Dec 042013
The very first night that we joined our tour group the leader asked us to say why we had come to India. ” I love my country, don’t get me wrong, but it takes a special type of traveler to come here.”
You all know I just did it because I have no memories or emotional attachments to India, and I needed to get away. For those reasons I had not done any research, again those of you that know me, know I would normally have read 15 books by now on the subject, but I just couldn’t rally to do anything but follow Mom onto the airplane.
I do not know if that was a good or bad idea, it was simply the way it was.
It is true, it takes a special type of traveler to do India. If filth and poverty appall you, do not come. If a consistent diet of a foreign country, with no real “American food” in sight, bothers you, do not come. If the lack of a moment of silence is too much for you, do not come. If heat, bugs and frightening toilets bother you, do not come. If having poor and filthy hands shoved in your face everywhere you go, begging for even a crumb of food or a coin, do not come. If every time you get out of your car or bus and you are surrounded by trinket hawkers that DO NOT GIVE UP until you have either slammed the door or purchased something, do not come.
However, I have fallen in love with this country. All of those things are counterbalanced by some of the most gorgeous art and architecture you can imagine. I have tried to write and photograph the thousands of moments that have taken my breath away, I cannot, for that, you must come.
Those hawkers and beggars are dressed in saris and lungis of colors and patterns that make you want to go home, import every piece of fabric you have laid eyes on and share them with the world.
The smog and filth abound everywhere. I read where a French ambassador to Calcutta went home after three years and was told he had the lungs of a habitual smoker (he had never smoked in his life). To a point, it makes it difficult to travel here. Most of our fellow travelers have developed colds and I have constant headaches, but remember Los Angeles looked like this in the 1960s and 1970s. I do not condone the situation, I am just trying to make a historical point.
This country has a truly horrible graft and corruption problem. I have found, however, that it is out in the open. People get into government for the express purpose of taking baksheesh for permits, line jumping, favors of all sorts. Whoever thinks that doesn’t happen in the United States is naive, we just call it political campaign support.
Here, however, since it is so accepted, the newspapers no longer report on it, and people no longer get upset, hey, if everyone is doing it, what is the big deal? How far away are we from that? To counter that argument, we have clean water and clean air, because we got fed up with large corporations dumping toxins into our environment and demanded something be done. I do not know how long it will take for India to choke to death on its own pollution before people start standing up and saying, bribery, progress and profits aside, we are killing ourselves.
In 1996 a World Bank study estimated air pollution killed more than forty thousand people annually in just 6 cities that it surveyed. The total health costs for the country resulting from illnesses caused by pollution was estimated at $9.7 billion, approximately 4.5% of India’s GDP.
India’s population is growing annually by the size of Australia. By 2020 they will have surpassed China in population. Sadly, however, the infrastructure is not keeping up. At the rate of growth they need an additional 127,000 schools, therefore their Illiteracy rates are appalling. They need 2.5 million new homes, which is why people sleep on the sides of the roads and in the public places, the poor will never be able to compete for housing when there is that kind of shortage. They need 4 million new jobs, hence poverty. Even simple things like the need for 190 million meters of cloth to clothe that type of population growth, is something to think about. Then last, and of course saddest, is that they will need 12.5 million quintals of grain each year.
