Further reflections on Calcutta...Capitalism...India
Marion read what I wrote in the previous entries
about Calcutta and had some reactions. She's busy washing a week's worth of
Calcutta's grime out of our clothes by hand, so I'll try to convey some of her
thoughts while I sip an iced Nescafe.
It's actually not true that Marion is doing the
wash. She finished it a few hours ago. But doing the wash definitely led her to
reflect more on the level of filth in Calcutta. One reflection was on the
airplane back to Chennai Friday night. As Luc lay sleeping in Marion's arms,
with his head leaning back into the crook of her arm, the black, sooty filth in
the previously hidden creases of his neck were revealed. Prior to that, at about
7:30 the same night, as Marion melted in the heat on the way to the airport,
stuck in traffic and feeling a layer of film on her teeth from the air
pollution, wishing she could brush them, what did we see? A man scooping some
opaque (that might be a generous adjective, let's just say 'beyond dirty') water
from the gutter to brush his own
teeth.
Other cities we've visited are filthy, too, but with what seems to be more a combination of dust and particulate matter (from car exhaust and burning of trash). In Calcutta, there was no dustiness, just pure filth. That all sounds really negative. What I think we want to communicate is that Calcutta is a compelling place if one can get past the burning eyes and awful taste in your mouth when a passing bus spews exhaust. There's a vibrancy, a bright soul even, that emerges from the filth if one looks closely enough.
Perhaps one example, refreshing for Marion following our experience in Bangalore, is that Calcutta did not feel like an aggressive or dangerous place. There were hardly any panhandlers who came up to the car when stopped at intersections, and although there were occasionally people sitting on the streets with a palm out or a basket in front of them, no panhandlers ever aggressively pursued us.
We also didn't see too many other white people, whom are most likely the targets of aggressive panhandling where it occurs. I think a more likely explanation has to do with cultural differences between West Bengalis and other parts of North India. One faculty member at Calcutta University explained to me that in West Bengal the commercialism and consumerism that is taking other urban areas in India by storm has taken hold more slowly. To be sure, Calcutta has its own IT sector, which seems to be driving the economic growth in most of urban India. But I think what this person was trying to explain to me is that in West Bengal people haven't embraced the consumerist-oriented idea that one's status, and even self-worth, should be conveyed through material goods. One's intellect, I was told, and moral character, are the basis for judging one's worth. Perhaps since wealth is not so visible, people living in poverty don't feel as deprived.
This fits with my "Bangalore Theory of Aggression." In other words, where people sense that others are prospering when they are not, what once seemed an acceptable way of living is experienced as a state of deprivation. Those feeling deprived aggressively seek to get for themselves some of the wealth they are seeing others around them enjoying.
I don't think this is the only explanation. In fact, I am sure India's caste system, which I have been told is becoming stronger in some parts of society even while it has been abandoned in others, has much to do with our observations. With no hope of transcending one's caste position, what use is there in resenting those above you or longing for what they have?
Whatever the explanation, the spirit of Calcutta was refreshing after some of the experiences we've had elsewhere. If Kerala had a major city like Calcutta, its spirit would probably be similar.
Marion's other observation was about the amount of life and activity happening in the street. Even in Varanasi, where Marion spent two months in 1993, she claims there was not the same density of activity on the street. In Varanasi, Marion doesn't remember seeing the water pumps in the street that everyone went to, just taps jutting out from buildings. In Calcutta, the pumps generate a lot of street activity. One morning there were a number of pumps along a particular street that were all gushing water. Each pump had a group of 5-6 boys lathering up and rinsing off.
In our reflections today, Marion and I were talking about the morning when we spent 15 minutes watching people queue at a pump to fill their vessels. Visiting the Taj Mahal was certainly a highlight of our trip. But years from now, when we think about the value of our experience, especially for Claire and Luc, moments like our the ones we had at the water pump will be most valuable. Claire and Luc can see pictures of the Taj Mahal anywhere, but for Luc to see himself helping a woman pump water, and for us to be able to explain that not everyone has faucets in their homes from which clean water flows, that's why we came to India.
The biggest thing I feel thankful for in having visited Calcutta with the family (this is me, Marion writing now) is that I saw aspects of the India I had seen 13 years ago and was able to share those visual experiences with Stephen and the children. The city India where people live so closely together with every element of their lives exposed to everyone around them. Cooking rice, boiling milk to make chai, roasting peanuts and puffing rice in wok-like pans. Men carrying huge baskets with snacks to set up their stands--roving fried snack sellers. Women sitting in close groups with tiny infants on the sidewalk smiling, chatting, living on the sidewalk.
I (Stephen) will add, sadly, that this version of India that Marion described, which had so defined her experience in India 13 years ago and which has made up a rather small part of our current experience, is most likely rapidly disappearing. This might be an overstatement, since India's economic growth has largely left untouched the rural areas where more than 600 million Indians live. But multinationals are lining up to be the first into this new market. Walmart, for example, is poised to enter India as soon as the government changes its current Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) laws. The current FDI laws permit brands to enter India, but not retailers that sell multiple brands. So in Calcutta, for example, you can find a Nike or a Levis store, but not a Walmart, K-Mart, or Target. Walmart, with its cheap prices, might just be able to crack into a portion of the 600 million strong rural market in India. Already, I have learned, marketers have co-opted the tradition of street theater to market goods in rural areas with low levels of literacy. In India, street theater has been used by social activists to spread messages to illiterate rural areas. Now, marketers stage their own street performances, with the message, of course, not being about having safe sex or joining a labor union, but about the virtues of X, Y, or Z product. The performance ends with free samples of the product for everyone.
So, yes, I believe that India is changing rapidly, and that outside of a few remote pockets of rural India, in another 10 years life in India will look more or less like life in any consumer society. Sure, it will still have its tourist attractions, based largely on its culture and history, but part of what draws tourists to India is the notion, whether fantasy or reality, that people still live with the richness of culture and the simplicity of everyday life like people lived 200 or even 500 years ago in India. When tourists begin arriving, and discover that this is not the case, and that all that is available is the sort of re-creation of history such as Americans are used to seeing at places like Plimoth Plantation or Colonial Williamsburg, there will be much disappointment.
You might argue that India has completely different religious and linguistic traditions, so how could it possibly become like American society. Capitalism, I believe, has a way of making religion insignificant. It strips away any elements of a religious belief system that might prevent people from becoming full participants in the consumer society. Just look at Christianity in the U.S. People find it possible to comfortably hold onto their Christian beliefs while consuming at levels and in ways that have serious environmental and human rights implications for people all over the world. Capitalism will do the same to Hinduism, it already has among India's middle-class (which, by the way, is 300 million strong).
And as for language, capitalism's preferred language is English. Sure, a company or a product has to make small concessions to local culture--such as in the classic business school examples of cultural insensitivity where a product's name in the U.S. gets translated in an offensive way in another language--but at virtually every management level within a multinational corporation, the language is English. Furthermore, brand names like Coca Cola and McDonalds are already universal even without translation. Whatever minor concessions capitalism makes to local languages or cultures are insignificant in comparison to the cultural leveling that results from the opening up of markets.
Whatever cultural differences remain between the U.S. and India in 10-20 years will be trivial. We will all drink Coca Cola (or bottled water packaged by Coca Cola), talk to each other on Nokia mobile phones, watch CNN or Fox, and log onto the Internet from our PCs running Windows (or Macs for the 1% of us who appreciate elegant design). I hope I am not correct. But if I am, I am thankful we had the opportunity to visit India at this point in history.
Other cities we've visited are filthy, too, but with what seems to be more a combination of dust and particulate matter (from car exhaust and burning of trash). In Calcutta, there was no dustiness, just pure filth. That all sounds really negative. What I think we want to communicate is that Calcutta is a compelling place if one can get past the burning eyes and awful taste in your mouth when a passing bus spews exhaust. There's a vibrancy, a bright soul even, that emerges from the filth if one looks closely enough.
Perhaps one example, refreshing for Marion following our experience in Bangalore, is that Calcutta did not feel like an aggressive or dangerous place. There were hardly any panhandlers who came up to the car when stopped at intersections, and although there were occasionally people sitting on the streets with a palm out or a basket in front of them, no panhandlers ever aggressively pursued us.
We also didn't see too many other white people, whom are most likely the targets of aggressive panhandling where it occurs. I think a more likely explanation has to do with cultural differences between West Bengalis and other parts of North India. One faculty member at Calcutta University explained to me that in West Bengal the commercialism and consumerism that is taking other urban areas in India by storm has taken hold more slowly. To be sure, Calcutta has its own IT sector, which seems to be driving the economic growth in most of urban India. But I think what this person was trying to explain to me is that in West Bengal people haven't embraced the consumerist-oriented idea that one's status, and even self-worth, should be conveyed through material goods. One's intellect, I was told, and moral character, are the basis for judging one's worth. Perhaps since wealth is not so visible, people living in poverty don't feel as deprived.
This fits with my "Bangalore Theory of Aggression." In other words, where people sense that others are prospering when they are not, what once seemed an acceptable way of living is experienced as a state of deprivation. Those feeling deprived aggressively seek to get for themselves some of the wealth they are seeing others around them enjoying.
I don't think this is the only explanation. In fact, I am sure India's caste system, which I have been told is becoming stronger in some parts of society even while it has been abandoned in others, has much to do with our observations. With no hope of transcending one's caste position, what use is there in resenting those above you or longing for what they have?
Whatever the explanation, the spirit of Calcutta was refreshing after some of the experiences we've had elsewhere. If Kerala had a major city like Calcutta, its spirit would probably be similar.
Marion's other observation was about the amount of life and activity happening in the street. Even in Varanasi, where Marion spent two months in 1993, she claims there was not the same density of activity on the street. In Varanasi, Marion doesn't remember seeing the water pumps in the street that everyone went to, just taps jutting out from buildings. In Calcutta, the pumps generate a lot of street activity. One morning there were a number of pumps along a particular street that were all gushing water. Each pump had a group of 5-6 boys lathering up and rinsing off.
In our reflections today, Marion and I were talking about the morning when we spent 15 minutes watching people queue at a pump to fill their vessels. Visiting the Taj Mahal was certainly a highlight of our trip. But years from now, when we think about the value of our experience, especially for Claire and Luc, moments like our the ones we had at the water pump will be most valuable. Claire and Luc can see pictures of the Taj Mahal anywhere, but for Luc to see himself helping a woman pump water, and for us to be able to explain that not everyone has faucets in their homes from which clean water flows, that's why we came to India.
The biggest thing I feel thankful for in having visited Calcutta with the family (this is me, Marion writing now) is that I saw aspects of the India I had seen 13 years ago and was able to share those visual experiences with Stephen and the children. The city India where people live so closely together with every element of their lives exposed to everyone around them. Cooking rice, boiling milk to make chai, roasting peanuts and puffing rice in wok-like pans. Men carrying huge baskets with snacks to set up their stands--roving fried snack sellers. Women sitting in close groups with tiny infants on the sidewalk smiling, chatting, living on the sidewalk.
I (Stephen) will add, sadly, that this version of India that Marion described, which had so defined her experience in India 13 years ago and which has made up a rather small part of our current experience, is most likely rapidly disappearing. This might be an overstatement, since India's economic growth has largely left untouched the rural areas where more than 600 million Indians live. But multinationals are lining up to be the first into this new market. Walmart, for example, is poised to enter India as soon as the government changes its current Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) laws. The current FDI laws permit brands to enter India, but not retailers that sell multiple brands. So in Calcutta, for example, you can find a Nike or a Levis store, but not a Walmart, K-Mart, or Target. Walmart, with its cheap prices, might just be able to crack into a portion of the 600 million strong rural market in India. Already, I have learned, marketers have co-opted the tradition of street theater to market goods in rural areas with low levels of literacy. In India, street theater has been used by social activists to spread messages to illiterate rural areas. Now, marketers stage their own street performances, with the message, of course, not being about having safe sex or joining a labor union, but about the virtues of X, Y, or Z product. The performance ends with free samples of the product for everyone.
So, yes, I believe that India is changing rapidly, and that outside of a few remote pockets of rural India, in another 10 years life in India will look more or less like life in any consumer society. Sure, it will still have its tourist attractions, based largely on its culture and history, but part of what draws tourists to India is the notion, whether fantasy or reality, that people still live with the richness of culture and the simplicity of everyday life like people lived 200 or even 500 years ago in India. When tourists begin arriving, and discover that this is not the case, and that all that is available is the sort of re-creation of history such as Americans are used to seeing at places like Plimoth Plantation or Colonial Williamsburg, there will be much disappointment.
You might argue that India has completely different religious and linguistic traditions, so how could it possibly become like American society. Capitalism, I believe, has a way of making religion insignificant. It strips away any elements of a religious belief system that might prevent people from becoming full participants in the consumer society. Just look at Christianity in the U.S. People find it possible to comfortably hold onto their Christian beliefs while consuming at levels and in ways that have serious environmental and human rights implications for people all over the world. Capitalism will do the same to Hinduism, it already has among India's middle-class (which, by the way, is 300 million strong).
And as for language, capitalism's preferred language is English. Sure, a company or a product has to make small concessions to local culture--such as in the classic business school examples of cultural insensitivity where a product's name in the U.S. gets translated in an offensive way in another language--but at virtually every management level within a multinational corporation, the language is English. Furthermore, brand names like Coca Cola and McDonalds are already universal even without translation. Whatever minor concessions capitalism makes to local languages or cultures are insignificant in comparison to the cultural leveling that results from the opening up of markets.
Whatever cultural differences remain between the U.S. and India in 10-20 years will be trivial. We will all drink Coca Cola (or bottled water packaged by Coca Cola), talk to each other on Nokia mobile phones, watch CNN or Fox, and log onto the Internet from our PCs running Windows (or Macs for the 1% of us who appreciate elegant design). I hope I am not correct. But if I am, I am thankful we had the opportunity to visit India at this point in history.
Posted: Sun - April 2, 2006 at 04:12 AM
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The Zavelogue chronicles the travels and travails of Stephen, Marion, Claire and Luc during our six months in India on a Fulbright.
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Published On: Jul 15, 2006 12:54 AM
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Published On: Jul 15, 2006 12:54 AM