I just spent a week in India, for work rather than for a holiday. It was my first visit to India, although I have spend a lot of time in Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia. In some ways India is quite like all of them, just on a much more massive scale. It is a very confronting place, more conspicuous grinding poverty than I have ever seen before, and just so many people. People everywhere, and they range from the very poorest to the very wealthy.
It is a country of great divides, such wealth intermingled with such poverty. I visited the sales office of the company I work for and spent all but one day with these people and visiting customers. They clearly are among the middle class in India and they have a very pleasant life. Because labour is so cheap, they all have servants. All cooking, cleaning, child minding, washing, in fact all household duties, are done by live in servants. Food is cheap, household items are cheap, most luxury items are cheap, housing is cheap, ultimately because labour is cheap.
Most of them have not one but two drivers, one for the husband and one for the wife. When we need to get a ride from the office to the hotel, one of the sales guys said he would arrange for us to go in his car. We thought that meant he would drive us, but instead we went down to the car park, he shouted his driver's name, the driver popped his head up in the car, received directions and then drove us to the hotel. He spends his whole day sitting in the car in the carpark just in case the sales guy wants to go out.
The traffic is enough to scare you silly. It appear utterly chaotic, but after a while I could detect a rhythm to it. Basically there are SO many cars that normal road rules, like give way and the like, make no sense. So everybody drives with their hand on the horn, and expects to force their way across intersections, and not to hit other people when they are forcing their way out. I was amazed at how few accidents I saw and how calm most drivers were, even in the most dense traffic. It just works. But if you drove that way in Australia or the USA, you would kill people and/or be killed in short order.
For many people wages are so low. I read an article in the Times of India written by a guy who had completed his Computer Sciences degree. His first job paid $1800 rupee a month or around US$40. And that was for a degree qualified guy. There were signs on billboards, saying "call XXX and see about earning a six figure salary" Well, 100,000 rupees is about US$2200 a year, oh so little.
On one occasion we were looking for somewhere that would serve us coffee that would not give us the runs, and we ended up in McDonald's. It could have been any McDonald's anywhere in the world - very depressing. Only difference was the number of vegetarian burgers and the amount of curry based burgers and wraps.
We took one day out for sight seeing. So hut and steamy and such a dirty place, covered in rubbish, in rubble, most buildings not painted just dirty stained concrete. So many slums with people living under plastic, in corrugated iron shacks, in fallen down buildings, in half finished constructions, on the footpath, everywhere people existing in poverty. People in shacks beside a six lane road with children playing in the dirt as cars whizzed past them a metre away. People digging through rubbish dumps, rubbish bins, scavenging everywhere, just trying to keep food on the family table. So many three wheeled taxis, old buses, 50 year old Fiat taxis, interspersed with Mercedes and Japaness cars. BWM, Porsche, Ferrari and Mercedes dealership in areas which look so dirty and depressing.
My wife also came to take a look and do the tourist thing. She found the whole thing quite confronting. She was advised not to leave the hotel without a hotel car and driver, and the driver would wait with her while she shopped. Basically she did not leave the hotel other than with an escort and ended up spending a lot of time in the hotel itself, rather than seeing the country. For her, not being with a bunch of middle class businessmen as I was, the whole experience was somewhat frightening and she has no desire to go back the next time I need to visit.
And Beggars everywhere. Walking through the traffic, banging on your window, confronting you where ever you stopped, crippled, blind, some seemingly healthy some old and frail. And people selling things, so persistent, so irritating and in your face that in the end the only way to survive is to completely ignore them, as even saying "NO" was taken as an expressed interest in conducting a conversation.
So many people out to scam you. Stolen luggage, stolen computer bags, "the shit on the shoe" scam, water bottles refilled and sold as clean water, on it goes. If there is a way to part you from your money or your possessions, it is practiced in India, relentlessly. And yet at the same time, I see this is people trying to make a buck, and trying to get it from people who obviously are far better off than they are.
I must say that that after a few days of moving in business circles I became somewhat immune to the down sides of the place. I was taken only to respectable offices and restaurants where the food was healthy and reputable and avoiding the really poor and disgustingly dirty areas. I think to the middle class Indian, they don't see what is around them, it has become background noise, and it is filtered out. It would be enormously confronting to deal with the fact that you were so wealthy comparatively and your countrymen were so desperately poor,so they don't see. And after a day or two, I almost didn't see either. Almost.
And there is no government assistance whatsoever, other than for education. Education is free, nothing else is. As the lady who was our tour guide - her , a driver and three of us - said "You either work or you beg and steal". No social security no health services, no nothing. The country is predominantly Hindu and very focused on reincarnation and I believe that has a big impact on the lack of government services. "You chose this life to learn lessons so get on with it" seems to be the approach.
We came home on the weekend and the single biggest impression we came away with was how blessed and fortunate we are to live in a country which is prosperous, not overcrowded, and not beset with the level of poverty and dirt and filth we saw in India. Everything is relative in this regard, but compared to India, Australia is a paradise.
It is a country of great divides, such wealth intermingled with such poverty. I visited the sales office of the company I work for and spent all but one day with these people and visiting customers. They clearly are among the middle class in India and they have a very pleasant life. Because labour is so cheap, they all have servants. All cooking, cleaning, child minding, washing, in fact all household duties, are done by live in servants. Food is cheap, household items are cheap, most luxury items are cheap, housing is cheap, ultimately because labour is cheap.
Most of them have not one but two drivers, one for the husband and one for the wife. When we need to get a ride from the office to the hotel, one of the sales guys said he would arrange for us to go in his car. We thought that meant he would drive us, but instead we went down to the car park, he shouted his driver's name, the driver popped his head up in the car, received directions and then drove us to the hotel. He spends his whole day sitting in the car in the carpark just in case the sales guy wants to go out.
The traffic is enough to scare you silly. It appear utterly chaotic, but after a while I could detect a rhythm to it. Basically there are SO many cars that normal road rules, like give way and the like, make no sense. So everybody drives with their hand on the horn, and expects to force their way across intersections, and not to hit other people when they are forcing their way out. I was amazed at how few accidents I saw and how calm most drivers were, even in the most dense traffic. It just works. But if you drove that way in Australia or the USA, you would kill people and/or be killed in short order.
For many people wages are so low. I read an article in the Times of India written by a guy who had completed his Computer Sciences degree. His first job paid $1800 rupee a month or around US$40. And that was for a degree qualified guy. There were signs on billboards, saying "call XXX and see about earning a six figure salary" Well, 100,000 rupees is about US$2200 a year, oh so little.
On one occasion we were looking for somewhere that would serve us coffee that would not give us the runs, and we ended up in McDonald's. It could have been any McDonald's anywhere in the world - very depressing. Only difference was the number of vegetarian burgers and the amount of curry based burgers and wraps.
We took one day out for sight seeing. So hut and steamy and such a dirty place, covered in rubbish, in rubble, most buildings not painted just dirty stained concrete. So many slums with people living under plastic, in corrugated iron shacks, in fallen down buildings, in half finished constructions, on the footpath, everywhere people existing in poverty. People in shacks beside a six lane road with children playing in the dirt as cars whizzed past them a metre away. People digging through rubbish dumps, rubbish bins, scavenging everywhere, just trying to keep food on the family table. So many three wheeled taxis, old buses, 50 year old Fiat taxis, interspersed with Mercedes and Japaness cars. BWM, Porsche, Ferrari and Mercedes dealership in areas which look so dirty and depressing.
My wife also came to take a look and do the tourist thing. She found the whole thing quite confronting. She was advised not to leave the hotel without a hotel car and driver, and the driver would wait with her while she shopped. Basically she did not leave the hotel other than with an escort and ended up spending a lot of time in the hotel itself, rather than seeing the country. For her, not being with a bunch of middle class businessmen as I was, the whole experience was somewhat frightening and she has no desire to go back the next time I need to visit.
And Beggars everywhere. Walking through the traffic, banging on your window, confronting you where ever you stopped, crippled, blind, some seemingly healthy some old and frail. And people selling things, so persistent, so irritating and in your face that in the end the only way to survive is to completely ignore them, as even saying "NO" was taken as an expressed interest in conducting a conversation.
So many people out to scam you. Stolen luggage, stolen computer bags, "the shit on the shoe" scam, water bottles refilled and sold as clean water, on it goes. If there is a way to part you from your money or your possessions, it is practiced in India, relentlessly. And yet at the same time, I see this is people trying to make a buck, and trying to get it from people who obviously are far better off than they are.
I must say that that after a few days of moving in business circles I became somewhat immune to the down sides of the place. I was taken only to respectable offices and restaurants where the food was healthy and reputable and avoiding the really poor and disgustingly dirty areas. I think to the middle class Indian, they don't see what is around them, it has become background noise, and it is filtered out. It would be enormously confronting to deal with the fact that you were so wealthy comparatively and your countrymen were so desperately poor,so they don't see. And after a day or two, I almost didn't see either. Almost.
And there is no government assistance whatsoever, other than for education. Education is free, nothing else is. As the lady who was our tour guide - her , a driver and three of us - said "You either work or you beg and steal". No social security no health services, no nothing. The country is predominantly Hindu and very focused on reincarnation and I believe that has a big impact on the lack of government services. "You chose this life to learn lessons so get on with it" seems to be the approach.
We came home on the weekend and the single biggest impression we came away with was how blessed and fortunate we are to live in a country which is prosperous, not overcrowded, and not beset with the level of poverty and dirt and filth we saw in India. Everything is relative in this regard, but compared to India, Australia is a paradise.