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.

(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.

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.

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.

–

Now what?

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.

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.

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.

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.