Incredible India

In India, Photo taking is a really serious affair. No smiles please.

This photo was taken at a rest stop en route from Jaipur to Delhi. Upon seeing my big camera, I was swarmed by request of photos and having received a token gift from my "adopted Indian brothers", I'm now under an obligation to mail them some photos. And then it struck me that most of them in spite being grown men, probably never had their photo taken before. How easily we take for granted the ability to freeze a moment of our past in a photograph. All of us probably have easily over 50 photographs of ourselves, ranging from our baby days to our big baby days. These people probably have none.

Of all the developing countries that I've visited, India seems to be the most worrying of the lot. Worrying in the sense that in spite of a lack of war, political instability, popular insurrectionist movements it still can't really seem to get its act together. Maybe this is due to the fact that it is the world's largest liberal democracy. Giving one man one vote is dangerous if the man is not educated to exercise his vote responsibly. Being a fervent believer in Plato's concept of a philosopher king has consequently resulted in me opposing full on democracy for developing countries.

I think India's biggest problem is its people. How do you change the mindsets of 1.1 billion people. Its times like this that I wished I had studied something more useful like developmental economics. Its also times like this when I can really imagine Thomas Malthus going "bugger me" at the sight of thousands of homeless families lining the streets. I was just musing to myself that in India, there is no need for streetlamps because once the sunsets the numerous homeless families that call the streets home light up biofuel fires for warmth, thus illuminating the streets. I suppose it can be a romantic notion to witness a street lighted by fire instead of electric lighting but look beyond the glow of the flames and you will see old and young caked in dirt and dressed in rags, malnourished and cold. The antithetical state of romanticism.

But polarity is what makes India unique. The bright contrast of sari shades, cold in the north-hot in the south, the super rich-the super poor, order and chaos-order in chaos, religous contrast-encompasing most religions of the world, the Caste system-differentiating a man from his brethren and so on. Such a rich divergence can be a positive spin for the nation, but ultimately it all boils down to the people problem. This is of course just my humble opinion. If only the woes of a nation could be solved by a blog post, we would all be living in Utopia.

Anyway, I think all Singaporeans should visit a developing country at least once. It is not enough to travel vicariously through the TV, one must experience the smell of poverty; a molotov cocktail of smells encompassing decomposition, fecal matter, dirt, smog and stagnant water that overwhelms your sense and strikes a chord deep within your humanity.