Off the Grid

Around 2am on monday morning, I woke up drenched in sweat realizing the room, as well as the neighbourhood, had gone eerily quiet. The lulling hum of the ac and the steady rattle of the ceiling fan had gone quiet. Power cuts are not uncommon anywhere in India, but as I looked out of the window I realized that the whole colony had gone pitch black. Wiping sweat I headed back to bed. Just another power cut, I thought.

The next morning the headlines were screaming about the worst blackout in India in over a decade. Apparently around 2.40 a.m. the whole northern power grid had collapsed. Power supply had gone to a halt on eight states in northern India, affecting the lives of over 300 million people, or 28% of the population. Normalcy was claimed to be restored by noon, until on Tuesday not only the northern, but also the eastern grid collapsed, which meant that over 600 million people were affected. Thirsty for more power to maintain the AC's of the people on what has been the hottest summer in 33 years and the driest monsoon in 11 years, neighbouring states sucked power from their neighbours resulting in a tilt of epic proportions. With over half of the entire country's population cut off the grid, India made international headlines by breaking the record of largest blackout ever, 10% of the world's population.

Many international media feasted on apocalyptic headlines, but in a city where power cuts are daily, people continued with their daily tasks, as the New York Times reported:

But despite the scale of the power failure, many Indians responded with shrugs. In the first place, India’s grid is still being developed and does not reach into many homes. An estimated 300 million Indians have no routine access to electricity.

Second, localized failures are routine. Diners do not even pause in conversation when the lights blink out in a restaurant. At Delhi’s enormous Safdarjung Hospital, doctors continued to rush around as hundreds of patients lay in darkened hallways.

Third, so many businesses employ backup generators that, for many, life continued without much of a hiccup. Dr. Sachendra Raj, the manager of a private Lucknow hospital, rented two new generators two months ago, and they were keeping the hospital’s dialysis machines running and the wards air-conditioned. “It’s a very common problem,” Mr. Raj said. “It’s part and parcel of our daily life.”

Meanwhile, as most of Delhi sunk into temporary darkness, beacons of light dotted the vast plains of Gurgaon and Noida, as the privately owned and mostly self-sustaining housing communities were running their power generators outside the public grid. The Silicon Valley returned it-consultant was most likely sipping his morning coffee in his 18^th floor condo unaffected, as must have the young NRI housewife continued her morning yoga routine, with the AC still running, uninterrupted. They must have in their mind patted themselves on the back for making the same decision many educated middle-class and upper-class Indians today have made, opting out of the public sector as extensively as possible.

As India's moneyed and educated have grown weary to the government's inability to update and maintain the country's vast and hopelessly outdated infrastructure, private housing communities that operate almost completely independently have become increasingly coveted modes of living. The wealthy have chosen to withdraw in hordes to gated oasises with lofty names such as Diplomatic Greens, Blossom County, La Premiere of Orchid Petals. These are housing communities built from scratch by builders on the outskirts of big cities on pieces of land that two decades ago would have still been considered wasteland. The communities operate much like holiday resorts, complete with swimming pools, tennis courts, club houses and built-in markets, making it unnecessary for a resident to ever step out. Children can walk to school from home without touching public property even once. 

Unavoidably, a thought passes that vestiges of a kind of a dystopia that Ayn Rand in her book ”Atlas Shrugged” envisioned have started to emerge: tired of the government's red-tape dictatorship and sluggish efforts to serve its people, many of society's most productive members have decided to distance and cut off themselves from it as much as possible. Be it as it may, for Indians, private sector has succeeded in what the public has failed.

Well traveled and ambitious upper middle-class indias have become so weary of the constant inconvenience that lurks behind every corner in the Indian everyday, that they have gone out of their way to create these magical pockets of amenities and 5-star living conditions to make daily life as hassle-free as possible, sans scamming rickshaw-drivers, corrupt babus, beggars, constant smell of urine, and piles of garbage, without fights over parking spaces and constant power and water shortages, without bucket showers, without ”India”.

The Indian middle-class has been repeatedly chided for being apolitical. For many of them, state has become more of a nuisance, which is vicariously kept at bay by the power of private money. This fervent but determined mass-privatization has become a statement in itself. As an article titled "Free from India?" in Outlook-magazine aptly puts it: ”By turning their backs on power outages and water shortages, they probably took the most political step of their lives.“

The private housing communities are gated throughout and heavily guarded to an extent, where one might think one is stepping into a new country and has to go through the local border control. No entry is allowed without an invitation from a resident, which will be scrutinized and double checked. Even staff is under heavy watch to make sure any uninvited people enter the complex. If, for example, a company employee has to be picked up by the company driver for work, the driver must first identify himself at the gate, then leave his driver's license at the gate and pick it up while exiting. People are constantly surrounded by CCTV and dozens of armed security guards to an extent of paranoia of ”India” crawling in from the eaves of the iron-bar gates and barbed wire.

Security and safety is what the residents are first and foremost after. However, the constantly emerging higher and higher walls around the housing colonies have polarized the population of these areas into an almost Eloi vs.Morlock kind of setting from H.G.Wells' "Time Machine", where once in a while one of the helpess Eloi is snatched into the darkness by the Morlock to feast on. The storyline serves as a parable to the fact that the "Millennium City" Gurgaon, a city of well-to-do professionals, has also made it to less flattering headlines as the "rape capital of India", a city of gleaming spires tarnished by rampant violent crime down below. In a great documentary about the daily lives of urban educated classes in the gated communities of Gurgaon, marketing consultant Shilpa Sonal ponders on the seclusion of the wealthy from the rest of the country: “It is so unreal that it is like a bubble which will burst,” she says. “How long can you keep these two things apart?” 

Ironically enough, these same oases on the rural dry sandy plains have been provided to their residents by the same kind of people they want dissociate themselves from – the new rich farmer landowners turned millionaires and real-estate hustlers. People with golden teeth in a foul mouth, butter chicken gravy smeared fingers filled with stacks of cash and silk shirts stained with drops of hair oil from their mullets. Less worldly folk perhaps, but a force to be reckoned with nevertheless. With their abundant means and sharp elbows in the business of land acquisition and real-estate roulette, they have made it possible for the educated class to stay away from them and the kind of India they inhabit.

Autowalas

Another morning waiting by the main intersection of Nizamuddin East and Mathura road; the sands of Rajasthan are up early, floating in the air making their way to the ears, eyes and hair of all the commuters. The papers tell summer in Delhi has been the hottest in 33 years so far and it certainly shows on the faces of people who are less fortunate and cannot afford a driver and a car with AC. A sense of exhaustion and despair fills the Monday morning on a busy crossroads. I'm running late as usual and trying desperately to wave for an autorickshaw, which are aplenty, but all full. Finally, one of them stops by me. The driver is your typical type, a man probably in his mid-thirties with at least ten years more on his face with white patterns of dried running sweat running all over his blue uniform. He looks at me with a mixture of annoyance and boredom. Running late, I'm already irate as well. I tell him where I want to go, he spits on the ground turns away and restarts the engine. I grab his rickshaw, jump to the backseat and tell him to at least drop me to the end of the road, where autowalas often hang out, to which he reluctantly agrees.

After a distance of about 200m, I'm not expecting to pay more than 5rs and casually jump off and thank him. He returns the thank you with a loud grunt of "20 rupees!!" and almost gets off his vehicle when I tell him he cannot be serious. I'm in a hurry so I  have to solve the conflict quickly and so I give him 10rs and tell him to kindly get out of my face. I run to another autorickshaw and repeat my destination request. It's 8.15am and he looks like he's drunk already. He's hunched over the dashboard of the rickshaw trying to roll a piece of chewing tobacco into a gum-sized ball. He slowly turns his red eyeballs towards me, sneers and says he's not interested. Frustrated, I ask why, he tells me to fuck off and continues rolling his tobacco. I'm almost ready to punch someone, when I'm miraculously saved by a third auto, which seems to be driven by Sai Baba himself.

The city's iconic green and yellow three-wheelers are an incomparably handy and vital mode of transport, but convenience comes at a cost. Delhi's auto-rickshaw drivers have an infamous reputation all over India as rude, nihilistic, dishonest and greedy scumbags. They are considered iconic of the city's general mental landscape, which is some kind of a mix of laissez-faire violence and rampant corrupt opportunism. Everyone has their own story of the unruly auto-rickshaw driver and it is especially the foreigners, unaccustomed to the nihilistic vibe of Delhi, that get traumatized by their rude demeanor or ruthless scamming attempts (for example, see the earlier post "Hot in the City"). A quick Google search reveals that this seems to be a popular topic of lament in expat blogs and discussion forums where Indians and foreigners rant how something should be done to them to keep them in order.

Samosapedia (South-Asian urban dictionary) describes the autowalas accordingly (click on the South-Asianisms for definition):

Common Traits/Features :

(i) If they think you're new in town, rest assured you will end up kangaal because they will take you all over town before depositing you at the destination, which was just three km away from where you started. But see, you are getting nice tour of the place, na?

(ii) You mess with them and you just might be the main component of tomorrow's lunch curry. (Think I'm simsimply making joke aa? Try it if you want to be simply going snake taking and putting in pockit) Make no mistake about it, they're one fierce lot.

(iii) Don't expect to be given back the change once you have paid for the ride.

(iv) They are full chalu types, and confirmed rowdy rascalla rangapas

(v) Every time it rains, double meter will happen off.

The entry further goes on to specifically describe Delhi autowalas accordingly:

In one word - frightening. The seedy guy will turn around in his seat every single time he stops at a red light (to letch openly at you, in keeping with the capital's great tradition of making women feel horribly unsafe). They will put kai for anything female that moves. Forget the government based system of charging customers by the meter, at the end of the journey you will be unceremoniously presented with a 'rate sheet', which bumps up the price by almost twice the amount shown on the meter. Who came up with that? Presumably the auto union of the city. If you know whats good for you you'll pay up without making any khupp. Speaking in English or a South Indian language will earn you a frosty-nosed stare, so stick to Hindi.

The poor reputation of Delhi's auto-drivers is no secret, they have gathered an infamous reputation to the extent where the Chief Minister of Delhi Sheila Dixit demanded that the city should do away with autorickshaws, one argument being that the drivers are "unruly and harass passengers". The announcement came around the time when the hype surrounding the Commonwealth Games of 2010 was at full swing. The authorities were rushing to make Delhi "a world class city" as quick as possible, which essentially meant sweeping poor people, bad infrastructure, animals and piles of garbage under the carpet - in other words all things unpleasant that might offend the international guests and tarnish the image of a shining New India. Impolite behaviour of the drivers seemed to be the final straw - embarrassments such as these would not be tolerated when prospective foreign investors were on the way.

Most people in Delhi find very little sympathy for the autowalas, most of whom are poor migrants from the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, in other words people the middle class Delhi generally dreads. However, these same people who they very often remain dependent on, hence the uneasy coexistence. There is no arguing against the fact that a vast majority of autowalas are indeed a grumpy and greedy bunch, but they are also products molded by their circumstances. These are men who face constant hardship and stress in their everyday. In order to secure their livelihood, they are forced to deal with small time crooks who lease the autos, bureaucrats who they usually have to bribe to get permits and above all, people much more infamous and scary than them, the Delhi police.

A very recommendable article by Simon Harding on the Kafila blog sheds light on the harrowing everyday of the autowala: 

Delhi’s hated auto-wallahs are, it appears, not naturally nasty, aggressive people. Rather, they are under huge financial pressure. They pay half their daily wage as rent or hand over thick wads of cash to financiers at the end of each month for outrageously priced vehicles, which they have little hope of ever legally owning. Transport Department officials demand bribes from them for the most basic of services whilst they are easy prey for policemen in search of quick cash. Somehow, in the midst of all these repayments, rents, bribes and challans, the autowallahs have to feed their families. Who can do all this on just Rs.4.5 per km? No wonder the meter is a dirty word as far as most auto-wallahs are concerned. Go by the meter and their families would starve.

Harding further goes on describing the process of obtaining a permit to drive the vehicle - a situation that can easily give a man a bad temper in the long run:

Auto-drivers must carry roughly sixteen documents with them at all times, including a licence, a commercial badge, vehicle fitness certificate, pollution control certificates for the past year amongst others. To get each compulsory document, the driver must make an application to the Transport Department. However, each application requires a long list of supporting documents (as many as fifteen), which most auto-wallahs simply do not have and have little chance of obtaining: A fifty-year-old driver applying for a commercial badge may be asked for his old school certificates from rural Bihar in the 1960s whilst Delhi ID and ration cards are standard for many applications, documents which migrant drivers do not possess and have virtually no chance of getting. Aware that these requirements are impossible to meet, Transport Department officials solicit bribes from drivers to overlook gaps in applications and often even to process complete applications.

The drivers certainly are being cornered from many sides, but it seems even within themselves there is concern about the rotten eggs. One autowala who was dropping me home explained how so many of his colleagues simply overcharge foreigners so that they can get drunk in the evening, buy chewing tobacco or beedis and possible pay the occasional visit to G.B.Road in Old Delhi. While double up the prices to pay the bills and feed the family, there are many who simply do it because they can.

The fact remains that the autowalas of Delhi indeed give their passengers a hard time constantly and on daily basis they certainly face hardship that the general Delhiite would never have to deal with, but it does not completely explain the general hostility and dishonesty that one faces daily. The autowalas of Mumbai are often cited as the polar opposites of their Delhi colleagues - always going by meter and never cheating, while still having to deal with similar pressures. Be it as it may, the general bad attitude as well constant pressure from authorities are only blowing air to the hot coals that the autowalas as well as the general public have walk on in this city.

Hot in the City

Summer is back in Delhi. Temperatures escalate to 40+ degrees. The dust everywhere fills your nostrils and eyes and the constantly flowing sweat on your forehead drips into your eyes making the whole city seem like a simmering fata morgana. In terms of climate, Delhi is a hard place to live in. Instead of seasons, the annual cycle is marked with ordeals following each other. The chilling winds of the Himalaya will be changed to the all-pervasive sands of Rajasthan. Delhi gets the worst of both worlds. Come May, the city with all its people turns into a pressure cooker on a hot flame, ready to explode any second.


The other day I was standing on the main strip of Nizamuddin East waiting for a rickshaw to appear. Opposite to me was another white man in a suit and a suitcase waiting for a rickshaw. The look on his face communicated he'd been waiting there in the heat for a tad too long for his liking and was in a hurry somewhere. A rickshaw pulled over, the man offered a price, the rickshaw driver stepped on the pedal, the man quickly clung to the rickshaw desperately trying to offer a higher price, but the rickshaw driver kept shaking his head and drove away. This was the final straw. With his entire body shaking in anger and frustration, the man fired at the driver: "FUCK YOU MOTHERFUCKER I HOPE YOUR FUCKING FAMILY DIES!!!!" It was his fortune that the driver most likely did not understand English well enough to pick up what he was saying. Had he spoken in Hindi, there would've been a chance the driver would've gotten out of his rickshaw and the man would've made it to tomorrow's headlines.


Mohammad Irfan, a tea vendor in Delhi's Seelampur was not so lucky. On May 16 the Hindustan Times reported a sadly typical incident in Delhi: a customer had demanded Irfan a cup of tea on credit. After he had refused, an argument had broken out, which eventually escalated in the customer leaving the shop, only to return with a friend, armed with bottles and knives. The men's solution to the row was that the 32-year chaiwallah was stabbed to death. The assaulters were arrested.


The incident above is your usual page 3 material of local newspapers. It seems that especially during the summer months, incidents like these become more and more common. Killing people over trivial reasons and petty disputes seems to have become a strange trend in Delhi's crime rates. The scenario seems to follow the same pattern every time, a small argument breaks out, the situation escalates, one of the counterparts becomes blinded by rage and assaults the other, usually armed with improvised weapons like bottles or rocks. The result can be read on page three of Hindustan Times or Times of India the next day.


An article from January 2012 in the Daily Pioneer quotes the Delhi police, who estimated that ca.17% of all the murders in the city are due to sudden provocation or disputes over petty issues. The fairly recent rise in random acts of violence has left the law enforcement puzzled. A 2009 article on the Guardian quotes psychologists, according to whom the people of Delhi are driven on the edge by the surrounding chaos of the city. The heat, the noise, the pollution and the commotion seem to be especially taxing for the migrants who are flooding to the city from small villages around the country. Unaccustomed to the stress of the urban setting, some find no way to vent and end up running amok. The journey from a small village to downtown Delhi is essentially like travelling through time. After stepping out of the train in the Nizamuddin railway station, where many of the migrants enter the city, the shock, combined with the constantly accumulating stress, can drive a villager to monstrous deeds.


Both the articles casually mention recent cases of killing at will.The list of incidents seems endless, each one more ludicrous than the other:

- a boy was battered to death with his own cricket bat because he would not admit he had been bowled out; 
- a man was beaten to death with iron rods for complaining about the goat his neighbours had tethered outside his house; 
- a chef was fatally stabbed for refusing to serve poppadoms to diners in his restaurant.
- a man killed his sister-in-law for not washing his clothes; 
- a security guard murdered a colleague for failing to turn up on time to take over from him 
- the owner of a roadside food stall was murdered by a customer for accidentally 
splashing water on his clothes.
- a young man being stabbed to death by four others at his mobile phone store after he refused to lend them a screw-driver
- a young man lost his life because he had protested against a bike that had brushed past him. 
- a teenaged schoolboy killed by ‘friends’ over borrowed money, 
- an elderly mother battered to death by her iron rod-wielding son for he had been refused a mobile phone,
- a young man murdered because he had knocked chicken tikka masala off the paper plate of his assailant
 when he opened the door of his car. 
- Two men asked a man for a bidi which he refused to give them. Enraged, they killed him.
- A young mother killed her own baby by throwing him out of the window as a result from a dispute with the mother-in-law
- In a petty dispute over breaking of a stone plate, a 25-year-old boy was shot 
and his cousins beaten up by a family
- A young man had thrown a party at a north Delhi hotel. It was in full swing when two of his friends  stepped up to the DJ booth and demanded he play their choice of music. When he refused, the pair left, only to return a couple of hours later to shoot him dead.


The Guardian article also quotes Dr.Rajat Mitra, a psychologist who has worked with the Delhi police. He speculates that one of the reasons for the seemingly random violence may indeed be the shock that small-town people who are forced to move to the city experience.


"In the village you are supposed to go to the elders to resolve a dispute, but you don't have a system like that in the city. What you do instead is resolve it on your own. You are carrying a village mentality into the cities and there is no introduction to people to how to live in a city."


He further goes to mention that Delhi people generally have no trust in law enforcement, which also contributes to a general sense of hopelessness and lawlessness. Delhiites, everyone I've spoken to, seem to be united by a general distrust of the local police. One other factor mentioned was easy access to guns combined with young men on a power trip.


A similar theory is offered by Hema Raghavan, a sociologist from Jawaharlal Nehru University:

"There is an influx of people coming to the city from varied backgrounds and rural set-ups. Although we cannot single out instances wherein the perpetrator has belonged to a village, committed a crime in the city and gotten away, there is a possibility that the bridging of the gap has ensured that such people have access to money and weapons. Since most of them are illiterate and get taken up with the trappings of urban life, they become wanton to committing crime. It is actually their frustration that manifests itself as a brutal crime."

Rapid changes in the socioeconomic backbone of India has led to even more rapid urbanization. This has led to painful decisions that people from rural areas have had to make. In search of work, they have started pouring into the cities. Its seems that the wider psychological effects of this remain yet to be studied.

Pedal to the medal gotta get ahead gotta run another red light in the dead of the night

Lettin the light from my cellphone distract my eyes

Sexual text messaging on my mind

Fingers are busy but now I'm lookin in the mirror 

cause the people behind me they're givin me the middle finger

I'll kill em if they pull up any closer to my bumper

Short tempered mother-

Shut your mouth!

Drinkin' my coffee now I'm dumpin it out

He's honkin' his horn like he wanna throw down

He thinks I'm mortal, oh he wanna go now? Well I'm ready.

- Sage Francis

Malana

The sun-soaked air was filled with dust rising from the road as our ride was making its way uphill on the winding mountain roads. The driver's tiny Maruti Swift kept bouncing from one side of the road to the other, occasionally dangerously close to the edge – a big drop for a small car hardly designed for mountaineous terrain. Large potholes and rocks sticking out dotted the roads that apparently some 4 years ago had been in perfect condition, but thanks to neglect by local politicians, had been let to deteriorate. Indifference that may in the long run claim lives considering how dangerous the moutain roads in Himachal Pradesh can be. Even Himachal, one of the most developed states in India, has not been spared from corruption.

We were on our way to see the village of Malana, a small secluded village on the hills of Parvati Valley in Himachal Pradesh. The village has managed to develop itself a mythical but also infamous reputation amongst backpackers. It is said that the inhabitants of the village of Malana are direct descendants of Alexander the Great's army, who after an arduous journey from Macedonia to the Himalayas decided to desert their leader and settle on the mountains. The way back would have been too much. Allegedly the villagers used to have very distinctly different features compared to the other Himachali people around them, they were said to be almost Greek-looking with light eyes and fairer skin. They also speak a language that is completely incomprehensible to anyone outside the village. The greek ancestry seems to be a myth that the locals like to perpetuate, be it true or not. Other evidence points that there is evidence of the existence of the village in Hindu mythology too. Be it as it may, there are several theories about this, but no tangible proof has been found yet though. The language, Kanashi, also known as rakshas bhasha – demon language, on the other hand has been proven to be a mix of Sanskrit and Sino-Tibetan languages, which makes it completely different from the other languages of Himachal.

This is the mythical side of the story. The village of Malana is also gained an infamous reputation as the home of the best hashish in the world – the Malana Cream. Cannabis grows naturally in abundance on the hills of the village and has always been an important part of the local tradition. Eventually, around 70s, as backpackers were hording to India in search of a party, drugs and enlightenment, some of the more adventurous ones heard stories of a mythical village covered with premium cannabis, growing naturally everywhere. Drug tourism started expanding and the white strangers taught the villagers how to turn the plant into hashish and turn it into a marketable commodity with extremely high demand. The plant had not been used for trade before this in the village. Malana Cream became and international brand amongst cannabis connoisseurs, a luxury treat in the coffee shops of continental Europe. Today, cultivation of cannabis is controlled by European and Israeli drug mafias.

This caught the attention of the local authorities and drug busts became daily. Our car and bags were searched twice on our way out of the village. The village suffered devastating damage due to a big fire in 2008. They say the fire began from a short circuit, but according to a popular rumour, the fire was in fact set by the local police to finally eradicate the vast fields of cannabis, as a result, half of the village burnt down as well, as the houses were mostly of wood. We could still see the burn marks on some of the houses in the village.

Geographical isolation, the tragic fire and the difficult history with the local authorities has made the locals suspicious of any outsiders. We were to experience this as well. After the bumpy car ride and an hour's ascent uphill, we reached the first houses of the village. Walking into the narrow lanes of a place that has gained a reputation of mythical proportions, the first impression was a something of an anticlimax. The general atmosphere in the village reminded me of a scene in the movie Deliverance, where Burt Reynolds and John Voight with their group enter a small hillbilly town in the Appalachian mountains – suspicious villagers were peeking out the eaves of their wooden houses, there was an air of hostility that could be sensed. Outsiders were clearly not welcome, except to buy the charas. Children in village, as anywhere in the world, were excited, friendly and curious, but the adults had historical baggage which explains their bland reception. Even the dogs seemed to be trained to bark at strangers. We met briefly a mixed group of drug tourists, a ragged bunch of israeli dreadheads, who told us not to touch anything. Outsiders are allowed to only walk through one lane in the village and touching of buildings or anything for that matter is punishable by a fine of 1000 rupees. The villagers themselves were extremely wary of not touching any outsiders. Whenever we would pass them on the narrow lanes, they would step aside and stand against the wall or some would even jump and scream, in fear of being touched by an outsider. I cannot help but wonder what the locals must think of foreigners, if the kind they are mostly exposed to are hippies in that are mostly interested in being stoned 24/7.

The village itself had clearly seen better days; heaps of garbage were lying everywhere and the place was in total squalor. As a side not, all the houses, however, had brand new TATA Sky satellite dishes, the wide world of Hindi soap operas and Bollywood was there to civilize the people. Illiteracy is a big problem in the village, health facilities are poor and the only cashcrop currently seems to be drug trade, from which organized crime takes the lion's share. Not a very solid basis for development. The village has now been integrated into the Indian electorate, roads are being built and the big hydro power project of the government of Himachal Pradesh has enabled electricity to the village, but also raised general awareness of the place, for better and for worse. The surrounding hills had been completely sripped down from trees due to construction, and the villagers had been prohibited to cut down anymore, which has made building and repairing of houses very difficult. Time will tell what the Malana people will make of all this hustle and bustle around them. Stories similar to theirs are abundant in India hell bent on modernizig the entire country.

The view from the hotel in Kasol, where we stayed during the trip.

The village of Malana in the background. The welcome sign was hardly set by the locals.

Women had to carry firewood to the village from far.

This man was reading a newspaper on a mountain cliff, the bare hills can be seen in the background.

A local house. It seemed that the men in the village spent their days  sitting on the porches of the houses doing nothing while the women in the village worked.

Piles of garbage were everywhere. With no  waste management, bags of crisps are hard to get rid of. 

The village had a very modest view.

Some of the facial features of the villagers were indeed quite different from the others in the surrounding area.

Mundane inequality

Few days ago, going to work in the rickshaw as usual, I was passing the entrance to the crammed alleyways of the Nizamuddin basti, the Muslim village, when I noticed that something had changed in the usual scenery: right next to the entrance had been erected a vast advertisement by Diesel Jeans. In a notably Muslim-dominated area, the ad featured several topless men and women wearing nothing but jeans looking jadedly at the passers by. Right below the ad there was a man taking an early morning shower with a garden hose, beside him were naked children playing and a woman trying to start a bonfire. The ad had been erected to a level where a regular pedestrian would not see it right away, as it was slightly above the head. It was designed to reach the glimpse of a person riding a vehicle, especially one where the driver would sit relatively high, such as an SUV. The nonchalant gaze of the mostly white models would never reach the beggars sitting below them, or even the paanwallah facing away from the board. The advertisement dominated their immediate surroundings, but served no purpose to them.

The extremities of Indian economic inequality never seem to cease to amaze the foreign traveller coming to India. Exposure to it is unavoidable and it sends any fresh-off-the-plane westerner on an instant guilt trip, while the Indian listens to the shocked foreigner's lament quietly, almost amused. ”Oh my god, the poverty is just shocking!”. 

For some, it's too much. A friend recalled an anecdote of a young girl who was staying at hers as a couch surfer armed with a suitcase full of sanitary products to give to poor people she would see on the streets. After a first few days she locked herself into the guestroom and sat there sobbing after having seen too many beggars to her liking. 

V.S.Naipaul summarized the weltschmerz of the westerner painfully accurately in his book "An Area of Darkness", a work written in 1964 has not lost a single bit of its relevance to this day:

"India is the poorest country in the world. Therefore, to see its poverty is to make an observation of no value; a thousand newcomers to the country before you have seen and said as you. And not only newcomers. Our own sons and daughters, when they return from Europe and America, have spoken in your very words. Do not think that your anger and contempt are marks of your sensitivity.

You might have seen more: the smiles on the faces of the begging children, that domestic group among the pavement sleepers waking in the cool Bombay morning, father, mother and baby in a trinity of love, so self contained that they are as private as if walls had separated them from you: it is your gaze that violates them, your sense of outrage that outrages them. You might have seen the boy sweeping his area of pavement, spreading his mat, lying down; exhaustion and undernourishment are in his tiny body and shrunken face, but lying flat on his back, oblivious of you and the thousands who walk past in the lane between sleepers' mats and house walls bright with advertisements and election slogans, oblivious of the warm, overbreathed air, he plays with a fatigued concentration with a tiny pistol in blue plastic. It is your surprise, your anger that denies him humanity.

But wait, stay for six months. The winter will bring fresh visitors. Their talk will also be of poverty; they too will show their anger. You will agree; but deep down there will be annoyance; it will seem to you then, too, that they are seeing only the obvious; and it will not please to find your sensibility so accurately parodied."

In other words, overly emotional accounts of encounters with poverty have the danger of carnevalizing and thus dehumanizing the poor, depicting them as some uniform group of people that dwell in their wretched existance with no prospects of a better life. After staying for a bit longer in India, something happens to you: Much to your surprise, you indeed find yourself bored of backpackers' teary-eyed accounts of their encounters with ”realities of life” during their Indian experience. It is an uneasy feeling and you do not forgive  yourself easily for feeling that way, but you begin to justify your newly discovered numbness to poverty as recognition of your own limitations as an individual. The legless woman shivering, wrapped in every rag she owns on a winter morning greets you as you pass her in the rickshaw every morning in the same intersection. The girl in her dirty and torn flowery dress taps on the darkened car windows. They all become your daily landscape.

As for the Indians listening to the cries of the foreigners, they have seen it all, maybe even too much. It is true that the economic reforms of early 90's have multiplied the size of the middle class and thus lifted a notable amount of people out of poverty and opened windows of opportunity beyond cultural barriers, such as in the case of Dalit entrepreneurs. However, for the more well-off of the Indian society, poverty still seems to remain an uncomfortable truth, an ugly stain in the shield of shining new India. For example last year Indian and foreign media channeled the public outrage when the Delhi authorities, with their idea of a "world class capital", were resorting to questionable measures while trying to hide the beggars from the international guests. The government may chastise its people of the situation by calling the state of affairs "a national shame", but the general middle class public seems to rather shut its eyes from the whole situation. Pavan K Varma for example, in his book "the Great Indian Middle Class", is rather hard on his countrymen:

"The poor have been around for so long that they have become a part of the accepted landscape. Since they refused to go away, and could not be got rid of, the only other alternative was to take as little notice of them as possible. This myopia has its advantages: the less one noticed, the less reason one had to be concerned about social obligations; and the less one saw, the less one needed to be distracted from the heady pursuit of one's own material salvation. To get on in the world one had to restrict one's canvas, where all the discordance of other people's needs and conditions was best shut out." 

" For the burgeoning and upwardly mobile middle class of India, such poverty has ceased to exist. It has ceased to exist, because it does not create in most of its members the slightest motivation to do something about it. Its existence is taken for granted. Its symptoms, which would revolt even the most sympathetic foreign observer, do not register any more. The general approach is to get on with one's life, to carve out a tiny island of well-being in a sea of deprivation"

Such a mindset may partly come from political disillusionment. Tepid interest in social reforms may partly be due to the fact that educated middle class Indians seem to have very little faith in politicians and government, whom they mostly regard as corrupt babus and gangsters. Unwilling to deal with such crowd, they remain more focused on minding their own business, beggars or no beggars. 

Thug Life in Delhi

There is a side of Delhi that's very hard to miss while walking around town: I sit in my auto rickshaw on my way to work in the morning, a car the size of a tank speeds past me plowing through scooters, rickshaws, Suzuki Marutis, cyclists, beggars and school children. The monster almost catapults the rickshaw to the gutter. The surroundings are sprayed with red paan spit and before you even realize what happened, the echoes of Bhangra music and Punjabi cusswords fade out in to the traffic. 

In the imagination of Indians elsewhere than in the national capital region, Delhi today often seems to appear as an epitome of power and corruption - a nihilistic den of vices run by corrupt politicians and gangsters inhabited mostly by migrants in search of a quick buck with nothing to lose. Whereas Mumbai is often associated with money (in terms of Indian stock market and entertainment industry etc.), Delhi in India is all about power and status. 


Much like Russia earlier, as a country with fairly short history of free market capitalism, India, and especially Delhi, has seen it's own emergence of an upstart class who have fairly recently become millionaires and aren't shy to flaunt their wealth. Being loud, arrogant and flamboyant is what they are best at. Whereas in Russia many got rich quick through oil trade, in India it has been all about land. 

The video above encapsulates the mindset perfectly. It follows rich kids during their ordinary day. These are sons of wealthy landowners from Delhi, who have made it their business to let everyone know that they now stand on top of the social ladder. For them, showing status equals carrying guns and having security guards follow them everywhere (although no-one really threatens them), getting an exclusive phone number like "0001" and driving the biggest car available on the Indian market, usually a Mahindra Scorpio or a Hummer. They spend their days doing nothing living on the money their parents made by selling land, and they are proud of it. What strikes here is the panache and blatant shamelessness of it all, they seem to be completely oblivious to the ridiculousness of the whole setting and seem to never get bored of their lifestyle of clubs, malls and swimming pools, all payed by their dads. I've been told several times that when people elsewhere ask "Don't you know who I am?", in Delhi it's "Don't you know who my dad is?". 


Since independence, India's austere socialist economic policies had limited the possession of capital to a very limited layer of society. The license and quota Raj, as the bureucratic economic atmosphere of post-independence India is often referred to as, allowed only the most headstrong and stubborn to gain licenses and thus make their fortunes in fields such as telecommunications, mining or steel. As a result of that, dynasties of wealth such as the Mittals or the Tatas were born, deepening a gap between a wealthy English-educated elite and huddled masses of people living in an India that was "an isolated and dour place of limited opportunity", where "the country was straitjacketed by its moralistic rejection of capitalism, by a lethargic and often depressive fatalism" as Akash Kapur writes in his column, as he comments on the recent surge of consumerism and idolization of American culture in India.


This so-called old money of Delhi accumulated vast amounts of wealth, got educated in the best universities of the world and thus consolidated its position as the cream of society.  Since money had existed in these families for a long time, there was no need to prove anything to anybody. Their societal status was unquestioned and relationship with money was nonchalant, extravagance was a marker of poor taste. Furthermore, as mentioned above, former elites grew up in a socialist country of limited prospects, where frugality was a necessity. The new rich of today live in a frantically consumerist country crazed with easy access to material wealth. 


The English-educated upper-middle class and upper class of Delhi with their Oxford or Harvard-returned children have during the few decades found themselves marooned in their own city, sequesterd by a completely different crowd. As Rana Dasgupta on his essay on the new rich of Delhi  quite aptly puts it,


"The Indian economy of the turn of the twenty-first century has been far too explosive for the tiny English-speaking class to monopolise its rewards. In fact they have not even been its primary beneficiaries. Their foreign degrees and cosmopolitan behaviour prepare them well for jobs in international banks and management consultancies, where they earn good salaries and mix with people like themselves. But they are surrounded by very different people – private businessmen, entrepreneurs, real estate agents, retailers and general wheeler-dealers – who are making far more money than they, and wielding more political power. These people may come from smaller cities, they may be less worldly, and they may speak only broken English. But they are skilled in the realm of opportunity and profit, and they are at home in the booming world of overlords, connections, bribes, political loopholes, sweeteners – and occasional violence – that sends their anglicised peers running for the nearest cappuccino. Over the last few years, provincials have become Delhi’s dominant economic group, with many millionaires, and a few billionaires, among their number, and networks of political protection that make them immensely more influential than those who have got rich on a salary." 



The 1991 economic reforms that aimed to liberalize the Indian economy marked a watershed in Indian history not only as an economic but also cultural paradigm shift. Doors were open for social mobility, social stratification of Indian society started shifting from caste to class. As prices of real estate skyrocketed downtown Delhi, the dusty plains and farmlands surrounding the national capital region became so sought after that they practically became worth crores almost overnight. Landowners realized that they were sitting on a fortune and leased their farmlands further for companies that required space for their corporate headquarters near the capital region. Satellite cities with office buildings and exuberant malls like Noida and Gurgaon emerged. Former poor farmers became millionaires. People who were used to a simple life all of a sudden had the world in their hands. Access to material wealth was no longer a matter of education. 


And soon enough, Delhi nightclubs and bars, places that used to be inhabited by the anglicized upper class were suddenly buzzing with mostly Hindi and Punjabi speaking offspring of rural landowning castes and gangsters, waving their guns at the DJ telling him to put down his progressive house collection and turn up Bollywood item numbers like Sheela Ki Jawani and Munni Badnaam. Should he of she fail to do so, he might get shot, but the culprit would still walk free because he happened to have the right connections. Much to the old elite's chagrin, opening of the market has enabled upward social mobility to perhaps slightly less refined strata of society and thus also given them access to power. With money comes power and with power comes freedom.

A recently published article in the Hindustan Times commented on this emergence of new upper classes pointing out that people who have gotten rich so soon, still seem to be going through a phase where they emulate the lifestyle of the upper class, but are still not entirely comfortable with a life of luxury:

"Nikhil Khanna of Avian Media, who once wrote a society column and continues to keep a watch on the well-heeled, says the chaos is driven by consumerism. "Car companies such as BMW and Audi are holding classes to teach people how to drive these cars. People who have the money to buy them but don't know how to drive them - it's a metaphor for what's happening to the city." 

Snapshots pt.3

While coming up with new topics to write about (which of course are abundant), here's another series of snapshots from the everyday of Delhi.

Lazing around at the Hanuman temple in Connaught Place downtown Delhi.  

Ramesh the andawallah (eggman) sells omelettes and chai in front of the American embassy. If you had to leave for work in a rush and skipped breakfast, he's your man. Since Chanakyapuri, the embassy district, does not have any kind of retail outlets available, Ramesh has the monopoly on breakfast and snacks. His clientele mostly consists of people queuing for a visa interview to the American embassy. Another example of the effects of immigration policy to the economy.

The Delhi winter can be hard on people on the streets, blankets are vitally important for many. Every year the homeless are distributed blankets by various NGOs and the government. This winter, to save money, the city of Delhi decided to distribute bubble wrap instead. Needless to say, the reception was rather cold.

A woman praying in the Hanuman temple in Connaught Place.

A rickshaw wallah taking five in Nizamuddin East market.

January 5th was the birthday of Guru Gobind Singh, an important figure of the Sikh faith. A  parade led by Sikh elders in their festive attire, weapons and white horses marauded through the colonies of south Delhi making sure everyone was aware what was going on. The procession included elephants, camels, white horses, several marching bands and a whole army of Sikh warriors.

Sikh youngsters showing their skills in Gatka, a Punjabi martial art.

"I'm the king of rock, there ain't none higher, sucker MC's should call me sire...ahem"

A vegetable vendor was decorating his stall with candles to celebrate Diwali, the Hhindu festival of lights.

The Hindu temple at the Nizamuddin East market has  interesting sponsors.

A peek down from a flyover revealed a dwelling and a dump.  As the city is in constant  flux of migrants from surrounding states, housing is a serious problem. Beggars and poorer labourers with only occasional income end up inhabiting the spaces under flyovers and bridges in arrangements like these.

The main strip of Nizamuddin East in the morning. This  spot is where my daily commute begins.  The routine usually includes a good refreshing loud argument with an auto-rickshaw driver. Some of them have already started to recognize my face and casually ignore me knowing I'm not easy money for them.

The future of India is safe.

A tuba player, member of a marching band. These bands fill the soundscapes during the hindu festival season when most Indians prefer to have their weddings. Marching band versions of Bollywood hits are played with supersonic cadence, often with rather cacophonous results.