Theory of Relativity

June 13, 2006.

"Theory of Relativity"

Recently, I went to Chicago to enjoy the Memorial Day, long weekend with some of my friends there. The total flight duration from Phoenix to Chicago was about 3 hours and 15 minutes. I barely had a good sleep the night before so I was fully prepared to utilize those 3 hours and 15 minutes enjoying a sweet and sound sleep. I boarded the Southwest Flight #1150 to Midway Chicago Airport. Soon I was on my seat and was being accompanied by a good looking American babe. Well, she was just average by American Standards in looks as well as by attire:). She started the conversation by asking me whether I was going all the way to NYC. This led to a little bit of introduction and soon we were talking to each other comfortably. Needless to say, my plan had changed by now. Interestingly I found her to know about India and Indian stuff more than I had expected to. She told that she considers herself an Indian because she loves everything about being an Indian and hates most of the American style of life. She considers herself a true Hindu and worships Krishna and Radha and is currently reading something called "GEETA" as a part of her daily routine. This was a bit of too much for me. I asked her how this interest developed and how it went so far? She laughed and told, “This fascination has been around for the last 5 years. I was working in an Indian Restaurant in New York when this started. I got attracted to Hinduism unconsciously and now I love it. My parents know about it and they sometime object to it but now they have started accepting and respecting what I am doing”.

She discussed some stories about Ramayana and Krishna to me, which would amaze me every time. She knew about the places like Agra, Mathura, Gokul, Rishikesh, and Ayodhya etc apart from the modern temples Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore etc. She was able to pronounce my name very correctly as her pronunciations for the above places were correct as well. Then came the interesting part when she mentioned about her fascination about Indian guys and her plan to marry one of the Indians. She also told me if she gets a chance to get settled in India, she would not mind it. I was just giving a patient ear to her. Then I got a chance to ask her as to how many Indian guys she has already dated or seen, to which the answer was, “ Well, not much but should be around five”. I asked how they were to her, and she answered, “They were all good”.
Then came the topic of what we generally term as true and real India, i.e. poor country and poor people. I talked to her about these realities although not in much detail but she gave a patient ear to it. She told me that I love poor people because I am also poor. This was a topic for me to laugh. I said, "Do you really understand what being a poor means?" I told her some hard realities of being poor in India. She accepted everything but she kept telling me she is also very poor. She has to take care of her family which comprises of her brother, sister and mom. Earlier she had mentioned that her favorite time passes are listening to music on IPOD and surfing the internet, the later she does to know more and more about India basically. She probably got a little irritated by my reasoning which were forcefully trying to make her agree for not belonging to that "poor" category. So she asked me how much money I make her on a monthly basis. I told her it might be just average. She asked the exact amount of dollars. I told her about 4k. She laughed and said " Compare your 4k with mine 1k per month. This is what I get when I work 6 days a week in that Indian Restaurant and that too in a city like NYC. My Mom also makes equivalent amount of money and that is the total source of our income. We hardly have any good furniture’s in our house and we drive an old car. I was just confused. We talked for sometime and then we became quite. She went to sleep and I also tried to utilize the remaining hours as per my plan thinking upon this "Theory of relativity".

In the last few years, McDonald has been a status symbol in Indian Metropolitan cities. Every middle class Indian loves to belong to the class who is a regular visitor of McDee in India. McDonald is a status symbol in the States as well but bears different significance and meanings. I thought this analogy might help me here as well. A person who can afford an IPOD, computer and Internet and a Car, definitely has to belong to that elite class of India wherein everybody's dream lies. But the same might not be true everywhere. Being “Poor” is an absolutely relative feeling.

India Shining – A myth or reality

Date: 29th Aug 2004.
“India Shining – A myth or reality”

All of us are aware of the psychological effect that is created when one repeats the same “mantra” in a crowd. More often than not, the mantra automatically becomes the crowd’s mantra. Perhaps that was the logic behind BJP government’s “India Shining” campaign before the recently concluded Lok Sabha election. They were under the illusion that the mantra of “India Shining” will automatically spread throughout the country and it will become a mantra for India. But, poor guys they were, that they assumed that the whole country would behave in a similar manner as a small crowd consisting of a few hundred people.

Now it’s a proven fact that “India shining” campaign has backfired the BJP itself thereby proving its fallacy to some extent. This was talking in terms of some result, which many people may not approve. But let us not discuss it in terms of BJP’s win or loss. Doing that would really make the issues less important.

The government may show some posters depicting good face of India, but that doesn’t make India shine? What about other millions of faces who sleep hungry every night? Still around 30% people live under the poverty line. Does this make India shine? What about those people who have lost their jobs because of the phenomena called privatization and globalization of Indian economy? You ask these people (more than 30%) the same question. Is India shining? And please take care of your self.

We talk in terms of shining IT and ITES sector, but what fraction of Indian mass has really benefited from this sector? Is it 1%? Oh god it’s even less than 1%. The real beneficiaries are those from the middle class backgrounds who had definite advantage in the knowledge based IT/ITES industry on account of their privilege in terms of getting good education. It is grossly assumed that the benefit of the global world would reach to the upper and middle class people first as they would be directly playing with the global economy, and subsequently over a period of time, the benefit would reach down to the poverty stricken mass also through a theory called “trickle down theory”. But how long it’s going to take? The statistical data would easily prove that even after 13 years since economic reforms started in 1991, this trickling is yet to happen on a large scale. Rather, for the time being, if we consider, this process has really widened the gap between the rich and the poor because of the rich benefiting the most and the poor the least. This ever widening gap has given birth to many social evils at the same time, which keep frightening even the tiny group of those people for whom India might be shining.

Agreed that in the last couple of years we have come a long way given the unusual performance of our knowledge based service industry but we have to still go a long long way before we feel like shining. Given the above facts, projecting India as “Shining” would be tantamount to ignoring all these deprived, poverty stricken, and hungry people in a democratic system. Happiness is infectious but does the happiness of a bunch of people make everyone happy and satisfied when they can hardly earn a decent meal for once a day? Can a democracy be called shining given all these ever increasing and ever-persisting problems? The answer is a firm “NO”.