Vacation in recent years have always meant going back home, visiting family in Kerala. This also meant that for Thomas the world was a very small place, made up of home which was of course Dubai, then amma’s place Perumbavoor and appa’s place Kottayam. India was to him two districts in Kerala. So when we planned a trip to Bangalore this year, I looked forward to showing him that india was really huge, really bigger than his Dubai.
He was impressed by the airport in bangalore and once he reached the city he was happy to see McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut and other fast food joints. Then he asked us, “Why are there so many small childen on the roads, knocking on car windows, selling things, begging? Why are they not in school?”
Then I looked around and saw the number of children on the roads, a face of India forgotten in the comfortable lifestyle in Dubai and we did not have beggars on the roads like this in Kerala. Thomas never having seen poverty on this scale was shocked. Somehow seeing this on a daily scale, we tend to become immune to these sights and only someone fresh and new to it notice the poor. We Indians tend to complain that foreigners only notice and take pictures of these sights. that they like stereotyping us as poor, that they ignore the impressive growth we have had. We hate it that they complain about the commonwealth games , the poor infrastructure, shoddy building and the lack of hygiene. But my seven-year old son can see the mess we are surrounded by, how can we as adults remain so indifferent.
Bangalore, touted as garden city, the center of all our technological hopes and dreams, the land of pubs and young westernised crowd, is really a decaying city, chronic power cuts, bad roads, scary traffic jams and no number of trendy fast food joints or swanky airport or shopping malls is going to make up for it. If this is the state of Bangalore, imagine the state of less fortunate cities.
When we are ruled by a PM, whose priority is being a yes man to American demands and juggling madam’s likes and dislikes, in an attempt to remain in power, this is to be expected. But still, in the five years that we had, to get ready for the CWG, if this is what we have to show as the end result, I really think we deserve to be stereotyped and thought of as no more than a third world country populated by beggars and snake charmers.
Developement does mean rich people getting richer and leading a more comfortable life, but poor people getting a chance to break through the glass ceiling and having at least the basic necessities of life without having to resort to turning their children into beggars.
