Ugly truth

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Geo: 28.6137, 77.1834

I realise th is may be a little harsh but #*%$ political correctness sometimes you just have to tell it like it is.
Many of us in Australia complain about our society one of those things is the public transport system, it could be more efficient, cost less and be overall more appealing to use. It's because of this, the inevitable crush up against a stranger's armpit and the distances required to cover that the majority of people resort to driving cars everywhere. If you watch peak hour traffic in a city like Melbourne you notice that most of the vehicles have one occupant in a car designed to carry up to 3 or 4 passengers as well as a driver. It's quite indulgent of a society to take such an advantage of space and resources. Australia has about 25 million people and a land mass of 7617930 sq km, that gives each person about 1/3 of a km sq to live in, by any bodies standards that sounds pretty good. If we lived a subsistence lifestyle then 1/3 of a sq km should be enough for everybody to house themselves, grow enough food and still leave a few trees for the wildlife. I understand that a lot of the land is of little use agriculturally, but civilisations have existed in harsh conditions in all corners of the globe, so it's reasonable to conclude that the interior of the country would be able to sustain a small population. In contrast the population of India is an estimated 1.18 billion people that is 1/6 of the world's population; it is estimated that by 2030 it will pass China as the most populous country. India has a land mass of 3287590 sq km nearly half the size of Australia, that means at today's population every person has about 0.027 sq km to live and breathe in. 2.7mt sq that's barely enough room to lay down in or put in a small plasma screen TV, nowhere near enough room to grow some veggies and have a couple of chooks, this goes a long way to explain why people cram themselves into the smallest of spaces and are reluctant to leave. I have seen "businesses" such as a type of newsagency in a 1m x 1m area where the occupier will spend roughly 18 hrs. a day selling papers, gum and chewing tobacco.

Traffic in India has adapted to ensure that the movement of people is not greatly impeded by the sheer volume of numbers. The British East India company did install a very efficient rail service originally it was for the transport of goods but is now the major way people travel long distances. The concept of legal passenger numbers doesn't exist in most cases except for the air conditioned sections of a train, Trains generally run on time but to get a train especially over greater distances takes some planning, the majority of the popular routes are booked out weeks in advance, you can book a ticket and go onto a waiting list in the hope that some other hapless soul is unable to make the trip but its no guarantee you will travel when you want to. People are moving all over this country constantly; on a remote train station at 2am you will see whole groups of families, businessmen, holy men and backpackers waiting for the next train.

In a bus designed for 60 passengers the driver will allow as many people as possible to get onto that bus, I have witnessed men hanging from the open window rails on the outside of the bus because there was no more room inside the bus. It does sound like a bit of a free for all and in some cases it is, but you often see displays of social conditioning such as when there is an empty seat next to a women a man will not go and sit next to her even if it is the only empty seat and the rest of the bus is jam packed or a parent and child will board a full bus with no available seats so the parent will hand the child to a complete stranger and the child will quite happily sit on the strangers knee for the distance of the journey no fear from the child and no fear from the parent.

In India the average yearly income is $1000 (US) obviously there are people who earn far more (India is 15th on the world list of millionaires it currently has 139000) the price of a car and the road conditions rule out owning a car for most people in the country but nearly everybody can afford a motorbike or scooter. The roads are full of scooters, this means that there is little in the way of traffic jams, and sure traffic doesn't move at a fast pace all the time and it may look like absolute chaos to the uninitiated but it does move, in every possible direction, all at once. Vehicles such as cars have their place but as yet they are not the most favoured form of transport, that position is filled by the motor cycle or scooter. It is not unusual to see up to 5 people on a bike designed for 2, but in the cities it's the most efficient form of transport, its quick, easy to park and cheap to run. It surprising how much you can fit onto a bike if that's your only choice and the authorities are not going to impose unrealistic expectations on you. If everybody in India drove a car the same way we do in Australia nobody would get anywhere, the roads would be constantly blocked and parking would be impossible, there just isn't that much available space.

We are lucky in Australia we have planned cities that have been able to expand with the increase in population, we have a good health care system, compulsory education and a welfare system that supports those who are unable to work for some reason or those who have worked and contributed taxes all their working lives, this insures that every person has a reasonable living standard. Thankfully what we don't have in Australia is people that are disabled begging on the streets permanent disfigured by preventable or treatable diseases, we don't have small children denied an education because they have to go out and work unreasonable hours in the worse environments to help support the family with a meagre income or worse still children sold into bonded labour because money had to be borrowed in an emergency and that child will work until the debt is paid off. We don't have elderly people walking around in rags begging because they have no family to support them and no home. We don't have families living in makeshift tents with rice bags for walls surrounded by rubbish and filth sifting through that rubbish for resalable items because that is their only source of income. We don't have slums such as those that exist in Delhi, Mumbai and most of the other major cities, where thousands upon thousands of people live in abject poverty on top of rubbish tips with open sewers running through them. These are realities in countries like India. I recently got talking to a man on the train who worked for the government and we were discussing the difference between Australia's social security systems and what exists in India he explained that the greatest problem that they face as a nation is the size of the population and the raising of revenue to support the implementation of better social services. Basically he was saying it's nearly impossible to get people to pay taxes (currently only 2% of the population pay tax), this is understandable it's a predominantly cash society and not everybody has a bank account so it's almost impossible to know how much a person earns and then getting them to pay tax on that income. When you consider tracking the income of 1.18 billion people you would need government departments the size of small countries to oversee it effectively. Personally I'm all for paying taxes it ensures that those services that I may require one day are there and it generally means that people who work in government departments are paid a decent income so there is less corruption. In India corruption is rife, “baksheesh” is common it can get you out of trouble; it can get you the help you require to get something done it can grease the wheels so that they spin a little easier but what it is essentially is corruption. Police officers and politicians get paid very little it is no wonder they want to increase their income, it's one of the few ways they can improve their living standards even if it is illegal. I can understand now why parents in India push their children to do well at school and encourage them to be engineers, doctors etc. it's because they are the only ones making a decent living. It also explains why so many students come from India to Australia to further their education and then apply for citizenship if it was me I would do the same.

India is a beautiful and diverse country it has everything from coconut palm rimmed beached on the west coast, isolated desert regions in the Nth West, The Himalaya's in the north and rich flood plains in the east, it can grow enough food to feed those 1.18 billion people mainly because the majority of people live on a complete if not largely vegetarian diet, intensive animal farming is almost non-existent. Rice, pulses fruit and veg make up the majority of the diet, coastal regions do include fish and you will see chicken and goat (as they refer to it mutton) being eaten but you won't see a Hindu (which is about 80% of the population) eating beef. Thankfully the cow here is sacred, it's a shame we in the west didn't adopt the same philosophy we may have avoided the horrible reality of feed lots and the environmental damage caused by the farming of huge herds of cattle. But in its hurry to catch up to western standards the country as a whole has not been educated in the damage they are doing to themselves and the environment, India is a nuclear country its has several nuclear power plants dotted around the country, I would hate to think of how many million people would be effected should something go wrong with one of those reactors. The cities are clouded in a haze of smog due to the sheer volume of vehicles but the use and disposal of plastics in every form is probably its most obvious environmental problem that is not being addressed or dealt with. Once the men on the streets and trains selling Chai would put the Chai into small unfired clay cups, once used these cups would be thrown on the ground and smashed. Someone then had the job of collecting up that clay and it could be remade into new cups to be used again it was an excellent system. Unfortunately now those clay cups have been replaced by plastic cups and the practice of discarding them wherever you stand has not changed. Everywhere you look there is plastic discarded without any regard given to where it ends up or how it will be permanently disposed of, this problem is compounded by the distinct lack of rubbish bins even in places where large numbers of people congregate. It appears that there is little in the way of public education on the correct disposal of rubbish, India has some wonderful odours, spices, incense, food and some that are both toxic and unpleasant the major one being the burning of plastic. It's a hard one to get your head around when you come from a country that takes a lot of pride in ensuring that rubbish is disposed of correctly and thoughtfully but in India if they didn't burn the plastic the situation would be far greater than already exists.

Then there is the issue of gender inequality, the literacy rate for all of India sits at about 72% but when you look at by gender the men are at 84% and the women 62%, this puts uneducated women in a position of subservience where by the only way they can hope to survive in the future is to marry and be supported by the working husband. Educated women don't fare much better, in a country where arranged marriages are still common place it is expected that after a woman has married she will stay at home and be a dutiful wife and mother even if she is more educated or qualified than the husband. To add to this the common practice of aborting unborn female foetuses or worse still the practice of killing or abandoning female babies is a major issue I read recently that in one month an estimated 3000 young girls went “missing”. This can all be traced back to the practice of dowry payments, if a poor family has a girl and has to support the female child until it is married and then also pay a dowry when and if she gets married ( because the family of a male will not consider marrying a girl from a family that cannot pay a reasonable dowry) then a solution to avoiding this situation is to just not have any girls and unfortunately that means that they disappear, on a regular basis and the authorities are either unwilling or unable to trace where they have gone. This also means that there are a disproportionate number of men and a male dominated society is not a nurturing society, its competitive society that has very little regard for its fellow human beings and the environment. It has been mentioned before about the way the groups of men hang out on the streets (it is quite uncommon to see unaccompanied women walking around) and the way they ogle and stare at western women, this stems from the portrayal of women in the media. Western women are depicted as having very loose morals and a desire to abandon any man that they are with to run off with an Indian male, couple this with the fact that most Indian males watch a lot of porn (western porn, with only white women in it) then you can see why they have a skewed view of who women are and how they should be treated. It's going to take a huge shift in society before any of these issues are addressed appropriately.

Over all India is quite an incredible country with a rich colourful cultural history and it has a huge diversity of environments and people but the lack of pride and its male lead inflated view of its own importance along with the total disregard for the correct treatment of its women and the environment mean that at any given time the wheels could fall of and nobody will be in a position to pull it back into line. It's a society living on a knifes edge but its so insular that's is unwilling to have a decent look at itself.

Im very grateful to have had the opportunity to experience India it's a country that has fuelled my imagination since I was a child its incredible to have the chance to immerse yourself in a culture that is so far removed from the one you have been exposed to most of your life. It's the difference I embrace and India is definitely not short of them.

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Comments

[enis]

Dude I think you got stuck in the traffic and had heaps of time to research stats. But seriously what an epic blog, I'm totally floored! Like u I always wondered about India and you got tha goods and well thanx 4 sharing , nice work... Tra
ditions are good I mean each to their own, but the dowry stuff in a poor place is a recipe for abandonment, not at all nice.Happy traveling guys..