Earlier this week I went on a very long rant about this Dana Parsons article in the LA Times on the sex trafficking of Nepali girls. Today Dana Parsons’ column takes sensationalist trash to a whole other level. Normally I wouldn’t subject anyone to yet another lecture on primitivism, but I think this particular piece is too precious to keep to myself.
Parsons’ article concerns his attempt at something called “perspective.” He received an email recently from his cousin who is on business in Mumbai, filled with details on the horrible living conditions there. Because of this said email, Parsons now feels a sense of enlightenment and gratitude at the fact that he doesn’t have to live in the squalor that his cousin describes.
You can already guess where this is going. The column outlines the horrors of Mumbai, as narrated by Parsons’ cousin:
There are animals everywhere. Common to see dogs lying in areas by the road. I don’t know how they survive, but I’m told animals are sacred and you watch out for them. There are cows wandering through the streets.
We saw several naked people. Not always children. Several relieving themselves.
Our driver pulled over near some marshy area that I took to be rice fields. I got the camera out and was ready to shoot when we saw that the driver was relieving himself at the side of the car.
Ok, we get it — animals, nudity, and public urination, oh my! How is this substantive news by any standard, and more importantly, how can anyone find these details enlightening, as Mr. Parsons claims?
Truth be told, I’m really not surprised that there are people who view the world the way that Dana Parsons does. What I do find upsetting is that the LA Times is carrying this trash and passing it off as journalism. Then again, what else should I expect — time and time again I have been appalled at their international coverage. I will concede, however, that the LA Times is good for covering a few things, namely: state and local politics, the Hollywood industry, and most importantly, a certain college basketball team that’s going to rout Florida on Saturday. But even if the LAT has no intention of upgrading their international coverage, it’s time for them to cut Dana Parsons off from covering anything related to South Asia. He really needs to be stopped.
The notion that this reporter should have to accommodate hurt feelings in the Indian diaspora by modifying or ignoring the truth is at once scary and funny.
I like how one commentator contrasted western expectations of assimilation to cultural norms to westerner’s revulsion at the lack of basic hygiene in third world countries. Yes all cultures may have equal value in the sense of their moral teachings, but no they are not all equal in the level of practical development i.e. lifespan, quality of life etc.
If the part of Indian society which is living at near first world levels is given a free pass by the rest of the world, they will have one less incentive to help their less fortunately compatriots rise out of poverty.
Gazsi
Well, to be fair to the author and the LA Times, this piece really isn’t offered as journalism but as column subtitled “One man’s reality check.” The Mumbai descriptions barely occupy three short paragraphs and aren’t really the point of the whole piece. Yes, the take on Mumbai is silly and unsophisticated, but this column is just a little column. Who cares? And the description of Mumbai cannot be said to be inaccurate . . .
Mr. K. how can you know for sure that it’s useless if nobody says anything? This is not about seeking truth, it’s about deliberate imbalance.
People dying everyday sitting on top of trains is accurate? This was the image from Gandhi. And he hasn’t seen anything else about India after that. The image of India is from the 40s. He needs to wake up.
Re: #47. i’ve seen well-dressed young men in the. u.s. relieving themselves in public, (not drunk), even though there must have been a public bathroom somewhere nearby and the subway had a urine smell (and i don’t think it was all homeless people). i’m also surprised by how much people spit while walking here. in india of course, there’s paan spittle and other spittle, but i was really surprised by how many well-dressed people, usually men, i see spitting openly in public here.
The Indian bourgeoisie can be motivated into alleviating poverty because they will be shamed by foreign journalists writing about mangy dogs and beggar children — good idea!
Hey Chowkutta #24, That blog IS pretty bad. I wonder why must she endure such horrors! Biting on every level.
Alas her effort to ‘share’ her world will likely be irrelevant – Mumbai will be what it wishes to be – great and crap at the same time. Easy to trash it, and India, and easy to forget that a subcontinent (not just India, but Pak, Bangladesh), strip-mined of its wealth, confidence, and assurance over long 250 yrs will take time to recover.
Preston, he could do his reality check right in LA. Otherwise, the inconveniences he puts up with in his middle class life in LA might properly be compared to inconveniences that middle class Mumbaikers cope with. This is just an update of “eat you vegetables for the starving poor children in India,” which was a colonial fairy tale. Somewhere in all of this there is an inherent denial of other underlying truths alrwady cited above– that people are that grindingly poor in India because the British worked long and hard to suck the place dry and that recovery is hard too, plus the United States we are all living on land and resources seized from indigenous peoples, etc., etc….
Yeah also what is up with this being Indian culture thing ? Like someone said before, animals walking on the streets, long commutes, nudity and poverty are now considered Indian culture ? Being poor and dirty is Indian culture ?
But this does have some truth to it, this kind of media can be good for India because if people see how bad some people in India have it then they may want to help those people out. OR it could have the opposite affect, and businessmen reading these articles can decide not to invest in India and take there money elsewhere..
Sadaiyappan if it takes ‘shame’ in front of foreigners to do something about poverty then nothing will ever be done about poverty — it’s naive to think that that could be an incentive, (and kind of funny in an old school way like how the family patriarch warns disobedient children that if they don’t listen to him he’ll tell everyone about their misbehaviour and bring ‘shame’ to the family!)
Amrita, I can’t agree that people are grindingly poor in India because the British worked long and hard to suck the place dry, that’s too reductionist. There are so many factors that contribute to poverty. And the British colonizing India doesn’t excuse or explain people urinating on walls. From what I see in Kolkata every day, some of it is lack of available facilities, much of it is plain laziness, and yes, it’s culturally acceptable. Does that mean I don’t notice it or excuse it as acceptable behavior? Of course not. I think it’s deplorable. The government has set up public toilets in the city, but near where I live there’s basically a piss wall that most men from all walks of life in the area know about and use(it’s also where a garbage truck dumps trash to be picked over by 4-5 ragpickers every day.) I see that you think Parsons is intentionally damaging, but like Mr. Kobayashi, I think that’s going too far.
Focusing on one aspect of a country doesn’t automatically mean deliberate imbalance. The truth has many faces.
I would be interested to see what Parsons says if you write him asking for a more balanced (and positive?) piece on India.
I am an immigrant in America. I really love this country and its people and I can be very critical of India and Indians. I don’t shy away from faultfinding among my own but please be objective. Preston, reducing Bombay to what this writer has, is in fact inaccurate, more pointedly it’s a lie. It’s like saying New York City is all about in-your-face homeless people, muggings and people’s pets’ urine steaking all of its sidewalks. I am an Indian trying to get ahead in an industry where there are hardly any other Indians or people of color. Lately I have begun to do quite well but anytime an article like this appears, I get defensive and also a false sense of inferiority complex overcomes me. I start thinking what the people around me are thinking about me, once they have read such an article – ” he comes from India where people live like animals.” I don’t even come from a wealthy family in India but I haven’t ever felt a sense of ” material culture shock ” in America. When I read such crap I want to give everything up and go back to India to be with friends and family I left behind and maybe live in a city that I always wanted to – Bombay – a city that pulses with life like no other city in the US except for maybe New York. That will be a slap in the face of people who think like this writer. But I am caught in a vicious circle of my own making – going back without having made it big here will have such a sense of self-failure, specially when I am so close. I am not here because I coudn’t bear India’s stench.
I always though the british helped India to modernize.. Look at what they did to Honk Kong.. Maybe if we had not declared Independance India would be a much nicer place right now..
Manju ol’ pal!!!! How the hell are ya!??
I’m skeptical of the India Shining series of articles that came out last year. I feel like both strains of contemporary journalism on India – both of the poverty voyeur / horrified white person genre as well as the India Is On The Rise variety – are fundamentally dishonest, exaggerating and sensationalizing one or another aspect of what’s happening in a tremendously complex part of the world. Two sides of the same coin, in a lot of ways.
I may not agree with all that the article says but in most part I find it an accurate representation of the facts. Mumbai is a filthy, stinking, hell-hole.
To all the high-brow intellectuals on this board who are spewing pages defending Mumbai’s unique charm, I ask you to take a trip to Andheri east. There, nestled among back-office sweat shops are entire fields of human excrement. From my hotel room window at 6 am I had a ringside view of humans lined up 100 deep shitting straight into the mouths of pigs who were eating the shit as it came out. Needless to say I lost my appetite for the entire week.
London was a slum until the 19th century. Have they forgotten that England was largely wretched when they were busy colonizing the rest of the world? Charles Dickens? William Blake? Economic growth is occuring in Asia alongside poverty. Poverty will persist, and that wont make the very real growth a failure as some are alleging now.
I have no problem with journalists writing about the poverty in India. But I do have a problem with Parsons’ relying on a cousin’s email to paint the picture. How accurate is it to say “There are animals everywhere”? What impression does that create? Why not say “Stray dogs and cows are a common sight.” And what about this:
Why not just tell us that a large percentage of India’s population does not have access to toilets?
And this:
Is it really OK? It sounds like the people on the roof are sold tickets too. And are deaths reported daily?
I went to India in 2005, mostly Tamil Nadu, and I didn’t see a single naked adult, nor anyone sitting atop any of the trains.
This is shoddy journalism. And yes, Preston, this piece is supposed to be journalism, even with that subtitle. It would be different, perhaps, if it was a letter to the editor or a blog post. But it’s been written by a three-times-a-week columnist, who has to be held to high standards.
Hi Naina, when was the last time you went to India? I grew up there, and unfortunately I don’t share your sense of outrage as I have seen all the above mentioned stuff…so please save your sense of outrage till you have actually spent some time there and gotten down from your ivory tower in new jersey or wherever!
“Focusing on one aspect of a country doesn’t automatically mean deliberate imbalance. The truth has many faces.”
true, but most people dont’ take kindly to it. what about americans going on about the french and not bathing (based on truth i guess). not sure the french appreciate that. what about americans who go on about the awful state of british teeth (i’ve seen it). not sure the brits like that. there are fewer excuses in the first world for smelly, dirty, unhygienic people with poor teeth, in my opinion.
appearances can be deceptive. i read an article by a british journalist complaining about the cramped, sweaty smell of a mumbai train and he insinuated that some of them hadn’t bathed. well, maybe that’s because the water supply is dicey and many of the people riding with him live in slums and the train is overcrowded. what excuse is there, then, for the well-dressed but smelly people i’ve had to endure on the not so crowded subways in the u.s. and the tube in london, especially during cold weather when a lot of them seem to bathe only every other day or every two days. what about all those outwardly nice looking homes on tree-lined streets that are absolutely filthy inside (just watch that tv show with those two cleaning women) inside? not even a slum person in india would have their house looking like that. dirt huts in india and africa may look poor from the outside but inside, the floors are swept clean. i’ve yet to see a dirty homeless person in the u.s. bathing in the river or trying to clean themselves. but in india poor people or rural people will try to clean themselves in rivers, ponds, lakes. so would it be ok for me to write a column based on my observations of people on subways in first world countries and of them on tv programs on cleaning houses and come to the conclusion that a lot of the “poorer hygiene” in first world countries is actually hidden behind fancy clothes and houses and perfumes? it wouldn’t be a deliberate imbalance on my part, just one face of truth after all. (and this isn’t so much to do with parson’s article but just a general response)
Hey Gabe, have you read Naina’s earlier piece on this columnists other article? She raises some great points.
http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/004276.html
I grew up in India for 21 years. And I definitely share naina’s outrage. I have not seen people dying everyday on top of trains or naked people on streets. And no I did not grow up in an ivory tower in India.
Well, it is certainly not OK, it is dangerous and stupid. There are plenty of warnings and sign boards put up by the authorities asking people not to do stupid things. But the trains are always overcrowded and carry 5-6 times their capacity (I think) during rush hours and you cant just leave the train if it is crowded and take the next one, because then you will have to wait for 3 hours. On an average about 15 people die daily in the Bombay suburban tracks. Many people die while crossing tracks as they are not fenced and not out of bounds and many people die because they simply fall off trains. People climb on windows and hang on with their fingers between the narrow ridge used to collect rainwater and let it flow from the front, between two compartments and sometimes almost on top . image. People hanging from doors sometimes with just one hand and a few toes on whatever tiny space is available at the doors can fall off if they lose their grip. Some times they are struck by the electric poles which are too close to the train and people are hanging too far out. Having said all this, the local trains are very punctual, very frequent, very cheap and run almost 24 hrs … from around 3:30 AM to 1:30 AM or so. It takes a huge disaster, natural or man made for the trains to come to grinding halt.
Also I think that this situation is totally unique to Bombay local trains and people from outside Bombay are usually in total ‘shock and awe’ when they witness this magnitude of humanity cramped in such a small place.
fsowalla, what have you been reading? Here’s something for you, and do try Macaulay’s Minute on (Indian) Education of February 1835. BTW, lack of “available failities” is lack of funds for plumbing– would you very sweetly spring for public toilets all over india? Then we can all start programs for teaching everybody to use them!
Re. 55, oh I totally agree – the problem is by no means an India-only situation. But from my experience, it is a much more frequent occurrence there (in broad daylight), with passersby not even registering disgust/anger. And let’s forget about police issuing citations for indecent exposure …
What Parsons wrote in his article is just the same things I hear from EVERYONE that I’ve known who has ever visited India. I work at a company where people travel around the world looking for products. They go to other ‘third’ world countries like Nigeria, Thailand, Vietnam, etc and yet the least favored country to visit is always India. They site the overcrowded streets, the lack of hygiene and shabby public facilities. It’s gotten to the point where people are taking turns having to visit India while they will gladly go to any of the other countries on their itinerary, despite the inconveniences. It’s extremely embarrassing. Could it be that we just tend to tolerate these things because we’re Indian? I think we just rush to make excuses for it instead of dealing with it.
So writing that in Mumbai there are naked poor people forced to defecate out in the open among wandering livestock is beyond the pale? Last week in New York, I saw a middle-aged, obviously middle class white man peeing between two parked cars, not twenty yards from Park Avenue. He had pulled back his blue blazer to let it fly. I assumed that he had some medical condition that prevented him from waiting until he could find a proper toilet.
I also assume that if the citizens of Mumbai had the means, they would clothe themselves, and if the city’s infrastructure were better, they would have a proper place to pee. This doesn’t seem to be a holdover from the Raj but more obviously the fault of corrupt and useless government at all levels.
Preston, why doesn’t it seem to you to be a holdover from what you call the Raj?
They go there with prejudices induced by Lonely planet guides which every westerner think is the bible for travelers. After reading it they try to find evidence to match what was written in the guidebook, not the other way around. People see what they are looking for. And this thing about least favored is wrong, because people talk bad about India even before visiting it, even before getting know. Surely, India has its problems, but then why go to India and stay in a 50 cent/night hotel and then complain about shabby rooms? Why don’t they spend the same amount that they would spend in US ($35/night). For the same $35/night they get the same quality in India too, but no they won’t do that. If they do that then they can’t spin stories as to how disgusting it was.
Thanks for the links. I’m not debating Macaulay and his ilk’s role here. My point is that poverty in India today is not only explained by British colonial policy. People were (and are) grindingly poor long before the British arrived.
As for pissing, what can I say? The government of West Bengal has installed over 328 sanitary marts in rural areas of 2004 (their data). They have also built public latrines in Kolkata. The money is there, don’t let people tell you it’s not. Various social sector departments in the government are in fact always looking for ways to spend their portions of the budget. In the slums, I’ve seen that people actually do a remarkable job of separating the latrine areas from where they live and eat (probably because they also live there)– it’s in the better off areas that one sees more public urination onto walls along sidewalks. Again, that’s one of the realities on the streets here.
Hello – I just found this Website while I was doing some research for a business travel to Bombay next month. I have to admit that had a different impression of the city, because my associates tell me it is the most modern and most wealthy city in India. But I am wondering if it is not true? Do many people really use the restroom on the street? – should I have any vaccinations before I travel?
Surely, India has its problems, but then why go to India and stay in a 50 cent/night hotel and then complain about shabby rooms? Why don’t they spend the same amount that they would spend in US ($35/night). For the same $35/night they get the same quality in India too, but no they won’t do that. If they do that then they can’t spin stories as to how disgusting it was.
Exactly. I stayed in a hotel in Hyderabad which was around ~$40/ day, it was far better than what you find anything in US for the same cost. In fact, the ~$110-150/ day hotels in Delhi, Hyderabad are absolutely fantastic. On several occasions, I have been with other Americans, they themselves wanted to move to cheaper ones because they thought that $35-40/ day were just fine.
Sure, India has huge problems. Foswalla and Preston, please read Kennedey (from Yale) and others, and compare the GDP of India before British colonization, during, and after. A country that had series of famines (Bengal and others) mostly by man made causes, is heavily populated, had all most all its natural resources diverted to distant lands to build war machine for His/ Her Majesty cannot be expected to be “sparkling clean and chic” like Singapore.
Also keep in context, the size of America and India (three times smaller), and population difference. If you crowd America to the same level, you will see shit all over, no kidding……..just like Mardi Gras. Also, remember, Katrina showed that even the most powerful countries can be very vulnerable and indifferent to poor.
How could it be a holdover from the British colonial project? India has had over a half-century of self-rule. At some point, India’s problems are just India’s problems. This is not to say that there are not pervasive structural problems, an overburdened and decrepit infrastructure, environmental degradation, the failed policies of external agents like the World Bank and the IMF, extreme government corruption and sleaze–all of which create a vicious trap for the poor, making it difficult to escape. But not all of India’s cities face the scale of Mumbai’s horrors. Plus, there are other major cities in the world with problems similar to Mumbai’s, and which did not suffer under a colonial yoke, or just not in the same fairly recent way. The woes of the world’s megacities are well known, well documented, and well studied (read anything by Mike Davis, for example).
I grant that India was placed at a severe disadvantage by colonialism, but the reality of life in Mumbai in 2007 results from more recent factors, not least of which is that the city has never really had a functioning government. Someone above mentioned Tamil Nadi as a counter-example. TN is one of India’s best governed states. It provided for the victims of the tsunami better than the American state and federal governments did for the Katrina victims in New Orleans.
Some parts of India are doing well enough, all things considered. TN was the Madras Presidency for a good long time.
Preston, I generally agree with things you post here, but its kinda naive to think that the economic effects of two hundred years of colonialism can be overcome in about sixty. I don’t have the time to go over it here, but the institutional legacies of colonialism still linger and actually have a very long lives in terms of affecting the incentives of political and economic actors. Such congealed/ossified institutions and their effects are very difficult to get rid of as institutional economists (Douglas North, Pranab Bardhan and actually Thorstein Veblen before all of them) have demonstrated.
It may have something to do with elevated skin melanin levels too.
Why do you assume that they aren’t staying at the finest hotels? The company does put them in the better hotels. However, they do have to visit factories and vendors to look for goods and it’s everything they see outside that they talk about. Men urinating or defecating on the streets is not a complaint that they make about Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh City.
My co-workers are also people who come from all walks of life. Some of them from poor backgrounds and all races/ethnicities. They’re hardly ignorant and I doubt they all simply read the Lonely Planet books to get a view of how the world is supposed to be.
Oh and by the way, there’s a reason most of Chicago’s alleys smell like urine. I mean, granted, we’re “flyover country”, and so therefore might as well be in Mumbai to readers of the LA Times, but I still think that’s relevant. Anyone shocked, SHOCKED by public urination clearly hasn’t spent much time in any big, non-automobile dependent city anywhere in the world.
Well here it is, Preston. The British did not build a plethora of public loos in India before 1947. They did however build public loos in Britain during the same period. In addition they left the country in a shambles, with a ruined economy and out of date industrial facilities (they stopped capital investment into manufacturing and other sectors as soon as they realized they would have to leave– years before Independence), so public toilets, which had gone wanting for centuries weren’t top of the list of necessary remedies. You must be aware that the infrastructure after Broitish withdrawal did not allow plumbing in any part of any Indian city to work 24/7, let alone share water supplies to support a network of public facilities. The infrastructure had to be rebuilt on tax rupees, and prioritized under multiple demands and stressors . As you note, the complexities of restructuring megacities are collosal, and sixty years is not very long, considering the damage the British Occupation did. Repairs to plumbing and the fabric of civilization will no doubt accelerate, just not in time for writers like Dana Parsons to have nothing to report. Bags no newspaper here will want to publish your story about the guy p[eeing between cars on Park.
fsowalla, enjoy Macaulay! He’s so totally outrageous. You know the rich people won’t share their facilities, and nobody installs public loos in Alipore, as everyone’s supposed to go in the houses’ servants’ quarters or such, or not be there at all, as if the streets were private or people were to just hold it in. But you are saying that loos have been built and are being properly used. The money is thwre now, boosted with IT generated tax revenues, but it wasn’t before. Re British, Victorian London had pretty poor people and lousy public facilities too, only their lot improved as Indian people’s got worse. The societal and mental scramble the British left behind was another impediment– World Bank and WTO policies carrying that tradition forward I grant you — but it’s impossible that people were as grindingly poor before the British occupation, if only because almost all Indians became poorer under the British, and those who were poorest to start with obviously had the least effective defenses against seizures, extortions, and other aggressive means of deprivation. don’t forget, traditions of indigenous craftsmanship were systematically undermined– and what else was there in a pre-industrail society, other than subsistence farming?
Paulina, one should always get vaccinated, even in Texas.
Sadly, I must do other stuff but wait for tech support on the phone the rest of this afternoon…
Kush, rather than compare India and the US, let’s compare cities with equivalent populations in both countries (not perfect, but better than using Mardi Gras — would be slightly more accurate to compare that to, perhaps, Ganesh Chaturthy or Durga Puja). Can these differences be explained solely by the British legacy? The yoke of colonialism can’t across the board explain the individual decisions taken by politicians, or for that matter, the average citizen in matters as large as public spending or as small as urinating on the street.
“Re. 55, oh I totally agree – the problem is by no means an India-only situation. But from my experience, it is a much more frequent occurrence there (in broad daylight), with passersby not even registering disgust/anger. And let’s forget about police issuing citations for indecent exposure …”
go gator, i’m not making excuses for those in india who have access to amenities and who indulge in this sort of behavior or making excuses for poor governance in india. whether in the u.s. or india, there are poor people who are much cleaner and wealthier people who are not. i just think there are fewer excuses for a reasonably well off first world person to be urinating in the street or have a filthy house or not bathe for two days and then ride the subway or for there to be really filthy homeless people when there are so many amenities and social services available to them that are not available even to some middle class neighborhoods in india.
people write that westerners are shocked when they go to a poor country like india and see the dirt, filth, poverty outside of five-star hotels etc. i am more shocked that 95 percent of the people at my fancy five-star college gym in the u.s. have zero personal hygiene, no respect for others, sweat all over the equipment and do not wipe it as required to, allowing the sweat/gunk to dry and the next unsuspecting person uses it or doesn’t even care enough to wipe it before using it (when all these amenities are available and signs are there telling them to do so). i am shocked by a female friend’s stories of the fancy bathroom in her corporate building, where well-paid, well-dressed women have zero hygiene and leave the toilet in a disgraceful state for the next person. all this may be out in the open and shocking in india, but it’s hidden and just as shocking here in its own way, especially in more seemingly upscale surroundings. as katrina shows, it doesn’t take much for filth to accumulate and people to fight over bathrooms when order and law and things and amenities break down. the veneer of “civilization” and “civility” is very thin.
I am not assuming, you are. You are assuming everyone who visits India are sent by the company. Go to http://www.travelblog.org and go to lonelyplanet(and similar guidebooks), read blogs about Bangkok or Ho chi Minh City(and India and the other “third world”). India is not the only country they talk bad about or good about.
And as far as Lonelyplanet, it is the highest selling travel guidebook in the world. So don’t tell me people don’t read it before they travel to the “third world”. It is the bible for backpackers and travelers.
And importantly, I never said “all” or “any” westerners are ignorant, as a matter fact i never said anything about ignorance. And I also said India has its problems. I said people go with prejudices and they see what they look for. And they look for what travel guidebooks tells them. Till there is a travel guidebook fair and balanced you will be having these type of articles.
Can these differences be explained solely by the British legacy?
No, not at all.
Sure, India has a significant share of failed policies, and corrupt politicians are in legions post 1947. But they do not come out of vacuum. A country that is cash-strapped, and is handed over broken infrastructure is a perfect breeding ground. It makes itself a prime place for misuse of limited funds, and rampant corruption.
A country that had series of famines (pre-47), could (not) barely grow enough food to feed its people, was simmering with religious strife, mess due to partition, empty coffers the time British left in 1947 – remember, all this with British muck-ups – should be not be expected to be avant garde, and with designer toilets every 10 steps in few decades later. The immediate problem in India was to even grow even grains to feed not making toilets in 1940s-50s-60s-70s, periodic wars with Pakistan and China.
It did not have Marshall (or Marshall like) Plan that guided the recovery of Germany, and Japan. Keep the size in mind, and populations, when talking about India or China.
As late as 1991, India was on the brink of loan default because they hardly had foreign reserves. India was on a brink of bankruptcy.
Regarding toilets, and public urinations, for most part, they are hardly clean public toilets in India – the key word is clean, and therefore, people prefer open spaces. This all requires resources, and casholla, which is only starting to trickle by in last 5 years or so. It has long ways to go.
My point is: discounting hundred of years of total rampage of India by British, and expecting India and similar countries to jump start as becoming Soho of East (or whatever) is either a sign of dishonesty or limited intellect or both by anyone who claims that.
Can’t resist (still on hold for techies)– public spending is directly related to going on the street. No issue bigger or smaller here. If you won’t read Paul Kennedy first hand, fsowalla. here’s a one sentence synopsis from an article in the Herald Tribune: “According to the Yale historian Paul Kennedy, India accounted for about 24.5 percent of world manufacturing output in 1750, a share that fell to 1.7 percent by 1900 as the per capita level of industrialization declined sevenfold.”
Kush: Katrina showed that bad governance is bad governance. Maybe instead of engaging in India vs America tit for tat, which is silly, conterproductive, and the product of a kind of insecurity (if you are confident in who you are and what you are doing, you simply address the problem at hand, not others perceptions of it. I’m talking to both sides here, since you can’t do comment on one without the other), we should be aiming our comment ‘sallies’ at the inept in government.
but i dont’ this discussion is about addressing the actual problem, which is really impossible for people on a blog to do and if we’re to address it all to those in government, why comment on a blog at all then? i think this discussion is about people’s perceptions of the problems they encounter in other countries and the conclusions, right or wrong, they draw from them.
Red Snapper: I didn’t see the some, obviously. Sorry.
I dunno, it was the right-winger that threw me off. Why not just say the right, why be derogatory? And the last time I checked, it’s the left that goes in for safari chic, not the right. It’s the left that goes in for all this, look how bad I feel about the world, I must be a good person. Why drag the right into it?
We are talking about the poor citizens of Mumbai not having suitable toilets and so having to squat on the street. Surely, even given the degrading legacy of colonialism, lack of investment in infrastructure, sectarian strife, currency devaluation, terrorist attacks, famines, wars with Pakistan, and every other woe–that the Mumbai city fathers could summon the political will to install some plumbing. This is not rocket science, nor is it the Israeli-Palestinian question. We’re talking about PVC pipe.
Uh, my last comment deleted, huh? Okay. I’m done.
Preston, this has nothing to do with Israel and Palestine! Are you not grasping what Kush and others are saying? Before you go any further about toilets in Mumbai, first tell us why you think all the Katrina damage has not been repaired yet.
Amrita, I get what people are saying. My argument is that in 2007 Mumbai suffers more from bad government than from colonialism. The same is true of New Orleans (which was at times a Spanish and French colony).
Amrita#98,
I think your pleas are falling on deaf ears. People see what they want see, I think it is as simple as that.