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When I arrived at Indira Gandhi International airport in New Delhi, I found it to be of world class. The cabins in which the officers sat while stamping passengers passports were made of steel and not wood. I thought this was perhaps because Indians do not yet want to copy the West by making things that have built in obsolescence. But they are copying the West in many ways as this essay will show you shortly. The immigration officers were very efficient and courteous.
I also found the rest rooms at the airport to be clean and organized. There was an employee assigned to each rest room to take care of it. This, I thought was a good use of the vast and growing manpower that India has.
In New Delhi I attended the marriage of a niece. It was a traditional marriage in Punjabi Hindu style and I found that each relative was supposed to bless the bridegroom by using a bank note, rotating it around his head and then placing the bank note in a pan. I thought that the proper way would be to use a flower and not a bank note. But the fact is that the priests have made these customs in order to make more money from these rituals.
I remembered the saying of Lord Sri Krishna in Bhagwat Geeta that if a devotee offered him a leaf or a flower with devotion, he would gladly accept it with love. Lord Krishna did not say that the devotee should approach him with a bank note and the greater the value of the bank note, greater would be the love of the devotee for the Lord.
The marriage took place in the afternoon and was followed by reception of guests. The reception was very lavish with large number of items served as snack followed by a dinner consisting again of large number of items. However I noticed that alcoholic drinks were absent, which kept the guests sober and the conversations low key.
I was very happy to learn that this was intercaste marriage. The bride belonged to a Punjabi Brahmin family while the bride groom belonged to a Hindu Rajput family from Punjab with the last name of Singh. This shows that the caste barriers are breaking down, at least in big cities, which is a very welcome sign indeed.
In New Delhi I noticed that streets were less overcrowded than they were when I visited India three years ago. I guess the reason is that now Metro trains are running in New Delhi. And they are working to expand the reach of Metro in various directions. This is a very good development for people of Delhi. But overcrowding has not gone away.
As long as poor people from the villages flock to big cities in search of livelihood, overcrowding in big cities will not go away. The Delhi government is trying to find ways to reduce migration of people from the villages, but one expert on Indian constitution remarked during my visit that not even the union government can stop the free movement of people. This is because free movement of Indian people was enshrined in the Indian constitution.
In my opinion, the difference between India and China is that in India people are free to move from one place to another and to practice any religion. But in China the state not only restricts the movement of people within the country, but also dictates which church they can attend. Only churches approved by the government are allowed to exist.
So, you can say that China has chosen order while India has chosen disorder. But too much of order is a menace. (Remember how trains always ran on time during Hitler's rule.) And so is too much of disorder.
One reason why you find less overcrowding in big Chinese cities is that the poor people from the villages are not allowed to freely move and settle in those big cities, in an attempt to improve their lot.
But in India you have tremendous religious freedom. This is why India has been called a factory of religion. Did China give rise to any religion? No. But India gave rise to many religions such as Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism.
In this regard it is important to point out that in a couple of residential areas of Delhi, I found a wall with tiles that had pictures of various Hindu and Sikh gods such as Krishna, Durga, Guru Govind Singh, Buddha. But it was interesting that a tile with a picture of Jesus Christ was also there. But as I had expected there was no tile with any image from Islam. It seems that the antipathy between Hindus and Muslims endures and shows no sign of abating.
In Delhi while using three wheeled taxis I found that you can tell the religion of the driver from the pictures he had pasted in front of the vehicle. I found a few Muslim drivers who had pasted on their vehicle images from the Islamic shrines in Mecca and Medina. So, you can say that the Muslims have religious freedom in India, even though some Arab states such as Saudi Arabia deny religious freedom to Hindus by preventing them from bringing with them images of Hindu gods or Hindu religious books.
I was impressed with the creative energy of the great Indian people, especially the city dwellers. Only a few years ago, one area in East Delhi was considered a poor area, inhabited by labor class people, while Janakpuri in West Delhi was considered a posh area. About ten years ago, in this poor area in East delhi, there were hardly any shops. But this time I found that this poor area has become so prosperous that in front of each house that is on the street, there is a shop of some kind. You can find all kinds of stores e.g. doctor offices, tailor shops, grocery stores, telephone (ISD/STD) shops, clothing shops, watch repair shops and so on.
Because most people can not find good employment, they have found their own way of supporting themselves by opening their own businesses. The Delhi government does not oppress people by trying to prevent them from opening their own shops in their homes.
In fact from these shops in this socalled poor area of East Delhi, I made lots of purchases. I got my glasses made there. I bought cotton underwear there to bring to the United States, and I saw a doctor there, when I got sick with upset stomach. This doctor charged me only 25 rupees (around 60 US cents) for his fees and the cost of medicines.
It is interesting that I did not need medical insurance of any sort while visiting India. Doctors fees are so reasonable and medicines are so reasonably priced, I was amazed. Contrast this with the state of affairs in the U.S. If my old mother wants to visit me in the U.S., she better purchase expensive medical insurance, prior to landing in the country, else she will make me go broke.
In New Delhi I found less pollution on the streets, compared to what I was used to seeing during my previous visits over the past thirty years. I was told that this is because buses and three wheelers run on CNG (natural gas) and not on petrol.
Many Indians remarked that India is now in on the path of growth and material progress. But coupled with material progress you have erosion of spiritual and cultural values. For example, I found that nudity in newspapers and magazines as well as on TV is increasing. Increasingly women's as well as men's bodies, with more and more parts exposed, are being used to lure readers and viewers. The modesty for which Indian women and Indian cinema were famous is being eroded at a fast rate. I guess the businesses in India are using sex to sell their wares, and are simply copying the West in this regard. This is not surprising because when you allow foreign companies to invest freely and bring their money with them, you can not stop them from also bringing in their values and their culture.
"He should throw his spit on the tracks below and not on the platform," I told my brother. He nodded and said that this is how they do in Bihar.
And the worst thing is that nobody cared to tell the young man to stop doing so. Finally I went to the young man and told him in a friendly manner to spit on the tracks below and not on the platform.
Some people say that government officers with big sticks should tell such people to behave. It is true that this would be more effective. But in my opinion if ordinary people cared and told such offenders to stop misbehaving, they would stop. But people just do not care to get involved. This apathy is cause of many social ills. Most people are afraid to express their opinions, for fear of upsetting some people. And they do not want to get involved even when they see others spitting their coughs, right in front of them.
In Muzaffarpur, Bihar, I saw three things that appalled me.
Some Biharis told me that during the past fifteen year rule of Lalu Prasad Yadav and his wife Rabri, no progress has taken place in Bihar. As a result there are few jobs and poor Biharis have to migrate to places such as Delhi in search of jobs.
No wonder, even Biharis who live in big cities like Delhi and Mumbai hate Biharis.
However, I met many Biharis who went to New Delhi as workers and are now running their own successful businesses. At least six people from my village in Bihar are running small factories in New Delhi and are employing many people in their factories.
Lalu Prasad Yadav pretends to be a man of the people, by dressing like a rustic fellow, but he has amassed vast wealth during his fifteen year rule. He has given high positions to his own and his wife's relatives. The Bihari people I talked to had no respect for Lalu P. Yadav.
Most of the rickshaw pullers in Delhi are from Bihar. I talked to one rickshaw puller in New Delhi who transported me. He too expressed the hope that a new government would come into power in Bihar who would do something to create jobs and bring some progress to the state, which has stagnated during the dark rule of Lalu Yadav.
But in India infrastructure development projects have taken place only in the last few years and since India had stagnated for many decades, due to the erroneous policies of the Congress Party governments, people and the press in India are treating these infrastructure development projects with great fanfare.
This is to say that India is still a third world country while the U.S. is still a first world country. It will take India a long time, if at all, to catch up with the U.S. But if India does not control its population, the burgeoning population may become a liability rather than an asset. By 2050, India is projected to become the most populous nation in the world. But does it mean that it will also become the most powerful or the most prosperous? This author does not think so. Effective population control and elimination of corruption are necessary for India to become a world power.
It is interesting that the press in India is not talking about population control, because its is not PC (politically correct). The political parties are not addressing this issue either. This is because the political system in India is based on votes, and you do not get votes if you tell people to practice birth control, as Indira Gandhi learnt the hard way. You get votes if you know how to please people and make a fool of them just as Lalu P. Yadav (of Bihar) and Jyoti Basu (of West Bengal) have known.
Democracy is a political system where people get a chance to exercise their power to caste their votes every few years and make a fool of themselves.
But the fact is that massive population can become an asset only if a government uses it for war or construction. Since the government in India is not an effective government, it can not use the burgeoning population effectively, which means that our burgeoning population will end up being a liability rather than an asset.
Please send your feedback about this essay to Nirmalb@HotMail.com.
Dear Nirmal,
Your essay has been nicly written describing what is present India. I fully agree with you that the wheel of progress has stoped in Bihar, India or it is rather too slow. But you may not be aware that the earliest civilisation on this earth was in Bihar. Millions of years ago Bihar was a land of mountains bigger than the Himalayas, but due to continious thunderring/lightining all these mountains were brought to ground level. This land was known as Rad Bhumi where the first civilisation took place. Only a hundred years back we had the top Engineers, doctors, scientists, economist, bussinessman from Bihar, but due to corrupt politicians all the intelligent Biharis have left their motherland. Every land/state has its good and bad days. This are now the Bad days for Bihar, but good days will also come.
Best wishes.