January 8, 2008
Alston asked about the Indian response to the American presidential election, and while I can’t answer that question, I thought I’d use his question to share some other things about India, and our last two days here. Bear in mind the accuracy of one of our teacher’s comments, “Whatever is true about India, the opposite is also true.”
We’re getting the Hindustan Times, one of around 500 English-language newspapers (there are 5000 papers printed in Hindi, and about 60,000 –that’s right– newspapers registered in India). That so few are printed in two of the main languages indicates that there are many other languages–14 official ones, and hundreds of dialects. The number of newspapers increased by 2,000 last year, unlike the US, where papers are in trouble, which seems to be less true here. Part of the reason is that this land of contrasts still has only a veneer of internet connectivity—and about 40% illiteracy!
The news we are getting internationally is not much better than what we get at the Pantagraph–but it’s from Reuters, the British news agency. Right now, the headline story is about the cricket match in Australia, and how the Aussies have insulted the Indian team with racial slurs and whether the team should come back home (the press is as sensational as ours, though cricket is the main sport here; it’s a game someone described as going on forever–you can come back three days later and nothing has happened that you can see). The combination of the two impressions–Reuters and cricket–suggests something that really hit me the first time I was here: India is a former British colony. When I was here in the 1990s, I arrived January 1, ran to the papers and found the football scores: Royal Madrid 1, Arsenal 0. Nobody plays basketball that I can see, and the factory team sports (we were at an auto supplier yesterday, that could have been anywhere in the world) were volleyball, cricket, and what we call (alone in this world) soccer. I remember an Indian-born student I had several years ago, whose family would travel anywhere in North America to see the cricket team.
The motto here is unity amid diversity, and the diversity is readily apparent. As I said, India is 60% literate; it’s 82% Hindu; 70% rural; 25% impoverished, with a rich upper class that can patronize all the upper class stores we saw at a mall yesterday.
Our visit to a village was a revelation; I think agriculture in all developing countries is the main challenge. As I wrote Sondra, it ain’t Iowa. 
Getting there was one of the major challenges in India–transportation. While there’s an extensive rail system (I think 1 in 15 Indians is working on the railroad), the roads are an adventure. The road we were on, national Highway 8 to Jaipur, was two lane, but sometimes had four lanes of traffic–three headed at you, as well as the usual assortment of “vehicles,” two four-legged and multi-tyred (as they spell it in the British sphere). Apart from being Muslim, the village was probably typical of north India–it grows wheat this time of year (and mustard), and a second crop of sorghum in the summer. This village (we got there because the college has a working relationship with an NGO–non-government organization that has adopted the village) has 1000 households and 8000 people, 70% under 18. The average family is nine! The teacher told us that he has 500 boys in school, and 250 girls; the head of a woman’s handicraft group (which raises money for schooling by making and selling crafts) said that most farmers don’t see any reason to send their daughters to school, though that is changing. Still if 5600 are under 18, and only 750 are in school; that leaves many young people not in school. As I said earlier, agriculture is a challenge in developing countries because it’s not very efficient. Seventy percent of the population contributes less than 20% of the GNP, and while India has become self-sufficient in food, the country relies heavily on the monsoons (which barely touch north India) for irrigation. And if it were more efficient on the farms, and people moved to the cities, what would they do?
The highlight yesterday (beside the usual great assortment of food, yoga, and lectures) was a ride home on a pedicab–an open cart pedaled by a young man. The cost was less than a dollar; the ride, a hair –raising experience.
See you soon, and congratulations on having a free election! The Indian intellectuals are really proud of being the world’s largest democracy, one of the few positive things they credit the British raj for establishing.