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Politics and society, continued.... My overriding impression after a few weeks in India was that it was certainly the least socialistic country I have ever been in, including the USA. Pretty much everyone at every level of society is out to look after themselves or perhaps their close family and this is just the way things are. In small-scale interactions between individuals it leads to a different definition of honesty and personal integrity to ours, as many unprepared Westerners have discovered to their cost. On a larger scale, it makes it harder to organise the social infrastructure of roads, schools, hospitals, utilities, etc. Those who are rich enough solve their problems directly: private generator, private health care, private education, private helicopter!!? Those who are not rich enough have no way to solve their problems either directly or through society, but they take whatever they can. Everyone sees the problem, but no-one sees how to implement a solution. Its true that none of these problems have been solved easily in our societies either, frequently there has been a military imperative! I did not at all feel that Indians are greedy, selfish or dishonest as it might sound from the above paragraph. In general, as many people have noticed they are extremely generous and giving, but just not in a larger socially oriented kind of way. Despite the emphasis they traditionally place on duty in personal interactions they do not seem to imagine themselves as having a duty to the unknown, unnamed individuals who form part of the society along with them. I think some of this must come from the very sudden transition from small relatively isolated villages to being just about the most populous country in the world. The need for infrastructure has been as sudden as the need for new cultural concepts and evolution has not yet taken place. Another limiting factor on Indian society that I noticed through reading and talking to people is the caste system, which is dissolving surely but rather slowly. The problem with the caste system, apart from the unfair allocation of resources and status, is that it fixes people in particular professions. If you are a member of the laundry-washing caste, you wash laundry, you live in a laundry and that is all you know how to do and all that your children are educated to do. When every family in India owns a washing machine and all the laundry houses are shut there will be nothing for you to do but live on the pavement and beg, ditto for your children. Of course the laundry washers are not currently in great danger, but I do gather that this sort of thing really is going on with many of the traditional castes. And there is no social safety net! A lot of people talk about their negative reactions to poverty in India. I think everyone notices the things they would miss most if they didn't have them. I am not a very materialistic person but travel and culture are very important to me. I think what affected me most was to find an entire tourist industry being run by people, few of whom had ever travelled themselves, even in their own country. It is clear that many of them have no idea where we are coming from, or how our lives are similar to or different from theirs, although many of the younger ones were on the look out for a way to get to America! One of our best guides, who was incredibly cultured and educated spoke to us in detail about sites we would see elsewhere on our trip. It transpired that he knew them only from books and was completely resigned to never being able to see them since he just couldn't afford even to travel around India. I remember at the time feeling strongly that he deserved to see these things far more than I did (he was really very erudite). Despite this, and perhaps because we spent a lot of time in the wealthier southern part of India, we saw relatively little extreme poverty of the starvation type. In fact most of the time I was in India I was strongly aware of the fact that my grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on didn't live much differently. Well, I suppose I have been extending myself a bit, since I am no sociologist and was only in India for five weeks - all the above is really just my surface observations and there must be a million angles from which you could look at a society. I would certainly see things differently if I spent longer in the place which is something I would love to do, if I get the chance. |