Through some random web surfing, I came across an interesting article by Jayant Bhandari comparing / contrasting his experiences doing business in the Desh shortly after 1991’s economic reforms vs. now. Although we frequently talk about how much the Indian economy has changed in the past 15 yrs, Jayant’s article had some solid anecdotes of just how grinding day to day life really was back in the day –
..I moved to Delhi [in 1993]. To my dismay, no one wanted to rent me a decent place to live in. The landlords mostly refused to talk to me, and had blatantly advertised their property as for foreigners only.
..having a phone was not enough. It usually did not work, and when it did, I usually could not use my fax machine because of the “noise” that infested the communications network. For the next three years, I spent, on average, one day a month to keep my phone in operation by making personal visits to the telecommunication department.
..One of the several laws I broke in those days was the law restricting the fax machine itself. I should have sought a license to use it; but getting it would have meant tens of visits to the telephone office, more hefty bribes, and the certainty that if I was refused a license, I would not have been able to communicate. This meant that the government employee responsible for keeping track of my telephone connection got a particularly heavy bribe…I spent the equivalent of one day a month depositing my telephone, electricity, and water payments.
..Getting money from the UK was another bureaucratic nightmare. The money came to the foreign currency department of a public sector bank. Once the bank got the money it would take about two months to give it to me — the check just traveled around and around inside their office.
It’s important to note that every single one of the issues he encounters were premised on good intentions at first. Why did landlords treat foreign vs. native rent money so differently? Because the latter couldn’t be evicted if they were late in their payments. Why the flimsy phone network? Because the telecoms saw their duty to provide jobs first, service a whole bunch of socio-political mandates second, and provide actual phone service perhaps 3rd. Currency controls? The goal was to prevent the twin scourges of capital flight and foreign takeovers. etc. etc. etc.
Of course, much turns around in a scant 5 years…
…In 1998 I moved to a self-sufficient gated community with its own electrical generating plant, water supply system, and private security — probably among the first such communities in India. Telephones had just started becoming private all over the country. A guy wearing a suit in the sweltering heat of Delhi came to install my new telephone. He made no pretensions of looking important and called me “sir” more often than he should have. Efficient private banks had opened everywhere. I could talk to them on the telephone, and they even delivered money to my place without charge.
While upper-middle class folk like Jayant had enormous gains, even at current growth rates, the poor have a LONG way to go –
an average Indian lives on about $1.70 a day. And how does India’s glamorous growth appear from this perspective? Australia’s growth in GDP (which is around 2%) will add about $600 to its per capita GDP, almost as much as India’s total GDP per capita. Its 6.9% growth will give the average Indian about 11 cents extra for use each day, a year from now.
… [Nevertheless] For the average Indian living on $1.70 per day, an extra 11 cents next year will be a windfall.
Helps keep things in perspective, eh?
India also needs solid Anti-Discrimination Housing Laws. Its not easy for example to rent in a lot of areas in Delhi if you are a Muslim or a single woman.
Interesting take. The increase in India’s population each year (18,145,650 using the latest CIA figures) is approximately the same as that of Australia’s total population (20,434,176 using the same figures).
shades of trying to commit journalism in Morocco in the early ’90’s for US outlets. Nice to know it wasn’t just me…
Or Bombay, if you are not vegetarian.
The economic growth in India is not just the rich getting richer. Lots of poor people are moving into the middle class and lots of middle class people are moving into the upper class. People who never had any sort of phones are buying cell phones. The airline industry is booming because millions of people are able to fly for the first time in their lives.
The poor that are crowding to the cities are doing so because the city is offering a better standard of lving.
We shouldn’t forget that India is still a poor country and we need to have policies that redistribute wealth to the poor through education, healthcare and infrastructure building.
But at the same we need to recognize that economic liberalization is improving the standard of lving for millions of people – not just “the rich”.
That’s right. Seriously, I never thought about flying in an aeroplane even late in my undergrad. Even though I used to cross the Meenambakkam airport railway station (tirusulam) using the suburban trains everyday during my school days, that thought never crossed my mind and I bet many of my friends’ minds either. After my first flight, one of my relatives asked about the windows in the aeroplane and wondered how to survive the cold if someone opened the windows. I had the same doubt before flying. 🙂
Buses and trains with open windows are the only means of transport we knew.
All India needs is one person who treats bureaucrats like rats. Someone like him.
First it needs good tenancy laws to be able to evict tenants without spending years in the court system. There are a lot of empty houses(flats) in Mumbai which earn no rental income but only bought with capital gains in mind, due to bad tenancy laws that favour tenants more than the landlords.
A case in point was a flat in my appartment building in mumbai. where the tenant got possesion for an 11 month lease ended up living there for about 20 odd years. Dint pay rent beyond the 11 months. The property was sold at a 50% discount since it was a disputed property, with the new owner taking care of the case. The flat worth 50 lakhs (5 million) was passed in at 25 lakhs (2.5 million) with the tenant given 12.5 lakhs (1.25 million ) to move out of the house.
Renting in India is a high risk business. The land lord in the above case was a decent bloke who lost his life savings, but did not use goons to evict the tenants. When the laws and their implementation is weak, you deal with whom you think you can trust, thus you bring personal prejudice into the picture.
In a high trust society with strong legal system, you don’t care who you rent to. But even here there is discrimination against people whom the landlord thinks is undesirable. Like in Sydney you are an undesirable tenant if you have pets, have too many young children, drug addicts. In some suburbs its easy for families to get a place over single people, in some others it easier to get a place if your LGTB (like darlinghurst).
Or Bombay, if you are not vegetarian.
Bombay is mostly vegetarian? One would think that Bombay being more cosmopolitan than Delhi would have a more diverse cuisine. Delhi has quite possibly the best North Indian/Paki non vegetarian food in the World and its available almost everywhere in Delhi. I know some people from Lahore/Dubai/London will disagree but f***’em. Delhi rules!
When tenancy laws are too pro-tenants landlords will only rent to people they trust on an intimate level. In India this usually means someone from one’s extended family, caste, social circle, religion.
The wealth communities like the Jains who reside in large numbers in prime localities are militant vegetarians. They wont drink water in your house if you are not a vegetarian. The Pizza hut on Marine drive is a vegetarian only.
But even here there is discrimination against people whom the landlord thinks is undesirable. Like in Sydney you are an undesirable tenant if you have pets, have too many young children, drug addicts. In some suburbs its easy for families to get a place over single people.
Discrimination because of familial status is illegal in the United States. There is a new trend now in some cities to pass insidious laws ‘limiting the number of people in a dwelling’ to exclude Mexicans. Such restrictions are being challenged in Courts across the Nation.
We had a recalcitrant tenant in a flat my family owned in India, and I was very tempted to hire some gundas to take care of the situation…but I was advised against it, since as an ABD I would have had no idea about the local power structures, and the tenant could easily have figured out a way to arrange giving me back the same treatment. Basically I was advised that if I took this to the level of gundas and strong-arm tactics, I would soon find myself out of my league and losing control of the situation. Finally the tenant left anyway without too much hassle, which was a very lucky break. Never would I consider renting out property in India again.
It is not, but the vegetarians in Mumbai like to live in vegetarian-only buildings.In practice this usally translates into vegetarian flats that are unofficially only sold to Gujarati vegetarians and Jains. Marathis, Muslims and others are excluded. The Gujjus and Jains also have the most money and see themselves as the upper class of Mumbai society. All of this is causing a lot of resentment.
As others have said, the issue is that the richest class of people, who own many of the properties, and form much of the landlord class, are often militant vegetarians.
Also, Lucknow in U.P. has excellent non-veg food as do Bhopal and Hyderabad (all centers of Muslim culture but the local non-veg Hindus share in the same cuisine as well).
The number of people in a dwelling issue had come up here with fire safety laws and illegal subletting done mostly by Asian students. Some property companies that develop luxury apartments were concerned about illegal subletting in their apartment blocks would bring down their property prices.
Was it me or did anyone get a whiff of condescension and patronizing from the article by Jayant Bhandhari? What a whinger.
Meaning, just intimidate him, not cause serious harm.
Yup or someone who has been referred by a very trusted person.I
I never thought about flying even late in my post grad – my first trip on a plane was to faraway Scandinavia – and the excitement was boundless.
Ponniyan – entha petta thambi ?
*** how grinding day to day life really was back in the day — day to day life is still grinding, at least in smaller cities, esp if you have to deal first-hand with the medical or legal system in India.
I think this kind of law is a very genuine need, don’t know anywhere in the US but I have seen bangladeshis living 4 to a 4X4 meter room in Singapore. Building safety is really compromised.
The number of people in a dwelling issue had come up here with fire safety laws and illegal subletting done mostly by Asian students.
Where is here?
I think this kind of law is a very genuine need, don’t know anywhere in the US but I have seen bangladeshis living 4 to a 4X4 meter room in Singapore. Building safety is really compromised.
First they came for the Indian North East. Then they came for the cramped Singaporean apartments. Then they came…
Seems fair to me as property taxes fund local schools and the extra needs of these kids (e.g. ESL or biligual ed). Limiting the # of tenants is necessary and does not necessarily imply racial animus. I don’t like the anti-Mexican haterade, but I know the same problems would exist if poor Indians were coming over and having large families too so I don’t feel like a hypocrite for pointing this out.
Getting back to India….I agree that housing discrimination is a huge issue. I can kind of understand how lifelong vegetarians might find the very thought of having us meat eaters as neighbors unsettling, but in the end “veg” is equated with being Jain/Brahmin/Marwari. Not like landlords accept a notarized letter from a doctor who analyzes your poop to certify you herbivorous. This is one Muslim grievance that I do recognize and it is particularly damaging because on one hand we prescribe modern Western education etc as a cure for backwardness, but once they become middle class they end up having to deal with this crap too. Furthermore I hope this level of middle class integration will discourage rioting….why engage in communal fighting which will result in Mutual Destruction of Flat Screen TVs.
I’m from a backwards class and I’m vegetarian yet most of my brhamin friends eat meat so lets not turn it into a caste thing. I think vegetarians are entirely within their rights to limit who they want to live with. Especially since vegetarianism is on the decline, its perfectly sensible for people to want to create a vegetarian community.
And Muslims are free to become vegetarian! In fact my roommate is a vegetarian, Persian Muslim.
BTW: Every city in India has neighborhoods for rich Muslims and poor Muslims and its very difficult for non-Muslims to move into those neighborhoods. And Muslims are not excluded from the vast majority of flats that are not vegetarian.
the medical system in the US needs some big-time repairs too 🙁 it is so difficult to get an appointment, especially if you keep moving around and have no primary care physicians. i can only imagine what the uninsured go through when they need help.
as for the legal system, a little tort reform would go a long way. but it’s nothing like the dysfunctional indian judicial system. it took my folks many, many years and tons of money spent on lawyers and courts to get rid of our awful tenants who would not leave. now the climate is changing, with lots of people demanding registered leases before they rent.
also, about 5-8 years ago, connaught place, prime commercial land in delhi was in the news, when the delhi rent control act was being amended. at the time, delhi policymakers were trying to dismantle the pugri system: prime land in delhi, usually rented out by old families with waning fortunes, were rented at 1947 rates. most of the renters actually sublet the land to wealthier merchants and kept the profits.
point is, doing business in india is a pretty risky proposition. there is the ubiquitous fear that contracts will not be enforced and many transactions will remain off the books (especially when it comes to real estate), and therefore, not fall under the ambit of laws (a corollary of that is that guarantees to protect labor cannot be enforced either). however, even paying off the mai-baap is no guarantee that your property/business will remain protected under the benign gaze of the powers that be. for instance, the people who paid off the local municipal big fish in delhi to encroach public land and/or violate the “building code” were shafted when the courts ordered the demolition of illegal construction. maybe those guys got what they deserved, but that much instability certainly adds to head-ache costs of being an entrepreneur in india (besides making india a slightly less attractive destination for investors). that’s why many feel justified in filing fake returns and paying little in the way of taxes. the general salaried person in india feels “businessmen” are greedy crooks anyway (for instance, a lot of people i know won’t marry their daughters into business families precisely because of that assumption).
feels ?? they are – they are forced to be crooks due to the nature of business in India. On the other hand – businessmen in the Western World are saints!! The kind of crookery is different. The only difference that I found is that business life in India is based on the premise – you are not to be trusted until proven otherwise. In the West it works the other way.
yup- high risk with high returns
Sorry, here, Sydney- Australia
Well, it is a caste thing precisely because secretly nonobservant Brahmins and Jains are accepted as vegetarian even when they are not. Your Brahmin friend will get into that veg apartment complex, you will not unless another tenant can vouch for you. Remember, India classifies everyone as Hindu/Muslim/Christian at birth, so at pretty much every level of society identity is about birth rather than belief/practice.
it is an argument that could be extended to any marker. Mallu Latin Catholics may decide to live in one apartment complex and refuse to sell / rent to anyone else who dont fit. This sort of discrimination would result in ghettoes – not a good outcome for society. Discrimination is a reality in India due to the limited nature of resources – that is not to say it is right.
New rule: Discrimination is OK as long as it doesn’t affect you.
sorry – but how is building safety compromised. will the building collapse? If my math is right this is about 150 sqft. Pretty big for 4 people. I was raised in a 200 sqft home – not comfortable but not a show stopper.
in an american context banning sub-letting is wise.
An example of my statement above:
“It’s blood-spilling. It’s almost murder,” she said, and yet she knows both sons regularly eat meat when they go out. “They are grown now, I can’t control it. They don’t do it to hurt me, just to fit in with their friends. Society has changed.”
The woman is Jain (surname Mehta), she lives in a vegetarian complex but apparently kinship allows her to cut her sons some slack. I can understand and might even support veg only housing, but this has become about ethicity/religion
Especially if you are in cash producing business like property, diamond trade, dance bars. You get phone calls for extortion. the Pay up or else…. type. Read Sacred Games covers the period in late 1990s Bombay and the mumbai underworld.
Yeah there is uneven enforcement. Just because a women isn’t kicking her sons out of the house for starting to eating meat doesn’t mean that she was running a scam to make vegetarianism a proxy for ethnicity and religion. The intent is to create a vegetarian atmosphere – and there are shortcomings to carrying it out perfectly.
If Muslim and Christian vegetarians were excluded then I would have a problem with it.
Sometimes we need to give people there space, forcing people to be in close contact with people they do not want to be near isn’t going to create social harmony.
BTW: Parsees and various Muslim sects run flats (baugs) that are blatantly based on religion and ethnicity. So perhaps we should eliminate these blatantly race-based housing projects first.
*a woman
They are, as are Hindu vegetarians from traditionally non-veg backgrounds. I know this from my veg Hindu relatives who faced similar issues. Walk in with a name like Trivedi vs. Murugavel, announce yourself as veg and see the reception you get
Wow this post leaves me speechless. First of all how do you enforce what others do in the privacy of their own homes?
I think vegetarian is a filter to keep out everyone but those deemed “desirable” by the homeowners. I would just like to know how many such muslim and parsi vegetarians live in these ” vegetarian colonies”
What in the world is a vegetarian atmosphere?
How would the people defending this so-called vegetarian housing like it if they were not allowed to rent a place because the landlord did not want them as tenants and came up with an excuse that he didn’t want to rent because he did not want his house to smell like curry.
I am sure that was the logic behind the separate-but-equal Jim Crow laws
When my mother announced about twenty years ago that she was a “very liberated woman” and did her own taxes and collected rent from her tenants in Kolkata, my sister and I, living in London and NYC respectively, chuckled and scoffed and chattered telephonically, and said, wow, she’s writing a check by herself, visiting the bank and drinking tea, but I see now that my mother may have been quite correct in her assessment of her own character. There used to be a great deal of mystery about the smallest transactions in Desh that I only see nowadays in NYC in dealings among coop tenant-shareholders –can it really all go away just because of economic reforms or even because everyone is twenty five years old?
There aren’t enough rich brahmins to go around. Most vegetarian Hindus in Mumbai that are buying the flats are banias, patels,and -walas. Its not always clear-cut who vegetarian and whose not so flats are sold through associations.
I would favor enforcing laws that prevent discrimination based on ethnicity and religion. There should be plenty of vegetarian Christians and Sikhs who can apply to test if a particular flat is simply vegetarian or also ethnicity-based.
But we should also make sure non-Hindus can live in Muslim neighborhoods w/o fear of retaliation and should also close down blatantly religion based baugs.
Parsees and Muslims have faith-based colonies – specifically excluding non-believers. Isn’t this worse than simply prohibiting non-vegetarians?
An atmospehere in which vegetarianism is taught to be moral way of life.
I’m
advocating govt forcing vegetarians and non-vegetarians to live apart. I’m defending the rights of vegetarians to separate themselves from non-vegetarians. Big difference. Guess what – you are anti-freedom if you support using the law to force vegetarians to mingle w/ non-vegetarians.
I understan how annoying some holier than thou vegetarians can be, but its their right to be snooty.
Well you could compare it to NY apartments where you need to be approved by existing residents.
The fact is that housing in Bombay is organised mostly, in fact almost entirely, in the form of co-operative housing societies. People think they own the house, the don’t. The own a share that gives them membership to the society, which in turn allows them to live there. You can be evicted from your own house if the society votes to have you expelled as a member for various reasons – mainly not paying dues repetitively. This is the reason they won a supreme court case, where a society had a vegetarian only bylaw. So if you are buying into an existing society, your membership has to be approved by a vote of the existing members of the society, for you to be able to live there.
Somewhat like Swiss Citizenship laws.
oh louiecypher!What’s wrong with being one thing at birth and at different times through life? Everyone here is classified and classified again and again throughout their lives as black, white, Hispanic, Asian, and just maybe sometimes as Native American, just so we can all purse our lips and say– all together now, “Diveuse-ity!”
This is a pro-secular comment.
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…….and louiecypher, diet IS religiously prescribed in India as indeed by orthodox religions in a lot of places. It’s not the kind of choice that lends itself to the sort of interpretation my English friend’s sister gave it, despite her then recent Tripos in Anthro from Cambridge/Newnham, when she asked my former brother-in-law at table, “Do you eat a lot of salads?”
Um, that was a secular comment. I am objecting to the state tagging people with an identity at birth that does not change as they do. Jeez, some people are so eager to flush out an RSS man. Keep at it Amrita, you can’t be wrong 100% of the time.
don’t know anywhere in the US but I have seen bangladeshis living 4 to a 4X4 meter room in Singapore.
wow! damn that’s a lot of space! (remember, these are bangaldeshis) 😉
India also needs solid Anti-Discrimination Housing Laws. Its not easy for example to rent in a lot of areas in Delhi if you are a Muslim or a single woman.
well, to be frank, i don’t think that india’s priorities should be anti-discrimination laws when most of the country is wracked by poverty. social justice in such a complex society is going to take some work and investment of time & money and i doubt it is really the best strategy at this point. consciousness is raised when affluence is attained. many poor countries have a crap-load of laws which are just never enforced.
in any case, about perspective, whenever i real articles or books raving about the rapid growth of india and china i wish every positive statistic would be bracketed with another one just to keep perspective. hundreds of millions are prospering…but this is in a sample space of billions.
Are you dense ? I am objecting to people assuming that some people are vegetarian, and others or not, simply because their caste historically is or isn’t vegetarian. Jains are supposed to be veg, but many people with Jain heritage are not. Chettiars are not traditionally veg, but many are. That’s the point I am trying to make, that when “vegetarianism” is ascertained by birth culture that it results in caste based discrimination
First it needs good tenancy laws to be able to evict tenants without spending years in the court system. There are a lot of empty houses(flats) in Mumbai which earn no rental income but only bought with capital gains in mind, due to bad tenancy laws that favour tenants more than the landlords.
This is very true. My family has burnt its fingers into this too. Our office premises at a prime location in south mumbai was “devoured” by a rich and influential metal trader, someome who came through a lot of references. No one would ever imagine he would do such a thing. 4 months into the lease he stopped paying rent and made us feel like beggars when my dad asked for rent on our premises. this continue for 5 months. we explored all options right from legal ones to illegal ones except for filing a case in the courts because we know how that works…. We tried influence through well known community members, to police inspectors/highly placed cops, to a minister but the guy wouldnt budge… we explored the Mafia option (Gawli gang) but it wasnt viable since they take 15 -20% of the asset value as fees. Finally we got intouch with an old friend of dad,a Metal industry Mafia guy who almost took care of the situation but As fate would have it, The jacka$$ trader suddenly had an heart attack in his mid 40s and passed away amid all this.
There is a legal solution to this which is to make the tenant a lease vacating document right when he signs the 11 month lease document so that at the end of 11 months he is legally forced to vacate. ofcourse there are rent non payment and other risks too
It’s not the kind of choice that lends itself to the sort of interpretation my English friend’s sister gave it, despite her then recent Tripos in Anthro from Cambridge/Newnham, when she asked my former brother-in-law at table, “Do you eat a lot of salads?”
if someone has a degree in math, they know math. if someone has a degree in anthro, i don’t assume they really know that much about humans 😉
Is there an economic component to the veg-only housing in Mumbai? I.e., it would be much more annoying (I’d think) for non-veg’s if those veg-only apartments were rent-controlled or otherwise especially desirable economically. I guess I’m asking whether this is about social-signalling only (not that that’s trivial!), or whether there’s an underlying economic harm (as well) to being kept out? Do zoning rules effectively eliminate the ability to construct (nice or new) non-veg apartments? Sorry for my lack of on-the ground knowledge–I’ve only been there once and stayed in a hotel–no (close) relatives in the city.
Or, if these are coops, is the real problem property law–i.e., inability of non-veg’s to construct non-veg coops? I’m a materialist at heart. 😉