Jeffersonian India doesn't do cities well
Monday, June 15, 2009 at 2:16AM FRONT PAGE: "Megacities Threaten to Choke India," by Patrick Barta and Krishna Pokharel, Wall Street Journal, 13 May 2009.
China seems very serious about getting its cities right, because it's actively encouraging the flow from rural to urban--very Hamiltonian. Screw that whole Maoist BS on the joys of being a peasant.
India, because it reifies the village and farmers (so Gandhian), doesn't seem to do cities that well, and yet it's accumulating mega-cities at a scary rate.
And believe me, plenty of slumdogs and plenty of millionaires (by number, India has the most in the world), but rarely do the two worlds meet, much less mesh well.
My one time in India (Mumbai) was eye-opening: so long as I stayed with the political elite, I could look everybody in the eye (I'm just 6'2" in shoes) and their skin tone was not much darker than mine. But head out among the masses and everyone is eight inches shorter and much darker in skin tone. It was stunningly clear that I was living in a highly segregated world.
What I like about China is the strange egalitarianism that still persists. Yes, China has its elite like everybody, but when you move about, everybody talks to everybody else with few apparent airs. It actually reminds me of the U.S. in that way.
Reader Comments (4)
I have not monitored this for the last few years, but at that earlier time the stories that reached the global media indicated the Chinese administrators were focusing on fast and efficient change, with limited humane concerns.
The recent handling of slumdogs kids' houses did not indicate much administrative humanity either.
There were Indian monitors for US/South Vietnam military operations in 1967. Napalm was not supposed to be used. A tall Hindu could see an A-1 being loaded with napalm over a security fence, but told his shorter partner there was no napalm. It didn't matter, the Vietnamese A-1 pilots dumped them at sea, or isolated areas, and returned for 'good' bombs. They only accepted the napalm loading because there was a constant flow in from US that would be a hazard for VC mortars. Dumb US Leviathan brass of that time.
Twenty years later I saw the caste system cause isolation between Indian immigrant families in Fresno.
Consider that North Indians are fairer skinned than South Indians. Many in Mumbai that you met were probably North Indian.
In India class is mostly defined by education and income. The percentage of India that is globalized and affluent is about 5% of the population or 60 million out of 1.2 billion.
About 20 million Indians use the data center services on their smart phones (the large majority almost exclusively for business or academic uses.) India only buys about 8 million PCs a year and only has an installed base of about 40 million PCs in use. Most Indians who use computers only use them at work or at school, and don't use computers at home.http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/006200906131324.htmThose who use computers at home primarily use it for work or academics, versus personal uses (unlike in the US.)
Keep in mind however, that this group of affluent Indians (about 60 million) is growing very rapidly as a share of the population. The comparable percentage in 1991, when Manmohan Singh began reforms, was perhaps half a percent of the total population.