International Political Will

Outside of a western-style shopping mall in Mumbai on a warm December afternoon, a typical middle-class Indian woman stops and digs into her purse for her camera.

Her grandmother stands at the steps of the entrance in a daze. Her thick glasses are perched on her nose, and her weathered skin reveals a lifetime of working in the sun. She is hunched slightly, and her traditional orange and blue sari is wrapped neatly, the long cloth almost covering her disheveled sandals and coarse feet.

The young woman, camera now in hand, calls out, but the elderly matriarch isn’t listening. She’s too enthralled by the motion-activated glass doors, the dozens of young shoppers with their blue jeans, Nike tennis shoes, and cell phones.

Eventually, the grandmother turns, smiles faintly, and the woman snaps a photo of her standing in front of the mall entrance. There is nothing particular about the backdrop: no outlandish lights, no neon signs, no famous landmarks. Just a dirty beige stucco wall and a smudged glass door. Just a shopping mall.

It’s an image of the ongoing compromise between traditional and modern India. Outside of the cities, where most Indians still live, India is still rural – and poor. The grandmother was probably on her first trip away from her village: seeing her first escalators, sliding doors, western fashion, and maybe even flush toilets.

The grandmother’s generation – and her home village - is tied closer to the India of the British Raj, homespun khadi cotton, and the independence movement that followed Gandhi, Neru, and Tagore to freedom.

The young woman’s generation is the India of call centers, air conditioning, i-Pods, and urbanization. With parents that saved enough to educate their children, the new generation grasping at the rungs of middle class life has left their villages, their traditions, and with it, their culture.

Yet there is still a connection to their past. The new India has made compromises to retain an essence of fashion, music, religion, and sense of community. The new India is developing, but isn’t going to force-feed modernity.

[...traffic jam in Mumbai...]

Electricity in large parts of the country’s biggest city is interrupted daily. My power is routinely cut for 1-3 hours a day. However, the electric bill only runs about $9 per month. A compromise, of sorts. The state may not be able to generate enough electricity to keep the lights on 24/7, but no one pays an arm and a leg for it, either.

The electric company has a big building off the main road. A security guard sits idly at the gated entrance. In the back of the compound is a small concrete room with barred windows, where two women on computers accept payments. Standing in line, the lights and fans flicker off. I barely notice; most buildings have generator backups, and in only a couple of minutes business usually resumes.

It’s only then I realize the irony of paying my electric bill to a power company that can’t keep the power on in its own building. But – a compromise. This month my bill was only 350 rupees - $6.50.

Back at the gate, myself and a few others are blocked by the local elephant and his mahout (rider) that tour the neighborhood streets and offers a blessing with her trunk for a few rupees. The elephant is stopped in front of the gate (for some unknown reason), and none of us can pass.

I stand patiently, look up at the colorfully decorated pachyderm, and think to myself “this would never happen in the States.” Eventually, a couple of guys waiting begin to yell at the mahout to move his beast and let us pass.

[...notice the guy is more interested in the white man with a camera than the elephant in the parking lot...]

The elephant lumbers only a few deliberate steps, and we quickly skirt through the gate and brush past his leathery snout back onto the street. A couple of the men purposefully touch the elephant’s trunk as they pass, then move their hand to their forehead seeking a free blessing from the animal is historically bound to Indian culture.

A compromise. Keeping elephants in the city is illegal, but the police ignore the infraction in return for retaining some connection to tradition.

In the United States, modernity is rigidly enforced, moving full throttle across all generations. There are no traditional villages in the U.S. – grandparents from Mayberry largely enjoy the same standard of living as their children in Los Angeles. Every town has animal regulations, every office has electricity. Rules are rules. There are no compromises.

Today’s India is a compromise between tradition and modernity. A place with such a long history isn’t ready to give up the past entirely, no matter how much their politicians may crave the status of “developed.” Until then, Indians will find a comfortable mix. A compromise.

Grandmothers from villages in brightly-patterned saris will continue to visit their daughters in the bustling city, timidly waiting at the base of escalators before timing their jump like skydivers leaping from a plane. Elephants will continue to mingle in the streets with taxis, rickshaws, and motorcycles, as if the traffic were no different from tigers, monkeys, and cobras.

And my power will always go off a few hours a day. But so will the electric company’s.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS