Continuing my foolishly courageous stand of being uninhibited by ignorance, here’s my take on India, based on my experience during the past few weeks.
It is a kaleidoscopic combination of the compelling and challenging. It is very big and very busy. It houses more than a billion people who range from the helpful and friendly to scam artists. Unfortunately, there’s no public identification of who falls into which group, so you must feel your way carefully and remember that costs remain low despite the fact that we’re paying more than the locals and, in some cases, paying for nothing.
It is colorful and confusing with a lot of very tasty food. For people like me unaccustomed to seeing carts drawn by camels on the highways, wild monkeys loping along and cows casually parked on big city streets by their owners, it is full of surprises. Good pictures are easy to find.
There’s cacophony aplenty that’s confusing and seems to suggest chaos, but may merely indicate cultural difference. In India, driving survival depends on use of the horn. I’m told this happened because the earliest autos here lacked mirrors. Whatever the reality, traffic moves slowly largely guided by horn signals, much to the surprise to those of us who live in cities where honking’s a sin, or at least a misdemeanor (unless, of course, you’re a goose).
The Indian economy is growing quite fast by our standards, but it is still very much a work in progress. I’d guess it is easier to become insanely rich here than it is in the U.S. And there’s an ongoing debate about the government role in the economy. This is not a socialist economy, but one where the government casts a very broad shadow. Government-backed banks have helped finance troubled airlines created to challenge Air India and the bureaucrats tell -- or at least signal – oil companies about how pump prices should move. They were just reduced a tad.
There are a few deformed beggars in the upscale neighborhoods we’ve been frequenting (we took a pass on the slum tour, which sounds interesting), and a growing and large middle class that already exceeds that in the U.S. There’s no doubt that government policies, particularly in the areas of health and education have fed this positive trend. And it is obvious that there’s a tremendous appetite for education provided by new private schools.
There’s a competition with China about which country can develop faster and better. A front-page newspaper story reports that the number of Americans in Indian universities has been rising, but the number of Indian students studying in the U.S. has been eclipsed by visitors from China. That thought reminded me of the recruiter we met from an American college I’d been previously unaware of who spends all his time making a circuit from Iraq to Japan signing up students. Another successful American export that simultaneously brings in money now while creating friendships that will likely prove useful later.
To anyone wondering whether India is a good place to visit, the answer is a strong yes bounded by some caveats. This is a nation transforming itself. The change won’t be as quick or neat as what’s happening in China. There’s no threat of high-speed trains here.
But it will be a very different nation a decade hence. Delay your visit and what you’ll see will be a blander international city. On the other hand, the transformation is not yet done. Things are creaky, paths are less than obvious and things can seem inefficient (and are inefficient) by American standards. A visit to India is not a respite for the tired and, unless you spend substantial time relaxing on the beaches of Goa, you’ll probably leave more tired than when you arrived.
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