independence except for a few short terms when Congress party lost the election. Unfortunately, he has shown little aptitude for anything other than claiming his right to rule the country. In an address to the delegates from the youth wing of the ruling party he preached that the only way to eliminate corruption in the country was to modify the democratic system. He did not care to elaborate but one would be forgiven to assume that he wishes to be given a free hand when he ascends to his rightful place at the helm. No one in the audience, either the delegate or the media, dared to ask the questions on the lips of ordinary citizens – How did his family accumulate the fortune estimated in hundreds of millions of dollars without ever having been in a successful venture or what qualifies him for the positions he occupies in the ruling party and the government?

My overall impression is that the drastic reduction in state controls on production in final decade of the last millennium liberated the suppressed native ingenuity and the economy developed rapidly. It helped most of the population to live better in a material sense. While there is optimism among people I met, there is also a growing awareness that rapid exhaustion of basic resources like water and clean air, corruption in administration at every level and governance focused on shortsighted economic goals are driving the country towards a cliff and no one has an inkling of how to stop it.