I remember reading Zen and the Art of Motor­cycle Mainte­nance by Robert Pirsig a while ago and reflecting on the nature of Quality as described by the author. Although the ideas described by Pirsig in his medita­tive narra­tive weren’t exactly novel, he did paint a layer of clarity over the things we see in day-to-day life, like a lens that magni­fies some parts of a specimen and brings to the fore an aspect that simply wasn’t noticed before, even as it stared us in the face.

But today, I was travel­ling around the streets of Mumbai, and it got me thinking about what sets nations apart from each other, especially the tenuous distinc­tion between the devel­oping and the devel­oped nations. The distinc­tion most certainly isn’t techno­log­ical — from consumer products to manufac­turing techniques, India has every­thing it needs to be on par with any other nation. In the cases where it doesn’t, there is a penalty of economic cost — we simply have to pay a little extra to get the same benefits. Alter­na­tively, the distinc­tion could be economic, but that expla­na­tion doesn’t fit either. While there are plenty of people in India below the poverty-line, there are plenty of rich people as well. But being rich doesn’t make life any easier in India, unless you are so rich that you can liter­ally pay someone to live your life for you.

To take a simple example, imagine that you need to get a new passport, and it takes several hours and several visits to the passport office to overcome bureau­cratic hurdles and get the job done. There are no missing pieces that prevent this system from functioning equally well in devel­oping as well as devel­oped nations. Except that you would expect this system to work better in a devel­oped nation, gener­ally speaking.

Or to consider another example, if it takes forty-five minutes to commute one mile in suburban Mumbai simply because the traffic is terrible (because traffic rules are not spelt out properly and seldom followed), whom do you blame? If that commute is impor­tant to you, it doesn’t matter how rich you are, such comforts cannot be easily bought. Again, the traffic is not terrible because of poverty, or lack of educa­tion, or limited access to technology.

What is missing is something that can be very accurately, if vaguely, described by the term Quality. Look around and you will see people not willing to make an effort to put in their best work, doing a shoddy job simply because everyone else does. They are surrounded by others who accept this situa­tion and get on with their lives as if it didn’t matter. The accep­tance breeds indif­fer­ence, completing the circle.

In many ways, this idea is scarier than the naïve assump­tion that gener­ating more indus­trial and agricul­tural output will magically trans­form the country into the ideal we cherish in our dreams. It is the people themselves who need to change in some hitherto undefined fashion; simply demanding more resources, more technology or more money does not help in this regard.

Somewhere along the way, we started writing down numbers in spread­sheets and ledgers, and lost track of what is really impor­tant to us.

So what does Mulayam Singh and his Samajwadi Party have to say about India’s devel­op­ment, now that we’re close to a national vote?

(All quotes from the NDTV website)

Regarding computers:

“The use of computers in offices is creating unemploy­ment problems. Our party feels that if work can be done by a person using hands there is no need to deploy machines.”

Regarding use of agricul­tural machinery:

“A harvesting season brings employ­ment for the labour class for at least six months but these harvesters will snatch their earnings.”

Regarding educa­tion:

The party’s manifesto also mentions that it will work to abolish schools providing expen­sive educa­tion in English medium and provide free educa­tion for girls till graduation.

And this gem on terrorism, from the same party that wanted to field Sanjay Dutt, convicted of posses­sion of firearms that were linked to the terror­ists respon­sible for the 1993 Bombay blasts:

The basic cause of terrorism lies in regional differences…if a govern­ment comes to power with our support, we will ensure that action is taken against communal powers and attack terrorism at its roots.”

There is really no reason to comment on these state­ments; the sheer absur­dity of it all is obvious.

From a Reuters article related to the national elections in India:

Throwing a shoe at someone is consid­ered an insult in India.

Isn’t that strange? In other parts of the world, it is consid­ered a great honor to be showered with footwear.

Oh wait.

After the tragic attack on Mumbai on Wednesday and Thursday, the question that we must all ask ourselves is not, “Who is behind these attacks?” as many news channels and newspaper colum­nists have kept repeating mindlessly. No, what we must ask ourselves is, “Will this change anything?”

This pessimism is not unwar­ranted. India has a long history of so-called ‘patience’ with respect to terrorist elements, something that the sensible citizen knows to be a euphemism for cowardice. The pattern is well-defined: a speech condemning the act and claiming that ‘the country would not put up with terror’, followed by a long, drawn out inves­ti­ga­tion by a committee of politi­cians, and then a few years in court with nonsen­sical judgments. Meanwhile, the media would do its bit, rising to the defence of the poor terrorist (who has a wife and kid after all), twisting the truth in the quest to enter­tain the public.

The situa­tion in Bombay is not under control yet, and already we have a hundred and thirty known casual­i­ties. How did we let this happen? I say ‘we’ because, at the end of the day, it our own fault that we let down our defences. When a tree is a rotten at its core, any passing storm can tear it down. And so, instead of pointing fingers at our oh-so-friendly neigh­bors, we must do what we can to fix the larger problem facing the country.

Why was there no patrol around the coast inter­cepting the terror­ists in their boats? Perhaps there wasn’t enough security in place, or perhaps not everyone was doing their job. When fishermen reported that they had seen armed terror­ists, why did it take so long for the police to get their act together? Indeed, why did it take so long for our security forces to cordon off a building infested with armed gunmen? Shouldn’t they have evacu­ated the adjacent build­ings immedi­ately? I won’t claim to know the answers to these questions, nor am I an expert in these matters, but it seems to me that there is absolutely no system in place to deal with such a situa­tion. Policemen are not trained to deal with such crises, nor do they have the appro­priate equipment.

And yet, how could we have such expec­ta­tions? In India, a policeman’s job is hardly one that the common man respects; we might fear them because they have certain powers, but it is fear mingled with contempt, because we know, just as they do, that they’re part of a highly corrupt system. As for equip­ment and training, the money allotted for this purpose lines the pockets of middlemen.

If security were the only problem, it could be fixed rather easily. But the rabbit hole goes still deeper. Terror­ists live amongst ordinary citizens and carry out their activ­i­ties with audacity, only because there’s really no way for us to tell if an individual is an Indian citizen or not, let alone enforce security measures at the border. Passports are forged, because there are people ready to supply them for their own personal gain. Politi­cians hanker after money and votes, and in the process, they disre­gard national security and the welfare of citizens. Today, politi­cians have destroyed our educa­tional insti­tu­tions in the name of reser­va­tions, damaged the unity of the nation in the name of caste, religion and language, and hampered the progress of the country by disre­garding merit and appeasing the incom­pe­tent. At this moment, we are proud of how our country is becoming a global economic power, but the educa­tional policies of the govern­ment will come back to haunt us ten years from now. This is the kind of pride that comes before a fall.

And all this while, why is it that we value the lives of our countrymen so cheaply? I read a headline from an Indian news source yesterday that I can paraphrase as, “6 foreigners amongst 80 killed…” — as if the lives of the six foreigners were somehow more impor­tant than all the others. This is not an isolated case; it’s almost as if, for the Indian media, these are mere numbers that contribute to the excite­ment, and the more the merrier.

So when I said the attacks were tragic, it wasn’t just because a hundred people were killed, but also because our enemies have once again made it obvious how weak the founda­tion of our society truly is. In happier times, I would have said that we must do whatever little we can to push forward on the path of progress, but today, little is not good enough. Now is the time for us to get together and tear down the bastions of corrup­tion and incom­pe­tence, before it is too late.

The terror­ists have been at it again. On Wednesday, November 26^th, India’s finan­cial capital Mumbai was rocked by a series of attacks that took more than a hundred lives and injured thrice as many — according to the last count. Some people are being held hostage by armed gunmen even now, and the situa­tion is still very tense.

–

Now what?

According to this press release by ISRO, India’s Chandrayaan-1 space­craft success­fully hit the Moon as planned on November 14^th 2008. An excerpt:

In a historic event, the Indian space programme achieved a unique feat today (November 14, 2008) with the placing of Indian tricolour on the Moon’s surface on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s birthday. The Indian flag was painted on the sides of Moon Impact Probe (MIP), one of the 11 payloads of Chandrayaan-1 space­craft, that success­fully hit the lunar surface today at 20:31 hrs (8:31 pm) IST. This is the first Indian built object to reach the surface of the moon. The point of MIP’s impact was near the Moon’s South Polar Region. It may be recalled that the modern Indian space programme was initi­ated in 1962 when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister of India.

Today, I watched Chak De! India, the movie, thanks to the efforts of the Cornell India Associ­a­tion. In brief, this is the story of the captain of the Indian hockey team who is forced to give up the game due to certain baseless allega­tions, but returns seven years later to coach the women’s national hockey team and lead them to victory in the World Cup.

My opinion about the movie: definitely worth watching. The script and direc­tion combine a passion for the game with light touches of comedy and drama to conjure up a couple of hours of sheer excite­ment. There are also elements pointing to the personal lives of some of the charac­ters, adding a measure of reality to the story.

Friday evening is the best time of the week. By then, all the activ­i­ties of the day are wrapped up and put away until the following Monday.

Saturday seems much less of a working day in the US than it does in India. I consider this to be a rather good thing, because it gives me a lot of free time to relax, and get ready for the next week. One day, in my opinion, is too little to recharge.

Also, two days in a row is often long enough to take a short trip somewhere, either as a holiday or a visit to a friend’s place. But you need a car for that.

In India, traffic moves along the left lane, but in the US it is the other way around. For newcomers, this is a constant source of confu­sion, because they have a diffi­cult time figuring out which way to look before crossing the street. Obviously the best way to deal with this problem is to err on the side of caution and look both ways.

Cars in the US are built differ­ently. The gears are simpli­fied — see automatic trans­mis­sion — which means that there is no need to change gears as the car speeds up or slows down. This also affects the way people drive their cars. For instance, when a red light turns green, a car in India would start moving gradu­ally, the gear would be changed and then the vehicle would speed up. In contrast, a person driving a car in the US would simply press down on the accel­er­ator and it would be off as quickly as possible. It is as if there were a perfectly functioning system of speeding vehicles that the driver wanted to join in the smallest possible time so as to become a part of the mainstream.

One of the strange things for an Indian going to New York is the way vehicles stop and give way to pedes­trians. Where there are zebra-crossings, cars slow down to let people pass. At the same time, it is almost assumed that pedes­trians will not attempt to cross the street at any other place. I think this phenom­enon is tied up to the technology involved — cars can afford to stop frequently because they speed up very easily afterward.