This is New Delhi - next stop: Hellor why the Indians can't play cricketImagine a huge garbage tip, swarming with people, enveloped in a thick cloud of dust and smoke, and so noisy with the continuous cacophany of vehicle engines and honking horns that your brain becomes numbed. That's Delhi. It could be almost any other major city in India. How do the beautiful people of India put up with this nightmare in a country that's about to explode, if its Government keeps carrying on in the same old sorrowful way?
My last visit to Delhi, in October-November 2011, was my eighth encounter with this madhouse, and my ninth visit to India - tenth, if you include my entry into the world in the southern city of Coimbatore. Why keep on returning? Well, for a long time India was my (and my wife's) favourite country for travelling in, for many reasons, and Delhi was normally our preferred port of entry, not least because we have a number of delightful friends living there, mainly accumulated by my wife during a relatively long sojourn in 1990-91. According to Demographia.com (2011) Delhi comprises the world's second largest continuous urban area, with a population of 22.6 million - about the same as the population of Australia. It is by no means the least habitable capital city in the whole world, but, along with some other Indian cities, notably Mumbai and Kolkata, whose population densities (people per sq km) are about double that of Delhi, it is a keen contender for the title "Arsehole of Asia". In my experience only Manila would give it a hard time in the asian capitals horror stakes. (However, I'm unfamiliar with the main cities of Pakistan and China, excepting Hong Kong.) Strange, though, that one of my favourite modern cities, Singapore, is not that far behind Delhi in shortage of living space - and only a 5-hour flight away. Delhi's redeeming features include the relatively plush government buildings zone and one or two impressive modern constructions, such as the metro and the recently overhauled international airport terminal (IGA) - a dreadful place prior to 2007. Short term visitors on organised tours or staying in one of the hugely overpriced 5-star hotels will barely get a glimpse of the "real" Delhi. They'll be taken to a few of the attractions mainly in the administrative area of the capital before being whisked off to Agra, Jaipur and the Rajastan circuit. Unless they venture out on their own they will most likely overlook the guts of the city where most people actually live and work. You have to go into the side streets and alleys and preferably stay with or visit ordinary people in their homes. Then you will experience the shocking conditions in which even most middle class folk live - teachers, lecturers, nurses, police, managers... Their homes, mostly reached on foot or by bicycle along muddy (or dusty, depending on season) garbage-strewn back-alleys, are mainly tiny, spartan, without air conditioning and made unsafe by crumbling brickwork and botchy electric wiring, with peeling paint and hideous plumbing adding to the mess. And that's before you venture into the toilet (if any). Don't ask! Since my previous visit back in 2006, there has been a very noticeable increase in the number of vehicles on the road, especially motorcycles (mostly Yamaha and Bajaj) and small cars (Tata, Hyundai, Maruti), adding to the interminable smog and noise. Delhi residents rarely see the stars and have no idea of the meaning of silence. The racket in residential areas is heightened at times by hindu bells jangling and muslim summons to prayer blaring from loud speakers. There's hardly any greenery in sight and nowhere safe for children to play. Go for a walk in the street and you come back home with filthy feet and a nose full of grime. Hell knows what's got into your lungs. Tourists, forget the threat of malaria, encephalomyelitis, pick-pockets or terrorist bombs! The Australian government's "defat" website gives a distorted impression of the main risks. The top hazards are just trying to cross the road and avoiding potholes, slippery mud and bits of steel protruding from the pavement. Be careful where you walk or you'll come home with an "India leg". And avoid Delhi belly by religiously refusing to drink tap water or eat uncooked food. You can have a bit of fun and get around Delhi by auto-rickshaw (tuk-tuk) if you like, but beware of the danger and make sure you've got travel insurance. Extract from news article, 25/02/2012: "Two Australian brothers are desperately scrambling to find more than $200,000 to bring their critically injured father home after an accident left him a quadriplegic in Bangladesh. [Mr X] had been in his native country for less than 24 hours when he was involved in a tuk tuk crash on Valentine's Day that left him paralysed and fighting for his life. Mr X, who didn't have travel insurance, currently has no movement below the neck..." OK, this was in Bangladesh, but the conditions are very similar and it makes my point. One great way of getting around Delhi is on the new metro, already operating on our 2006 visit and now greatly extended. A lot of it goes above ground, on pillars mostly running down the centre of main roads, so you'll avoid the sometimes intolerable traffic jams and won't miss out on too much "scenery". Huh, a real plus for Delhi! A pity so many of the locals can't afford to use it. And a pity most Indians, living miles away in rural areas, would have preferred half a roti for lunch than a stake in a transport system they've probably never heard of.Although much new construction work, including major roads, was carried out well before the 2010 Commonwealth Games, people and traffic appear to have simply expanded to fill the new usable spaces, adding to the pollution and city centre congestion. Despite the bold measures taken by the government around 10-12 years ago to reduce Delhi's air pollution, the smog was much more noticeable in October-November 2011 than during the same period in 2006. This observation is born out by the fact that about 1000 new motor vehicles are sold to Delhi's road users every day. The same uppercrust mini economic boom that supported the road-building has made cars and motorcycles more affordable to the city's middle class.
The extreme air pollution is by no means confined to Delhi. We were unable to escape from it throughout our entire tour of Uttar Pradesh, though it was less noticeable in the Faizabad region. In Agra we found sunrise and sunset viewing of the Taj Mahal are no longer worthwhile, especially if you want clear photos, as the city is swathed in a perpetual smog which is generally worse at dusk and dawn, and even worse in winter. A photo I took of my wife in October 1990 sitting in an arch of the Fort clearly shows the Taj in the background. Twenty years later, the same shot, taken in the same month, has a blank greyish background. The Taj is nowhere to be seen, and no amount of computer enhancement would conjour it out of the mist. Other nuisances for tourists include hasslers, touts and bothersome children at tourist sites - especially bad at the Agra Fort and Fateh Pur Sikri. Undoubtedly they've become worse in some places, and if you have no plan of how to get rid of them (or no sense of humour) they could make your visit such a misery that you wish you'd never come. Long queues, often caused by security checks, are also a problem, especially if you have to stand in the sun, but with smart thinking you can often avoid them. (For example, if you decide on a dawn viewing of the Taj, go there at least half an hour after opening time, to allow the queues to evaporate. Everywhere, look for and make use of special booths and entrances for foreign tourists. Ask appropriate people, because every Indian will give you an answer whether it's right or wrong.) Then there's all the red tape, beginning at home with your visa application. This is now an unbelievably tiresome process, way beyond what you need to enter any other country. For most countries world-wide, Australian travellers will find they don't need to obtain a visa at all (prior to departure). India is a notable exception. No matter how short your stay, not only will you need a visa, you will need the right kind of visa, selected from a long list, and it could cost you an arm and a leg (in fact, about 200 times the daily income of millions of India's country dwellers). Your initial application must be done on the internet, some of the questions are far from clear, but you must answer every one of them. If you choose one of the tourist visa options, be aware of the restrictions, which in theory prevent you from doing anything except sight-seeing and visiting relatives. If you want to go into a university, a military area, a National Archives building or even a public library, you'd better ask before leaving Australia! They'll probably say you need a research visa, which costs more. Here's another reason why I'll never go back to India! Obviously the government doesn't welcome tourists.
The underlying cause of India's problems, of course, is the population explosion, a world-wide phenomenon but relatively unrestrained on the Indian subcontinent*. The government's birth control policies have always been much too weak to stem the tide. Far be it from me to suggest difficult reforms, but it does seem to me that long, long ago they should have introduced compulsory, stringent birth control measures, appropriate compulsory education for women and an absolute ban on child labour together with a comprehensive education program aiming to achieve a nation-wide, solid foundation in literary skills and understanding of population driven issues. What they needed was something like a combination of China's one-child policy and Singapore's litter and traffic reducing measures, along with better industrial emission controls (and not merely a relocation of polluting industries to non-residential zones). At the moment only Kerala appears to be doing some of the right things. *To put this in perspective, India's birth rate is almost half that of many African nations and almost double that of China, Australia and many European countries. But because its base population is so huge, India adds more people to the world annually than any other country - currently around 26 million (or 24.5 million if infant mortality is deducted) - that's more than the entire population of Australia every year. Think about it!
New Delhi - star of India, arsehole of Asia! A focal point for unmitigated turbulence and for its remedy. Do you suppose the remedy will ever materialise? Not a chance! The Indian government has no bones and no integrity. There's no need for me to tell you about where its problems lie, nor about the intensely distressing condition of India and its people as a whole. Other writers have done a great job of this. I would especially like to recommend the excellent summary entitled Why 1 million Indians Escape from India every year; also see the link from that page to "About this blog and blogger". In short, India's future is fearful, and the consequences for the rest of the world will make the current European crisis look like a lollypop stall gone bust. So why can't the Indians play cricket? An Australian commentator recently remarked that India should be well ahead of the pack because they've got so many people to draw upon - in fact about 20 times as many as England or South Africa, 50 times as many as Australia or Sri Lanka and almost 200 times as many as the 15 cricketing countries and dependencies on which the West Indies can draw. Well, therein lies much of the problem: India's enormous population generates an environment that is not conducive to producing a comparable percentage of superlative cricketers. On top of that, the mentality of the government, the bureaucracy and the upper class has doubtless suffused the Indian cricket board, with adverse consequences for everything from training to team selection. (17 March 2012 - Sachin Tendulkar deserves no kudos for his record-breaking century against Bangladesh, after his selfishly throttled batting almost certainly cost India the match. Another result of urban overcrowding that squashes team spirit and encourages an "every man for himself" style of competitiveness?) Finally, let me say that the stimulus for this webpage came, surprisingly, not so much from the bedlam of Delhi as from a visit to Lucknow's Ambedkar Park. This extravagant monument to extreme self-idolisation is a smack in the guts for all impoverished Indians. It is one of the most unforgiveable misappropriations of government funds I have ever come across, and undoubtedly the most obscene modern display of misplaced political vanity I have ever seen in my life. Having said that, in very different circumstances it might be considered quite spectacular were it not for its desolate open spaces and endless repetition arrogantly modelled on the temples of Egypt. ........Dabs of Grue.........February 2012..................... |
