This was my first visit to India since 2007 so I was interested to see what changes had been made in that time. The news in the West is of India the rising power that will soon be one of the top dogs. Certainly on my last visit I could see signs of change and thought that India was becoming a more modern society. On my first visit in 1989, I arrived in Delhi airport which was something of a dump, now the new Inderia Ghandi (IG) Airport is slick and modern and at Western standards.
The first signs of the unchanging nature of Indian society came in the immigration queue. There were manned counters for Diplomats and First and Business Class travellers, except there weren’t any. So the half dozen or so immigration officers (all male and older and hence more senior) sat around and chatted while their colleagues’ a few desks away had to handle a plane load. Even these took time out every couple of passengers, so stop and have a rest, having a stretch and a yawn before beckoning the next person forward. Indian bureaucracy moves at its own place. Most of the passengers were Indians returning from the Gulf and they seemed to have reams of paperwork that needed to be examined, who knows why, after all they were only re-entering their own country.
Outside the airport, the swish new Metro link to the city was not working and no one knew why, so I had to get the bus. Outside the Airport, India was much as ever, endless honking horns, might is right traffic rules, traffic lights that were invisible; instead the push and shove of traffic that slowly grinds around the cities. There are lots of new cars on the roads and more motorbikes and the airport had big ads for RangeRovers and Jaguars but in reality the ideal Indian car would be Landrover with steel girders welded on the sides. There are still a few ‘Ambassadors’ on the road, the 1950’s British design, all of which are government cars, as it’s unlikely an Indian car buyer would choose one.
In 2007, the one thing that did impress me was the new Metro in Delhi, and since then it has expanded dramatically, so much so most of the journeys I wanted to make around the city could be done on the Metro. A new factor in Indian society is the threat of Terrorism and the Mumbai attacks a couple of years ago have clearly made an impression on the Indian authorities and this is most obvious on the Metro. To get onto the platforms everyone has to go through airport level security, so the bags go through a x ray machine and everyone is frisked and run over with a metal detector. I didn’t travel at rush hour but the queues must be impressive. Around the stations, in concourses and in subways there are sandbagged gun emplacements manned by soldiers, and as their AK’s have the disposable see through plastic magazines you can see they are loaded with live rounds. Soldiers and sniffer dogs wander the trains and platforms. This level of security surrounds every public building and they clearly don’t intend to be caught napping again.
The Metro fares are very cheap and even the longest journey costs IR 35, about 40 pence UK. Although there is a stored value cards to pay for journeys used by the more affluent who can make the investment, the cheapness of the fares brings its own problems. India just doesn’t have enough small change and no one has thought of either producing more or stocking the ticket offices with it. There are no ticket machines; you have to buy from a person behind a counter. What this means is that the ticket offices are besieged by people trying to buy tickets (actually a ‘smart’ plastic counter) but can’t as there is no change.
Glitches aside, the Metro is very impressive, clean, bright and punctual and in reality quite unlike the rest of the country.
Again on my last visit I was stunned by the growth in mobile phones and how everyone either had one or wanted one; so it was surprising how few I saw on this visit. The middle classes had their smart phones but the explosive growth I had expected in all phones was not evident at all. Again security may be the reason, the government is concerned that new phones may be used for crime or to set off bombs in Kashmir so in order to buy one lots of ID has to be produced, which many poorer people just don’t have. Even to use an internet café or log into wifi, ID has to be produced and names and addresses noted down in a ledger. As all this information is recorded on scrappy bits of paper all over the place its use as intelligence is practically nil as none of it is collected, and depends on terrorists not having false ID’s and telling the truth. All it really does is creates more bureaucracy and deters people from getting things like mobiles and internet access which could help the countries development. It’s an interesting contrast to Africa where I was two years ago, competition was so fierce between the phone companies SIM cards were given away on the street and they were at the forefront of the development of new services like transferring money via mobile phones. This exists in India but is pitched mainly at the middle classes.
One thing that always impresses me about India is the Railway system, the biggest in the world. This has changed a bit in that some of the rolling stock is newer and on my trips I paid out for AC seat, which is really quite OK. Of course there’s no way you can buy a ticket from a machine, it involves filling out a form, producing ID (which you also have to show on the train) and queuing at a counter. The whole thing still runs on pre Amstrad software and the tickets are spat out on a dot matrix printer, just as they were in 1989. It’s the world’s biggest employer and it just seems too big to change but at the end of the day it works, I have never had a problem with it; every seat booked has always been there. The train masters, usually older, dignified men as belays their status, go around with their lists and make sure everything is as it should be, and it is. The trains are slow, stop and start a lot and are often held up by ‘strikes’ but they always get there. They may even be in for a revival, as many of the internal airlines that saw explosive growth a couple of years ago are headed for bankruptcy. So the middle classes may rediscover the pleasures of long distance train travel.
When I arrived I was ready to see the new ‘fast forward into the future’ India and apart from the some new infrastructure like airport and metro I haven’t seen it. India seems unchanging, there are some nicer cars on the road but they still have to compete for road space with cycle rickshaws and tuk tuk’s, and even the odd elephant. There are still frequent blackouts and every business of any size has a generator, a huge drain on resources and productivity. New technology, like mobile phones and the internet which should help moves things along seem to have hit the buffers. Even English seems to be less widely spoken, which is one of India’s natural advantages. I’m sure pundits will say it’s different in places like Bangalore, but these are only small spots in a huge country, a country too big to change fast.
The first signs of the unchanging nature of Indian society came in the immigration queue. There were manned counters for Diplomats and First and Business Class travellers, except there weren’t any. So the half dozen or so immigration officers (all male and older and hence more senior) sat around and chatted while their colleagues’ a few desks away had to handle a plane load. Even these took time out every couple of passengers, so stop and have a rest, having a stretch and a yawn before beckoning the next person forward. Indian bureaucracy moves at its own place. Most of the passengers were Indians returning from the Gulf and they seemed to have reams of paperwork that needed to be examined, who knows why, after all they were only re-entering their own country.
Outside the airport, the swish new Metro link to the city was not working and no one knew why, so I had to get the bus. Outside the Airport, India was much as ever, endless honking horns, might is right traffic rules, traffic lights that were invisible; instead the push and shove of traffic that slowly grinds around the cities. There are lots of new cars on the roads and more motorbikes and the airport had big ads for RangeRovers and Jaguars but in reality the ideal Indian car would be Landrover with steel girders welded on the sides. There are still a few ‘Ambassadors’ on the road, the 1950’s British design, all of which are government cars, as it’s unlikely an Indian car buyer would choose one.
In 2007, the one thing that did impress me was the new Metro in Delhi, and since then it has expanded dramatically, so much so most of the journeys I wanted to make around the city could be done on the Metro. A new factor in Indian society is the threat of Terrorism and the Mumbai attacks a couple of years ago have clearly made an impression on the Indian authorities and this is most obvious on the Metro. To get onto the platforms everyone has to go through airport level security, so the bags go through a x ray machine and everyone is frisked and run over with a metal detector. I didn’t travel at rush hour but the queues must be impressive. Around the stations, in concourses and in subways there are sandbagged gun emplacements manned by soldiers, and as their AK’s have the disposable see through plastic magazines you can see they are loaded with live rounds. Soldiers and sniffer dogs wander the trains and platforms. This level of security surrounds every public building and they clearly don’t intend to be caught napping again.
The Metro fares are very cheap and even the longest journey costs IR 35, about 40 pence UK. Although there is a stored value cards to pay for journeys used by the more affluent who can make the investment, the cheapness of the fares brings its own problems. India just doesn’t have enough small change and no one has thought of either producing more or stocking the ticket offices with it. There are no ticket machines; you have to buy from a person behind a counter. What this means is that the ticket offices are besieged by people trying to buy tickets (actually a ‘smart’ plastic counter) but can’t as there is no change.
Glitches aside, the Metro is very impressive, clean, bright and punctual and in reality quite unlike the rest of the country.
Again on my last visit I was stunned by the growth in mobile phones and how everyone either had one or wanted one; so it was surprising how few I saw on this visit. The middle classes had their smart phones but the explosive growth I had expected in all phones was not evident at all. Again security may be the reason, the government is concerned that new phones may be used for crime or to set off bombs in Kashmir so in order to buy one lots of ID has to be produced, which many poorer people just don’t have. Even to use an internet café or log into wifi, ID has to be produced and names and addresses noted down in a ledger. As all this information is recorded on scrappy bits of paper all over the place its use as intelligence is practically nil as none of it is collected, and depends on terrorists not having false ID’s and telling the truth. All it really does is creates more bureaucracy and deters people from getting things like mobiles and internet access which could help the countries development. It’s an interesting contrast to Africa where I was two years ago, competition was so fierce between the phone companies SIM cards were given away on the street and they were at the forefront of the development of new services like transferring money via mobile phones. This exists in India but is pitched mainly at the middle classes.
One thing that always impresses me about India is the Railway system, the biggest in the world. This has changed a bit in that some of the rolling stock is newer and on my trips I paid out for AC seat, which is really quite OK. Of course there’s no way you can buy a ticket from a machine, it involves filling out a form, producing ID (which you also have to show on the train) and queuing at a counter. The whole thing still runs on pre Amstrad software and the tickets are spat out on a dot matrix printer, just as they were in 1989. It’s the world’s biggest employer and it just seems too big to change but at the end of the day it works, I have never had a problem with it; every seat booked has always been there. The train masters, usually older, dignified men as belays their status, go around with their lists and make sure everything is as it should be, and it is. The trains are slow, stop and start a lot and are often held up by ‘strikes’ but they always get there. They may even be in for a revival, as many of the internal airlines that saw explosive growth a couple of years ago are headed for bankruptcy. So the middle classes may rediscover the pleasures of long distance train travel.
When I arrived I was ready to see the new ‘fast forward into the future’ India and apart from the some new infrastructure like airport and metro I haven’t seen it. India seems unchanging, there are some nicer cars on the road but they still have to compete for road space with cycle rickshaws and tuk tuk’s, and even the odd elephant. There are still frequent blackouts and every business of any size has a generator, a huge drain on resources and productivity. New technology, like mobile phones and the internet which should help moves things along seem to have hit the buffers. Even English seems to be less widely spoken, which is one of India’s natural advantages. I’m sure pundits will say it’s different in places like Bangalore, but these are only small spots in a huge country, a country too big to change fast.
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