Facts in Fiction

To

My African Friend

Developing country

My Dear Friend,

Greetings from India ! I hope you and your family is doing well. It was heartening to get your letter, and your words conveyed your well-being, and I am glad to learn that. It’s been quite a long time, in fact 5 years, since we have met each other. Our first, and the only meeting was on a train journey from Bangalore to Delhi, but I am happy that our friendship and the intellectual conversations has been active through mails. I understand from your previous letter, that you are writing a book, and you wanted to know some specific things about India. This letter is an attempt to unveil few of my thoughts on 3 issues you had asked for. Please remember that what I write here are my own views, and my words vary from being accurate to inadequate to mere speculation. I leave it to you to make the judgment. So here are some of my thoughts.

India vs China

This comparison has been done all over the world, but I think it is an unfair comparison. Specifically, the rate of technological growth in China is far superior to India. This is partly due to the pace at which we work. Our decision making bodies take quite a looooooooooooooooooooong time to come to conclusions. In fact, it is so long that even to install a security camera in Delhi high court, we took more than 3 years, and I am not sure whether the cameras are working or not. So if you think that we are head and shoulders with China in development, then my friend, you are under a wrong impression. China has its own problem – some are simple and some difficult ones to solve, but atleast they are trying. In India we are fighting our enemies within and it will take a while to wake up. If you look at India and China as an outsider, you will always see that China will be leading for next 20 years, at the least. My prediction is that our development gap will widen in future. In general, an argumentative Indian is a sheer joy to watch, but you ask the same guy to execute what he has argued upon, he will fail miserably. Execution of thought is the burning problem of India. We have great minds and very ordinary hands. After all, empty vessels make more noise, and our political class is a vessel of infinite volume.

Indian media and entertainment

Hey, you liked food with lots of masala, isn’t it? well, this aspect is typical of Indian food. Our media and entertainment has taken this concept too seriously and have adapted this into their working. There is a huge difference between substance and image, and our news and films are mainly run by images but not by substance. This does not mean we lack the right people, but it means that wrong people are on the right camera. You will observe that stupid films made by egomaniac, animal killing, drug-addicted actors will make box office hits, and deep, thought provoking, low-budget movies made by some talented people will hardly make a mark on the media, leave aside the people. I have a strong feeling that most of the movie directors in Indian cinema have miserably failed in their basic science classes in the school. They show many unphysical things in theirs movies, that a pool of fans think that physics is a joke, and Indian movie is a reality. I fear for their mental stability and I seriously wish that our government build more mental hospitals for them. Coming to the advertisements in our media, you must see some of the “Fair and nonsense” brands that go around the circuit. If you think we are not racist after seeing these ads, then you are deceiving yourself. It’s dripping in our society. There are many regional news channels which cover and recover news day and night. They go to every nook and corner of India and report anything which can be detected on the CCD of the camera. If you think India has given great freedom to its news media, then you are right. Right because our news media can covers anything on earth including the fictious news.

Sports

Cricket : 99.999999% :: other sports : ~ 0

We are obsessed with cricket. We like it and sometimes take it very seriously. We have a very famous team of cricketers, who are richer than some of your African kings. Few are great. Many of them are good cricketers in Indian conditions, and not so good when they travel. This team is usually coached by a guy who will not make them work very hard. If the coach tries to do so, our captains and media will annihilate him. Now the recent trend in Indian cricket is to couple itself with our film industry (bollywood), and make a lot of noise in a tournament called Indian Premier League (IPL). It is a league played by the cricketers, run by the jokers, feasted by the pokers and funded by liquors. Other sports hardly fill a part of the final pages of newspapers. Actually field hockey is our national game, but it is so poorly administered that someday the players may use their hockey sticks to play cash rich cricket with bollywood funds. There are many willing sports persons in our country, and some of them have made their mark in international circuit, be it chess, shooting, despite the hardships they face.

All the above are tiny insights to the great Indian tamasha. We are still “work in progress” mode, and I hope to update you in future. Meanwhile, you may explore more on the web, and don’t watch too many bollywood movies in Africa. I know you like it, but you may have to re-learn your physics from scratch. Beware !

This is all I have for this letter, I hope this will help.

cheers,

Pavan