India Explained

The biggest pastime for the educated in (and of) modern India (and I suppose for the rest too, out there in Bharat) is to reflect endlessly on all the faults of the country and how to fix it. Anyone with half a brain (and some with complete lobotomies) has a fully developed solution to what ails the country. Unfortunately, none of us agree on what is ailing India. By the sheer force of this obsession (bending the spoon with will power and all that), we should have fixed all the problems by now. I think the obsession gets worse the farther you are from India and the longer you have been out.

The ideas that have been suggested to me include military rule (of course, Pakistan is a stellar example of its success) and genocide (Lallu Prasad Hitler?) on the one hand to dissolution of the country into 22 small countries on the other. And everything in between. Most of the extreme ideas, not surprisingly, come from the NRI/PIO (Non Resident Indian/Person of Indian Origin) types.



Even so, Indians living in India seem to be a very touchy when the NRI/PIO type desi flies in with a suitcase full of foreign smells to offer solutions to their problems. The same complaints they shared that morning with their neighbor become points of pride. If you care so much, why did you leave, they ask. As if they would have made a different choice if they were in our shoes. It is a different India, they tell us, not the country you left behind. Of course, it is a different India, but a different India built on the foundations of the same India.

So, I generally keep my opinions to myself when I am in India. But I too have my own opinions on how to fix India. They too are simplistic, unworkable and is born more out of frustration than pragmatism, blame it on my peripheral lobotomy.

I have realized, sadly, that increasingly when I care about the problems of India, I care more about things that matter to ME and not necessarily to Indians in general. I worry about airports, surface transportation, government rules on foreigners and PIOs, infrastructure, slow internet, electricity and pollution. That does not mean I have no opinions on everything else that affects India. Those opinions might make 365 seperate blog posts.

I just know my limitations.

I thought about all this yesterday on my flight from the US to Europe. The flight was full of Americans and Indians going to India on business trips. I heard an Indian gentleman "explaining" India to a wide-eyed woman who was on her first trip to India (and from the look of it, to any third-world country.) The sad part is, the first book that explained India to me that made rational sense (albeit, from the eyes of a foreigner) was In Light of India by Octavio Paz.

Can you explain India to someone? Much less, can you "fix" India? Does India need to be "fixed?"

There is a genetics lab in a University in the US, where a Gujarati scientist hangs a "holy fish" as a symbol of his Hindu religion. Holly cow, a holly fish! Now the Caucasian-Americans in the lab have taken to asking new (and very confused) Indians coming in, where their holy fish is.

Explain that to the Indians.