Indian dawn
Hope and troubles accompany India’s economic rising
Andrew Lodge Staff
“India is many many things,” Arun, my supervisor-to-be, tells me as he weaves in and out of traffic. He has just picked me up from near the bus station in the small city of Bijapur in Karnataka, a state in southern India, where I’ll be spending the next little while. “In India, there is everything.”
He’s not kidding. Only one week here and already I am overwhelmed by it all. To get here to Bijapur, I travelled from Delhi by train to Mumbai, and then took the bus south into Karnataka. The trip was gruelling and great, as these sorts of backpacking trips always are, filled with great food and shared stories as the Indian countryside rolled by.
India has lured outsiders for millennia. Trade, empire, conquest, adventure . . . all these things together and who knows what else have brought travellers from far and wide to its shores and mountain boundaries.
I won’t lie: for me adventure plays a role, without question. Officially, I’m here to learn a little about tropical medicine and public health. But I’m really here as a chance to get back to Asia and to check out India. Bearing in mind the lessons furnished by orientalism, I resolve early on to preoccupy myself not with all things India as subjects themselves, but with my own reaction to them.
And there’s plenty of reaction. India confronts and challenges the outsider at every turn. Just when you think you’ve got some part figured, a ripple propagates through the mix and throws everything off.
The juxtaposition of everything
This is a land of extremes, and as such, seems to be almost defined by juxtaposition. In Delhi, along the famed and hopelessly crowded Main Bazaar in Paharganj, an elephant, its face painted a myriad of colours, squeezes by a shiny new Toyota. In Mumbai, the headquarters of the Indian economic “miracle,” massive overflowing and ever-expanding slums form the backdrop for billboards hawking diamonds and Mercedes and investment funds.
Everywhere I go, new construction is happening alongside ancient structures. In a land where for many traditional, or at least non-western, dress is the norm, there are constant images on the television of the scantily clad models on the runways of Delhi, or the equally tantalizing outfits of Bollywood.
Some of the oldest practicing spiritualism is alive and well here. Sadhus, the wandering ascetics or holy men, are not an uncommon sight. But this is also one of the most fiercely materialistic societies I have ever seen. Gentleness and kindness seem to wrestle with aggression and cruelty. Perhaps all this simply mirrors the human condition everywhere, but for some reason, maybe because everything here strangely potentiates everything else, the contrast is all the more striking.
Emerging economic power
India is on the rise. There are slogans everywhere proclaiming the bright future promised by the growing economy. The Indian government has announced that 2007 is “the Year of India,” exhibiting the almost palpably feverish optimism simmering here among those hoping for a piece of India’s emergence as a major world economic player. At over a billion people, India is the world’s largest democracy and is poised to become the most populated country on the planet. With plenty of people struggling to eke out an existence here, India’s comparative advantage, cheap labour, is indeed massive. This, combined with a significant population of highly trained professionals, has jump-started the manufacturing sector.
But the major catalyst to the Indian boom of late has been in the service sector. When India is discussed along financial terms, the discussion invariably turns to its role in the field of information technology, or IT, where it has absolutely exploded. The consequent high level of economic growth has meant that more Indians are now better off, and a burgeoning middle class now clamours, like every middle class, for more stuff. In a smaller city like Bijapur, where older hierarchies seem to remain, this has yet to be a prominent factor. But in Delhi, and particularly Mumbai, it’s all about getting ahead. You can see it in the swanky western-style shops and the chic cafes and nightclubs. This is a new India, and the people riding this wave believe that theirs will be a critical role as India makes its move.
But, despite all the grand pronouncements and despite the apparent growth, the poverty remains. India has a veritable army of poor and being poor in India often means you are spectacularly poor. After midnight one night I walked through Old Delhi and passed literally hundreds of sleeping bodies, of old men and women, of gainly rickshaw drivers, of the smallest little boys and girls, all without homes. The scene repeats itself throughout the city and in Mumbai, home to the world’s largest slum, as well as in other cities scattered around the country.
Official Government of India statistics indicate that efforts to alleviate poverty have met with some success over the past decade. The government focuses on “income poverty” as its main evidence, and these variables indicate that incomes have, on the whole, risen in recent years. Critics point out, however, that growth has been uneven and that the rise of the middle class has artificially inflated the status of the poorer echelons. Furthermore, social upheavals brought about by economic reform, most glaringly in the form of mass migrations from rural to urban regions, fuel the expansion of India’s massive slums and generate social ills not measurable in simple income rates.
The question for India is not unlike that of other developing countries. Can a widening (though still tightly constrained at present) middle class unintentionally transfer benefits in a downward direction? Will the oftpromised “trickle down” come to fruition as Indian planners and World Bank economists alike have insisted for decades? Only time will tell.
What about the earth?
As everywhere, economic growth in India has meant environmental destruction. In India, it’s hard to miss. Last week in the Times of India, the main English-language rag here, an article matter-of-factly, if not proudly, reported that Delhi alone now has enough cars that, if put end to end, would stretch from Delhi to New York City. With this in mind, it’s not surprising that the smog is one of the first things that strikes you as you leave the airport in Delhi. And in Mumbai, the sky is a perpetual brown haze that turns an awesome bronze at dusk.
Some years ago, I debated with a classmate of mine from Pakistan about the virtues and pitfalls of socalled “sustainable development.” At the time, I championed the position that any development must not come at the expense of environmental degradation, arguing that, now that we know the impact of human activity on our planet, we must strive to minimize it whenever possible. He dismissed my argument as self-righteous. “The West plundered the planet to become rich. Now it turns and expects poor countries not to exploit the natural resources the West itself has exploited for its own gains.” He could have added that North Americans continue to be the highest per-capita users of environmental capital, be it by using energy or by generating waste. It is more than a bit hypocritical for us to lecture developing countries on environmental responsibility.
And yet, as one watches the economic miracle in action here in India, knowing full well that a similar project of similar magnitude and with similar methods is being undertaken in neighbouring China, it is hard not to wonder what will become of the planet as more than 2.5 billion people start driving around, firing up air conditioners, and finding the means to buy all the stuff they want. It was the West that set in motion this inexorable slide towards environmental catastrophe and it is certainly the West that bears the moral responsibility for the continuing orgy of consumption, but one can’t help but wonder, choking back the earlyevening Delhi air, whether it is Asia that will have the honour of striking the final death blow to the planet.
Indian dawn
It’s morning here in Bijapur and the city is waking up. The traffic isn’t at its frenzied daytime pace yet, and there is still a fresh calm to this small city. Women walk by in saris and turbaned men squat by the road sipping on chai. A sense of calm pervades human interaction for these moments before the day begins.
Despite the gains in the IT sector and the Starbucks-and-Gucci culture of the jet-set group in Mumbai, on the whole one gets the distinct impression that India is doing things in her own way. Language and tradition are strong here. People, it would seem, whether consciously or not, are still very much on their own trip. It’s mornings like this that remind the visitor of why India is so special.
