Even if you might dispute his analysis of what causes poverty, I was shocked at how so many of the situations were similar to ones that I had seen in India. I have grown up in many parts of India, and the setup in Cameroon sounds sadly familiar.
- Terrible roads. I remember the awful roads in Dehradun, or more recently, the absolutely terrible roads in Gorakhpur and Lucknow. The typical government response is to either patch the roads with low quality tar that wears off after the first rains, or to claim lack of funds as a reason for not doing anything. While Bangalore might have decent road quality, the overall road network is shoddy.
- Thugs exacting money. In Bombay, street vendors used to pay a hafta: a weekly dole to ensure that the local thug (partnering with the local police and politician) did not destroy his shack, or break his legs. An acquaintance of mine in Delhi was recently threatened by the local thug into parting with a plot of land, adjacent to his house!
- Libraries. Anyone in India seen a functioning local library?
Yet, we need to acknowledge that we do have these problems. We need to admit that no city in India has a functioning public library. People in UP need to ask where are the schools and roads. People in Bihar need to ask why the local economy is so broken that nearly all their labor goes elsewhere, to work as taxi drivers, or dhobis.
The sadder fact is that complaining about this stuff is not seen as the right thing to do. We are told that India is a poor country, and cannot have all the facilities available in richer countries. Or that "This is how it is in India". I have heard that phrase so often, I've lost count.
We look at the West so often, we forget to look at parts of India that look almost exactly like Douala.
u said it right. think of India, in 1980s.I remember my uncle saying they had to wait in the post office to make a call. if you want to make STD calls, u had to wait for hours togetehr till its bookd. from that stage India has emerged with her power. but think of India, when politicians are more interested in making their pokets fatter, and not to improve India, the Indian villages which is the Soul of our country.
ReplyDeletewe are poor.. (not comparitive).. adn we will reamin poor if politics doesnt change... though Technology will improve
(Great to see you here again, Beena. You've become a regular here)
ReplyDeleteYeah, I remember accompanying my father when he had to make a 'trunk' call, when we were living in small cities. All because telecom was then a state monopoly.
Luckily, we're not in that position anymore. Luckily, we don't have to pray to the gods of the telephone company to have a line installed.
But in things where it is best for the Government to provide the service -- public goods like roads, and education -- the government still does a terrible job in many places. We should hold the government accountable, and demand more transparency of public fund spending. If there is no money to be spent on good roads, we should push for more transparency, so we can see _where_ the money is being spent.
Hi
ReplyDeleteI am working in Bangalore Mirror, tabloid belonging to Time of india group. We have a section called blog talk. I found your blog interesting and wanted to know if i could feature your blog in the section. Please mail me your permission at nt.balanarayan at gmail.com