December 18, 2007
India Then and Now...
Through some random web surfing, I came across an interesting article by Jayant Bhandari comparing / contrasting his experiences doing business in the Desh shortly after 1991’s economic reforms vs. now. Although we frequently talk about how much the Indian economy has changed in the past 15 yrs, Jayant’s article had some solid anecdotes of just how grinding day to day life really was back in the day -
..I moved to Delhi [in 1993]. To my dismay, no one wanted to rent me a decent place to live in. The landlords mostly refused to talk to me, and had blatantly advertised their property as for foreigners only.
..having a phone was not enough. It usually did not work, and when it did, I usually could not use my fax machine because of the “noise” that infested the communications network. For the next three years, I spent, on average, one day a month to keep my phone in operation by making personal visits to the telecommunication department.
..One of the several laws I broke in those days was the law restricting the fax machine itself. I should have sought a license to use it; but getting it would have meant tens of visits to the telephone office, more hefty bribes, and the certainty that if I was refused a license, I would not have been able to communicate. This meant that the government employee responsible for keeping track of my telephone connection got a particularly heavy bribe…I spent the equivalent of one day a month depositing my telephone, electricity, and water payments.
..Getting money from the UK was another bureaucratic nightmare. The money came to the foreign currency department of a public sector bank. Once the bank got the money it would take about two months to give it to me — the check just traveled around and around inside their office.
It’s important to note that every single one of the issues he encounters were premised on good intentions at first. Why did landlords treat foreign vs. native rent money so differently? Because the latter couldn’t be evicted if they were late in their payments. Why the flimsy phone network? Because the telecoms saw their duty to provide jobs first, service a whole bunch of socio-political mandates second, and provide actual phone service perhaps 3rd. Currency controls? The goal was to prevent the twin scourges of capital flight and foreign takeovers. etc. etc. etc.
Of course, much turns around in a scant 5 years…
…In 1998 I moved to a self-sufficient gated community with its own electrical generating plant, water supply system, and private security — probably among the first such communities in India. Telephones had just started becoming private all over the country. A guy wearing a suit in the sweltering heat of Delhi came to install my new telephone. He made no pretensions of looking important and called me “sir” more often than he should have. Efficient private banks had opened everywhere. I could talk to them on the telephone, and they even delivered money to my place without charge.
While upper-middle class folk like Jayant had enormous gains, even at current growth rates, the poor have a LONG way to go -
an average Indian lives on about $1.70 a day. And how does India’s glamorous growth appear from this perspective? Australia’s growth in GDP (which is around 2%) will add about $600 to its per capita GDP, almost as much as India’s total GDP per capita. Its 6.9% growth will give the average Indian about 11 cents extra for use each day, a year from now.
… [Nevertheless] For the average Indian living on $1.70 per day, an extra 11 cents next year will be a windfall.
Helps keep things in perspective, eh?
vinod on December 18, 2007 05:13 PM in · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
India also needs solid Anti-Discrimination Housing Laws. Its not easy for example to rent in a lot of areas in Delhi if you are a Muslim or a single woman.
Interesting take. The increase in India's population each year (18,145,650 using the latest CIA figures) is approximately the same as that of Australia's total population (20,434,176 using the same figures).
shades of trying to commit journalism in Morocco in the early '90's for US outlets. Nice to know it wasn't just me...
Or Bombay, if you are not vegetarian.
The economic growth in India is not just the rich getting richer. Lots of poor people are moving into the middle class and lots of middle class people are moving into the upper class. People who never had any sort of phones are buying cell phones. The airline industry is booming because millions of people are able to fly for the first time in their lives.
The poor that are crowding to the cities are doing so because the city is offering a better standard of lving.
We shouldn't forget that India is still a poor country and we need to have policies that redistribute wealth to the poor through education, healthcare and infrastructure building.
But at the same we need to recognize that economic liberalization is improving the standard of lving for millions of people - not just "the rich".
That's right. Seriously, I never thought about flying in an aeroplane even late in my undergrad. Even though I used to cross the Meenambakkam airport railway station (tirusulam) using the suburban trains everyday during my school days, that thought never crossed my mind and I bet many of my friends' minds either. After my first flight, one of my relatives asked about the windows in the aeroplane and wondered how to survive the cold if someone opened the windows. I had the same doubt before flying. :-)
Buses and trains with open windows are the only means of transport we knew.
All India needs is one person who treats bureaucrats like rats. Someone like him.
First it needs good tenancy laws to be able to evict tenants without spending years in the court system. There are a lot of empty houses(flats) in Mumbai which earn no rental income but only bought with capital gains in mind, due to bad tenancy laws that favour tenants more than the landlords.
A case in point was a flat in my appartment building in mumbai. where the tenant got possesion for an 11 month lease ended up living there for about 20 odd years. Dint pay rent beyond the 11 months. The property was sold at a 50% discount since it was a disputed property, with the new owner taking care of the case. The flat worth 50 lakhs (5 million) was passed in at 25 lakhs (2.5 million) with the tenant given 12.5 lakhs (1.25 million ) to move out of the house.
Renting in India is a high risk business. The land lord in the above case was a decent bloke who lost his life savings, but did not use goons to evict the tenants. When the laws and their implementation is weak, you deal with whom you think you can trust, thus you bring personal prejudice into the picture.
In a high trust society with strong legal system, you don't care who you rent to. But even here there is discrimination against people whom the landlord thinks is undesirable. Like in Sydney you are an undesirable tenant if you have pets, have too many young children, drug addicts. In some suburbs its easy for families to get a place over single people, in some others it easier to get a place if your LGTB (like darlinghurst).
Or Bombay, if you are not vegetarian.
Bombay is mostly vegetarian? One would think that Bombay being more cosmopolitan than Delhi would have a more diverse cuisine. Delhi has quite possibly the best North Indian/Paki non vegetarian food in the World and its available almost everywhere in Delhi. I know some people from Lahore/Dubai/London will disagree but f***'em. Delhi rules!
When tenancy laws are too pro-tenants landlords will only rent to people they trust on an intimate level. In India this usually means someone from one's extended family, caste, social circle, religion.
The wealth communities like the Jains who reside in large numbers in prime localities are militant vegetarians. They wont drink water in your house if you are not a vegetarian. The Pizza hut on Marine drive is a vegetarian only.
But even here there is discrimination against people whom the landlord thinks is undesirable. Like in Sydney you are an undesirable tenant if you have pets, have too many young children, drug addicts. In some suburbs its easy for families to get a place over single people.
Discrimination because of familial status is illegal in the United States. There is a new trend now in some cities to pass insidious laws 'limiting the number of people in a dwelling' to exclude Mexicans. Such restrictions are being challenged in Courts across the Nation.
We had a recalcitrant tenant in a flat my family owned in India, and I was very tempted to hire some gundas to take care of the situation...but I was advised against it, since as an ABD I would have had no idea about the local power structures, and the tenant could easily have figured out a way to arrange giving me back the same treatment. Basically I was advised that if I took this to the level of gundas and strong-arm tactics, I would soon find myself out of my league and losing control of the situation. Finally the tenant left anyway without too much hassle, which was a very lucky break. Never would I consider renting out property in India again.
It is not, but the vegetarians in Mumbai like to live in vegetarian-only buildings.In practice this usally translates into vegetarian flats that are unofficially only sold to Gujarati vegetarians and Jains. Marathis, Muslims and others are excluded. The Gujjus and Jains also have the most money and see themselves as the upper class of Mumbai society. All of this is causing a lot of resentment.
As others have said, the issue is that the richest class of people, who own many of the properties, and form much of the landlord class, are often militant vegetarians.
Also, Lucknow in U.P. has excellent non-veg food as do Bhopal and Hyderabad (all centers of Muslim culture but the local non-veg Hindus share in the same cuisine as well).
The number of people in a dwelling issue had come up here with fire safety laws and illegal subletting done mostly by Asian students. Some property companies that develop luxury apartments were concerned about illegal subletting in their apartment blocks would bring down their property prices.
Was it me or did anyone get a whiff of condescension and patronizing from the article by Jayant Bhandhari? What a whinger.
Meaning, just intimidate him, not cause serious harm.
Ponniyan - entha petta thambi ?
*** how grinding day to day life really was back in the day
-- day to day life is still grinding, at least in smaller cities, esp if you have to deal first-hand with the medical or legal system in India.
I think this kind of law is a very genuine need, don't know anywhere in the US but I have seen bangladeshis living 4 to a 4X4 meter room in Singapore. Building safety is really compromised.
The number of people in a dwelling issue had come up here with fire safety laws and illegal subletting done mostly by Asian students.
Where is here?
I think this kind of law is a very genuine need, don't know anywhere in the US but I have seen bangladeshis living 4 to a 4X4 meter room in Singapore. Building safety is really compromised.
First they came for the Indian North East. Then they came for the cramped Singaporean apartments. Then they came...
Seems fair to me as property taxes fund local schools and the extra needs of these kids (e.g. ESL or biligual ed). Limiting the # of tenants is necessary and does not necessarily imply racial animus. I don't like the anti-Mexican haterade, but I know the same problems would exist if poor Indians were coming over and having large families too so I don't feel like a hypocrite for pointing this out.
Getting back to India....I agree that housing discrimination is a huge issue. I can kind of understand how lifelong vegetarians might find the very thought of having us meat eaters as neighbors unsettling, but in the end "veg" is equated with being Jain/Brahmin/Marwari. Not like landlords accept a notarized letter from a doctor who analyzes your poop to certify you herbivorous. This is one Muslim grievance that I do recognize and it is particularly damaging because on one hand we prescribe modern Western education etc as a cure for backwardness, but once they become middle class they end up having to deal with this crap too. Furthermore I hope this level of middle class integration will discourage rioting....why engage in communal fighting which will result in Mutual Destruction of Flat Screen TVs.
I'm from a backwards class and I'm vegetarian yet most of my brhamin friends eat meat so lets not turn it into a caste thing. I think vegetarians are entirely within their rights to limit who they want to live with. Especially since vegetarianism is on the decline, its perfectly sensible for people to want to create a vegetarian community.
And Muslims are free to become vegetarian! In fact my roommate is a vegetarian, Persian Muslim.
BTW: Every city in India has neighborhoods for rich Muslims and poor Muslims and its very difficult for non-Muslims to move into those neighborhoods. And Muslims are not excluded from the vast majority of flats that are not vegetarian.
the medical system in the US needs some big-time repairs too :( it is so difficult to get an appointment, especially if you keep moving around and have no primary care physicians. i can only imagine what the uninsured go through when they need help.
as for the legal system, a little tort reform would go a long way. but it's nothing like the dysfunctional indian judicial system. it took my folks many, many years and tons of money spent on lawyers and courts to get rid of our awful tenants who would not leave. now the climate is changing, with lots of people demanding registered leases before they rent.
also, about 5-8 years ago, connaught place, prime commercial land in delhi was in the news, when the delhi rent control act was being amended. at the time, delhi policymakers were trying to dismantle the pugri system: prime land in delhi, usually rented out by old families with waning fortunes, were rented at 1947 rates. most of the renters actually sublet the land to wealthier merchants and kept the profits.
point is, doing business in india is a pretty risky proposition. there is the ubiquitous fear that contracts will not be enforced and many transactions will remain off the books (especially when it comes to real estate), and therefore, not fall under the ambit of laws (a corollary of that is that guarantees to protect labor cannot be enforced either). however, even paying off the mai-baap is no guarantee that your property/business will remain protected under the benign gaze of the powers that be. for instance, the people who paid off the local municipal big fish in delhi to encroach public land and/or violate the "building code" were shafted when the courts ordered the demolition of illegal construction. maybe those guys got what they deserved, but that much instability certainly adds to head-ache costs of being an entrepreneur in india (besides making india a slightly less attractive destination for investors). that's why many feel justified in filing fake returns and paying little in the way of taxes. the general salaried person in india feels "businessmen" are greedy crooks anyway (for instance, a lot of people i know won't marry their daughters into business families precisely because of that assumption).
Sorry, here, Sydney- Australia
Well, it is a caste thing precisely because secretly nonobservant Brahmins and Jains are accepted as vegetarian even when they are not. Your Brahmin friend will get into that veg apartment complex, you will not unless another tenant can vouch for you. Remember, India classifies everyone as Hindu/Muslim/Christian at birth, so at pretty much every level of society identity is about birth rather than belief/practice.
New rule: Discrimination is OK as long as it doesn't affect you.
An example of my statement above:
"It's blood-spilling. It's almost murder," she said, and yet she knows both sons regularly eat meat when they go out. "They are grown now, I can't control it. They don't do it to hurt me, just to fit in with their friends. Society has changed."
The woman is Jain (surname Mehta), she lives in a vegetarian complex but apparently kinship allows her to cut her sons some slack. I can understand and might even support veg only housing, but this has become about ethicity/religion
Especially if you are in cash producing business like property, diamond trade, dance bars. You get phone calls for extortion. the Pay up or else.... type. Read Sacred Games covers the period in late 1990s Bombay and the mumbai underworld.
Yeah there is uneven enforcement. Just because a women isn't kicking her sons out of the house for starting to eating meat doesn't mean that she was running a scam to make vegetarianism a proxy for ethnicity and religion. The intent is to create a vegetarian atmosphere - and there are shortcomings to carrying it out perfectly.
If Muslim and Christian vegetarians were excluded then I would have a problem with it.
Sometimes we need to give people there space, forcing people to be in close contact with people they do not want to be near isn't going to create social harmony.
BTW: Parsees and various Muslim sects run flats (baugs) that are blatantly based on religion and ethnicity. So perhaps we should eliminate these blatantly race-based housing projects first.
*a woman
They are, as are Hindu vegetarians from traditionally non-veg backgrounds. I know this from my veg Hindu relatives who faced similar issues. Walk in with a name like Trivedi vs. Murugavel, announce yourself as veg and see the reception you get
Wow this post leaves me speechless. First of all how do you enforce what others do in the privacy of their own homes?
I think vegetarian is a filter to keep out everyone but those deemed "desirable" by the homeowners. I would just like to know how many
such muslim and parsi vegetarians live in these " vegetarian colonies"
What in the world is a vegetarian atmosphere?
How would the people defending this so-called vegetarian housing like it if they were not allowed to rent a place because the landlord did not want them as tenants and came up with an excuse that he didn't want to rent because he did not want his house to smell like curry.
I am sure that was the logic behind the separate-but-equal Jim Crow laws
When my mother announced about twenty years ago that she was a "very liberated woman" and did her own taxes and collected rent from her tenants in Kolkata, my sister and I, living in London and NYC respectively, chuckled and scoffed and chattered telephonically, and said, wow, she's writing a check by herself, visiting the bank and drinking tea, but I see now that my mother may have been quite correct in her assessment of her own character. There used to be a great deal of mystery about the smallest transactions in Desh that I only see nowadays in NYC in dealings among coop tenant-shareholders --can it really all go away just because of economic reforms or even because everyone is twenty five years old?
There aren't enough rich brahmins to go around. Most vegetarian Hindus in Mumbai that are buying the flats are banias, patels,and -walas. Its not always clear-cut who vegetarian and whose not so flats are sold through associations.
I would favor enforcing laws that prevent discrimination based on ethnicity and religion. There should be plenty of vegetarian Christians and Sikhs who can apply to test if a particular flat is simply vegetarian or also ethnicity-based.
But we should also make sure non-Hindus can live in Muslim neighborhoods w/o fear of retaliation and should also close down blatantly religion based baugs.
Parsees and Muslims have faith-based colonies - specifically excluding non-believers. Isn't this worse than simply prohibiting non-vegetarians?
An atmospehere in which vegetarianism is taught to be moral way of life.
I'm
advocating govt forcing vegetarians and non-vegetarians to live apart. I'm defending the rights of vegetarians to separate themselves from non-vegetarians. Big difference. Guess what - you are anti-freedom if you support using the law to force vegetarians to mingle w/ non-vegetarians.I understan how annoying some holier than thou vegetarians can be, but its their right to be snooty.
Well you could compare it to NY apartments where you need to be approved by existing residents.
The fact is that housing in Bombay is organised mostly, in fact almost entirely, in the form of co-operative housing societies. People think they own the house, the don't. The own a share that gives them membership to the society, which in turn allows them to live there. You can be evicted from your own house if the society votes to have you expelled as a member for various reasons - mainly not paying dues repetitively. This is the reason they won a supreme court case, where a society had a vegetarian only bylaw. So if you are buying into an existing society, your membership has to be approved by a vote of the existing members of the society, for you to be able to live there.
Somewhat like Swiss Citizenship laws.
oh louiecypher!What's wrong with being one thing at birth and at different times through life? Everyone here is classified and classified again and again throughout their lives as black, white, Hispanic, Asian, and just maybe sometimes as Native American, just so we can all purse our lips and say-- all together now, "Diveuse-ity!"
This is a pro-secular comment.
.......and louiecypher, diet IS religiously prescribed in India as indeed by orthodox religions in a lot of places. It's not the kind of choice that lends itself to the sort of interpretation my English friend's sister gave it, despite her then recent Tripos in Anthro from Cambridge/Newnham, when she asked my former brother-in-law at table, "Do you eat a lot of salads?"
Um, that was a secular comment. I am objecting to the state tagging people with an identity at birth that does not change as they do. Jeez, some people are so eager to flush out an RSS man. Keep at it Amrita, you can't be wrong 100% of the time.
don't know anywhere in the US but I have seen bangladeshis living 4 to a 4X4 meter room in Singapore.
wow! damn that's a lot of space! (remember, these are bangaldeshis) ;-)
India also needs solid Anti-Discrimination Housing Laws. Its not easy for example to rent in a lot of areas in Delhi if you are a Muslim or a single woman.
well, to be frank, i don't think that india's priorities should be anti-discrimination laws when most of the country is wracked by poverty. social justice in such a complex society is going to take some work and investment of time & money and i doubt it is really the best strategy at this point. consciousness is raised when affluence is attained. many poor countries have a crap-load of laws which are just never enforced.
in any case, about perspective, whenever i real articles or books raving about the rapid growth of india and china i wish every positive statistic would be bracketed with another one just to keep perspective. hundreds of millions are prospering...but this is in a sample space of billions.
Are you dense ? I am objecting to people assuming that some people are vegetarian, and others or not, simply because their caste historically is or isn't vegetarian. Jains are supposed to be veg, but many people with Jain heritage are not. Chettiars are not traditionally veg, but many are. That's the point I am trying to make, that when "vegetarianism" is ascertained by birth culture that it results in caste based discrimination
First it needs good tenancy laws to be able to evict tenants without spending years in the court system. There are a lot of empty houses(flats) in Mumbai which earn no rental income but only bought with capital gains in mind, due to bad tenancy laws that favour tenants more than the landlords.
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This is very true. My family has burnt its fingers into this too. Our office premises at a prime location in south mumbai was "devoured" by a rich and influential metal trader, someome who came through a lot of references. No one would ever imagine he would do such a thing. 4 months into the lease he stopped paying rent and made us feel like beggars when my dad asked for rent on our premises. this continue for 5 months. we explored all options right from legal ones to illegal ones except for filing a case in the courts because we know how that works....
We tried influence through well known community members, to police inspectors/highly placed cops, to a minister but the guy wouldnt budge... we explored the Mafia option (Gawli gang) but it wasnt viable since they take 15 -20% of the asset value as fees. Finally we got intouch with an old friend of dad,a Metal industry Mafia guy who almost took care of the situation but As fate would have it, The jacka$$ trader suddenly had an heart attack in his mid 40s and passed away amid all this.
There is a legal solution to this which is to make the tenant a lease vacating document right when he signs the 11 month lease document so that at the end of 11 months he is legally forced to vacate. ofcourse there are rent non payment and other risks too
It's not the kind of choice that lends itself to the sort of interpretation my English friend's sister gave it, despite her then recent Tripos in Anthro from Cambridge/Newnham, when she asked my former brother-in-law at table, "Do you eat a lot of salads?"
if someone has a degree in math, they know math. if someone has a degree in anthro, i don't assume they really know that much about humans ;-)
Is there an economic component to the veg-only housing in Mumbai? I.e., it would be much more annoying (I'd think) for non-veg's if those veg-only apartments were rent-controlled or otherwise especially desirable economically. I guess I'm asking whether this is about social-signalling only (not that that's trivial!), or whether there's an underlying economic harm (as well) to being kept out? Do zoning rules effectively eliminate the ability to construct (nice or new) non-veg apartments? Sorry for my lack of on-the ground knowledge--I've only been there once and stayed in a hotel--no (close) relatives in the city.
Or, if these are coops, is the real problem property law--i.e., inability of non-veg's to construct non-veg coops?
I'm a materialist at heart. ;-)
I think the answer is yes. Contracts are not worth the paper they are printed on (Indian legal system sucks, maybe only marginally better than Nigeria/Russia)so the old economy businesses are conducted within insular communities. The only thing that might serve as an incentive to behave is loss of social standing. Living together helps create this cohesion. That's just my theory as someone with no background in "social science". This is no longer a big complaint for the MNC or tech employeed people, they tend to live in brand new professionally managed digs in suburbs, it's all about the $$$ there.
I think most coops in Mumbai are non veg but the vegetarian gujjus, jains and marwaris have been in Mumbai for a long time and occupy the best real estate. For example most of the flats that face the ocean and have ocean views are occupied by jains mainly because jain families bought them decades ago and are staying put.
Even though they are limited to vegetarians many of these coopsa re selling briskly at very high prices. I doubt the vegetarians are getting special deals, they may be paying a premium to be into a vegetarian building.
As a guju meat eater ABD, I can attest that the sight of and the cooking of meat can visibly make lifelong, hardcore vegetarians sick, at least the sheltered types who have never really been around meat. I've seen this happen with the sight of chicken tikka masala which made my aunt gag. Also eating meat in India is really different than here in the states in the sense that the animal is sometimes slaughtered on premises which in many cases does mean the first floor parking/grassy area of flats. It aint like going to your respective super market and buying some boneless, skinless chicken breasts (though this is quickly changing). If this is offensive to people who live in a restrictive NYC coop type environment where tenants are regularly rejected on whims (which bombay is comparable to), what is so wrong in rejecting people?
Must be. Took a degree in Biology and Behavior, and one in Design, can't understand anything.
What in the world is a vegetarian atmosphere?
Yogi, I'm thinking it could be one without the wafting scent of mutton biryani, makhani chicken, kofta and fish mollee.
at least the sheltered types who have never really been around meat.
muslims have similar attitudes toward pork. e.g., there are some muslims who won't eat in restaurants where they think the silverware might have touched pork. there are hare krishnas in the united states who have similar issues, i once was going to a house that was populated by krishnas with an acquaintance and bought a burrito the way. she advised me to scarf it down as soon as possible before we reached the house cuz they they were freak out if they saw me eating meat.
I dont know any vegetarian Christian.
you kind of know anna. additionally, seventh day adventists also recommend vegetarianism. so vegetarianism isn't a common necessary inference of being christian, but it is not unknown.
I know Jews who are vegetarians because its makes kosher easier to keep. I also know lots of christian vegetarians - though they are not vegetarian because of their faith.
I've seen sikh vegetarians on indian dating sites...lol
I only know 1 Muslim vegetarian, my roommate and he is Persian and into sufism
I mean they are vegetarian for ethical, health or other reasons. They're not vegetarians because they believe their religion demands it.
Whereas Hindu and Jain vegetarians are vegetarians because its part of their religon.
True - christians dont have strong beliefs on food except for Lent when there are days of fasting and Abstinence
Many muslims can also be vegetarians like the Jews as halal meat can be tough to get hold of. It transverses religions but it seems jains/ and some religious hindue are more prone to vegetarianism. I knew a jain girl who wouldn't also eat root vegetables as she said it was deemed they are 'alive'.
Is this true?..
My best mate is a vegetarian hindu, married to a meat eating sikh. He can only eat meat when out and if he cooks it at home he has to keep all utensils separate. bless them they have a happy compromising marriage. lol
i can see why maybe vegetarians want to live in certain areas though as the smell of meat can be horrid to some people.
True - christians dont have strong beliefs on food except for Lent when there are days of fasting and Abstinence
yeah. the christian food taboos that emerge almost always had strong cultural rationales. e.g., in parts of slavic europe the consumption of horse meat was banned by the church because of its association with particular pagan customs and practices.
I knew a jain girl who wouldn't also eat root vegetables as she said it was deemed they are 'alive'.
Is this true?..
just an FYI, vegetables in general derive from living things ;-) vegetarians are very kingdomist. if you want to go hardcore you got to go to the fruitatarians.
Many muslims can also be vegetarians like the Jews as halal meat can be tough to get hold of.
fish doesn't have to be halal, so that's a major "out."
Eating roots is by definition killing the plant. Thats why onions, potatos, carrots are taboo. The ideal diet is composed of things tht are only culled from plants.
This is particularly strict form of Jainism.
Some jains also believe one should eat only fresh food because old food may have mold grow on it and eating mold is non-veg or one shouldn't eat sunset because thats when insects come out thereby increasing your chances of accidentally eating insects.
What if its packaged in a none-halal supermarket?
You think the butcher sterlizes everything each time he moves on to a new meat?
JGandhi
You think the butcher sterlizes everything each time he moves on to a new meat?
A bit of compromise of some principle helps us get along with our lives. It does not hurt to allow people to live in blissfull ignorance.
(P.S. if you are vegetarian do not try to learn about how sugar is refined -- one of my friends felt it would be a hoot to tell me the detailed process just before lunch and I still have not forgiven him fot it :-))
You think the butcher sterlizes everything each time he moves on to a new meat?
just depends on how much a muslim has an aversion to the kuffar, right? a lot of these food taboos are about enforcing a separation between "us" and "them." many "moderate muslims" consider the sort of behavior you allude to above as ostentatious, but some goat-beards do behave like that.
For someone who read the post on 1993 versus 1998 and then jumped to the end, it is a bit mystifying how the conversation turned to meat. :-)
by the way, as someone who had not been to india through that entire period, it was an awakening to see india in 2002 versus what i remembered. the most dramatic change was communications, and next the smog in delhi (the air was actually less sooty in 2002 than what i remembered) and the energy in the air. Then again. I had changed as well. Had a new appreciation of the chaotic indian way of life where i would have been casually dismissive or even contemptuous of anything unorderly.
Why is there this assumption that those who are kept separate (blacks, Muslims or whomsoever the case may be)are inferior and can not be trusted to create for themselves a society that is better from whom they are separated (whites, hindus/jains or anyone else). Why is it assumed that the place that are minority - only would be places of disadvantage and discrimination and that they need to be saved by integrating them into the majority white or hindu community which ever the case.
I am not making a case for segregation but highlighting the underlying assumption made by most here that can be interpreted as, Muslims in India cannot on their own create anything else other than ghettos.
melbourne desi,
i'm not from any "pettai"..
reg: discrimination in housing societies / flats, though i'm against it i don't think the government can enact a law or enforce a ban.
I don't like intra-caste weddings as they sustain the caste system, but that doesn't mean I would ask the government to force inter-caste weddings. There needs to be a gradual societal change with government providing the sops.
This post has gone completely off-the-topic but has been enlightening in some ways we have people here who have
justified using
mob connections to get what they want
condoned segregation
discrimination based on eating habits (more likely a filter for caste based segregation)
How lovely, in short; the golden rule is for dummies, for us however might is right and the ends justify the means. Is this the "Indian culture"
we are so proud of?
Its not about ritual purity for me. I don't eat meat so less animals are killed. But I also live in the real world and am not a purist. If I find out my pancakes were made on the same griddle as bacon I'm not going to freakout.
My understanding is Muslims associate halal w/ ritual purity. The non-halal food is inherently profane so if you accidently eat bacon grease there is something spiritually polluting to what you did.
PS: While I defend vegetarian colonies i wouldn't ever want to live in one - some of the most condescending. arrogant, self-righteous people I know are militant vegetarians.
My lab partner for chem lab was one such person, this person who last name was Jain
didn't even eat tree nuts and even coconut along with the stuff that grows underground like garlic, onion, potatoes etc but did eat eggs claiming only to eat "vegetarian" (unfertilized) eggs.
Almost every week I would get a lecture from this person on the virtues of vegetarianism, was glad when the semester was over.
I have no problems with vegetarians as long as they don't go around indoctrinating me, in fact I go completely vegetarian several weeks in the summer when there is a lot of fresh produce and weather's too hot to potter in the kitchen on a hot stove top.
It really isn't so mystifying.
The cause of the changes is fairly obvious: Liberalization (and the reversal of policies of the previous 45) , so there won't be much point in the discussion about causes
The socio-economic upheaval is very recent and frankly India is still in the middle of it, so it too early for reminisces.
So the discussion followed the usual path, Hindu/Muslim discrimination, quirky customs such as vegetarianism, etc.
Yogi:
People here have discussed how they had to resort to mob connections to regain property that was legally, morally and ethically already theirs.
I feel that there is a difference between this and "using mob connections to get what they want"
I feel Jayant may have faced a lot of heartache in 1991 due to lack of knowledge, agreed that things were not rosy but there were ways around most things, I believe for faster phone connections there was tatkal service and if anything companies (even properitorships) got phones faster. I had never heard of a license for a fax machine and as far as I can recall both Citibank and ABN Amro were doing business in 1991. Most landlords I know insisted on company leases for reasons mentioned by others above, as most of know, it is next to impossible to get a house vacated if the tenant doesn't want to in India.
India also needs solid Anti-Discrimination Housing Laws. Its not easy for example to rent in a lot of areas in Delhi if you are a Muslim or a single woman.
Beg to differ. The discrimination is ugly; but a free trade in property (both urban and rural) would go much further in alleviating the housing problem, particularly in the metros. If that happens the "single woman implies loose morals" nonsense would be a pin-prick.
- if prices are constrained then it costs the asset owner NOTHING to indulge in his irrational racist / sexist / classist / vegetarian preferences
- if prices float, then the asset owner LOSES $$$ by ignoring the fact that all money is Green and he's ignoring a chunk of the potential market
Razib, I see your point about perspective when people spout off positive stats saying how India and China are gonna over take the western economies.
But when you think about the advances of India and China in isolation, it is actually pretty phenomenal how many millions are being lifted out of poverty, even if it is in a sample space of billions. Many many more millions to go, but I think it is fair to be proud of what has been/is being accomplished already. Wouldn't you agree?
- if prices float, then the asset owner LOSES $$$ by ignoring the fact that all money is Green and he's ignoring a chunk of the potential market
Er... In this case, perhaps you should say that everybody's rupees have Gandhi on them. :)
My family owns property in South India (Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andra Pradesh), and we've never had these issues brought up here regarding tenants. We were warned about this, but perhaps the vetting was better. I know my SOs family never rents their properties in New Delhi.
It sounds like better tenant-squatting and property-tax polices need to be put in place, after all India needs housing.
Several US cities have zones of uninhabited properties and lands. Landlords are speculating the nearby university, hospital, company, etc. will eventually buy the property/land at a premium. To prevent this speculating, taxes on best-use/uninhabited housing have been proposed.
Despite all the talk about the IT/call center industry bypassing the State to create income / jobs, the State is omnipresent. I wonder how many people know the time and money spent in creating the workplace bubble. Doing business in India even when one is a biggie is a tough ask.
When we were looking for a phone in 1993, I spent nearly 3 months kissing ass. I was always amazed when 'phoren' returned visitors talked about ordering a phone from the airport and it being available by the time you reached home !!
This is partly why the same communities and families dominate certain sectors in India. They may be skilled at business but they're skilled at getting permits.
Just look at Tata - they would never be able to survive in a Western economy. American corporations are constantly spinning off divisions so they can focus on core businesses lest they get beaten by more efficient competitors.
Tata on the other hand is in apparel, retail, publishing, cars, tea, steel, IT and a thousand other fields not particularly excelling in any of them. They succeed with this model because they have 200+ years of goodwill and connections with the Indian bureaucracy. Startup companies find it very difficult to even get a permit.
Not an objective article at all. It's almost as bad as the British shown to be so ignorant about India 15 years or so ago. It goes on to rubbish things like the Moon mission in the same dismissive tone that ignorant people adopt while discussing countries other than their own. To clarify just one point the Moon mission won't rob poor people of their money. The problem isn't the money, it's the corrupt bureaucracy and the political class who cause the funds meant for development to leak during their distribution. We won't solve such problems by NOT doing things. Rather we ought to do progressive things like change our attitudes, become less corrupt, do more research and development, send a mission to the Moon...
Just this much in the article was such a put-off that I can't push myself to read the rest of it. It's probably a perspective of a person who doesn't live in India anyway and he lacks a basic understanding of India.
World Economic Forum, best known for the Davos conference, after an extensive, 113-point analysis of each country, has ranked India 48 in a list of 130+ countries in terms of business efficiency. The other Asian giant, China, is #34. Countries with highly dubious or relatively unknown business reputations, such as Estonia, Thailand, Czech Republic and Slovenia are all ranked above India.
Obviously, any study that distills 113 data points down to a single digit, whether a rank or an index, is bound to have serious skew problems especially if the subject country is as large and diverse as India. It takes only a few huge deficiencies – in India's case, the archaic infrastructure - to negate a lot of the good stuff and drag the country's ranking down. So the results need to be kept in perspective. However, in an increasingly globalized economy, business decisions impacting one country are made in faraway places utilizing studies, expert opinions and numbers rather than ground realities. Studies such as this, especially coming from as august a body as WEF, does impact FDI and valuations in India.
Fortunately, there are enough nuances in the report to give every country a fair shake. For instance, India is ranked #8 in the world for the quality of its management schools but #106 for the reliability of its electricity supply – in simplistic terms, a great place to open a consulting firm but not for starting a paper mill. China, on the other hand, may be a better choice for large-scale, infrastructure dependent manufacturing but not the safest climate for intellectual property or the financial sector. The soundness of China's banks is ranked #128. On the Sophistication and Innovation Factor, China scores 3.89 and India 4.36, a statistically significant difference considering the data range was only 0 to 5.
The WEF study is a treasure trove of economic data and perhaps more useful to large scale businesses that are more sensitive to macro influences than the small entrepreneurial enterprises that normally find sustenance in the nooks and crannies of an economy. A good example will be a small to medium scale manufacturing enterprise in India with regional distribution. India's infamous transportation system will not be much of a hindrance to such an enterprise, and neither would India's onerous labor laws, cited by WEF as India's third worst business problem.
Good read if anybody is interested in trying this link.
http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Competitiveness%20Report/index.htm
On an anecdotal level, we can all vouch for the radical changes taking place in India. Waiting 3 months for a phone and a year for an automobile are ancient history now. The most remarkable improvement in India, at least for the vast middle and upper-middle class, is the easy availability of financing. The United States takes the cake for entrepreneurship because most small businesses are financed here by maxing out the good old credit cards or borrowing against home equity. India has started to offer the same financing fuel to its entrepreneurs. When I was growing up in India, consumer financing was virtually non-existent. You didn't go to a bank to borrow, unless you were Tata or Birla. You went to a bank to save.
My advice - go East, young man... and woman.
The justification is that to extract the root you have to kill the plant, and killing things is bad Karma. I doubt many Jains know this.
Some gujarati hindus also don't eat onions and garlic. Unlike Jains they still eat Potatoes.
I am not sure why... but I think it has something to do with Potatoes being a New World vegetable.
Orthodox brahmins try to eat sattvic food. Onions and garlic are considered rajasic food, they increase passion, excitement and other feelings that are not good for a meditative or devotional life.
As far as I know, Jains do not eat potatoes because harvesting potato requires uprooting the plant that leads to total destruction of life. Hence they don't eat any root vegetables.
I am the Great American, born as I am the unseen land of the Utopian States. To re-establish the principles of my spiritual life and to delight in the company of my brethren, I descend to the holy land of India time and again. Dwelling among the mortals, four kinds of pious men approach me.
.The suffering. They worship me as one to give solutions to their tribulations. They befriend me to raise their downtrodden social image. No longer are they the nobody everyone always took them to be, they can now show off their magnitude in the company of the Great American. They wish me to narrate tales of the Great America, the land of their dreams, instilling hopes of a future paradise amidst the harsh struggles of existence. Perhaps, so they ardently pray, I will one day redeem them and bring them to the Great America where an abundance of dollars is easily available for one and all.
The greedy. They know that my skin is white for the daily milk baths I take, milk purchased from an infinite stock of magic dollars. After all, in Great America we use small notes for wallpaper, and old notes we pulverize and scatter across our yards; that's why our grass is so lushly green. They befriend me, take me as their bosom friend, and tell me long tales culminating in their need for money. Perhaps I would grace them with a hundred rupees or a thousand, or even give some American dollars. And upon my next ascent, I would certainly bring them an American camera or a walkman made in America, for goods manufactured in America have an immortal shine. With these hopes, the greedy indulge me with various local pleasantries.
The curious. They are well-established in life and often also well educated, relatively free from the worries that trouble the suffering and the greedy. For them, I am a foreign curiosity able to provide varieties of mental fulfillments and delights through discussions and dialogs, a man with an access to a base of knowledge beyond common reach. They are often eager to hear about the relative value of the dollar, the working conditions and cultural traits of the Great America, and also the system of divorcing and the free availability of sex. The cost of a round-trip and the hours spent on the journey also feature among the favorite trivia. A particularly fine specimen among the curious might even entertain me with a discussion featuring the great Hellenic philosophers.
The wise. These rare souls share an insight on the reason for my descent. They are overjoyed to hear that I have left behind the Great America with an aim to obtain the final emancipation spoken of in the ancient scriptures, and that my ties to the Great America have been forsaken. Even if they share curiosities with the other three classes of devotees, they easily understand my disinclination to indulge in the same, respecting my wish to keep my attention internal. They might even offer me a good advice, unsolicited and without expectation of anything in return. They view me not as an object of attainment, but establish a relationship in the spirit of brotherhood.
The heart of the Great American, however, is a heart crying for solitude, for the objective is to be found within. Social interactions, whether of the more common nuisance flavor, or of the occasional neutral flavor, are distractions all the same, acts calling to be minimized for my ultimate good. Exchanges making a substantial positive internal contribution, the meetings with the truly great, are shining beacons of light in the vast and engulfing darkness of human existence. Alas, if they accounted for even just one in a ten thousand meetings, I might be inclined to keep my eyes outward-looking.
And I'm not even American.
What? Housing exclusively for veggies in India? I am soooo there!
We need something like this over here!
I lived for a short period, 6 months, in one of those vegetarian only apartment buildings in Mumbai 2 years ago while taking kathak and swar courses. I can vouch for that one at least did not take caste into consideration. About 50% of the people living there were Hindu. The rest 50% were a mix of Jain, foriegn yogi/buddhist types, ISKCON members (also foriegn) and even a few muslims of a particular sufi order. Quite an ecclectic group.
The smell of flesh cooking actually makes alot of vegetarians sick to our stomachs.
We are fully within our rights to build vegetarian only accomodations. It's like saying vegetarian restaurants are discriminating against non-vegetarians. Well, if you want to eat vegetarian food, you are welcome, if not, there is the Mickey D's across the street.
It's not like there are no apartments for meat eaters in Mumbai. In fact, the veg only apartments are few in number, very few. I've not heard about any meat eater who even wanted to rent there in the first place. Let's not make this into something it isn't.
As long as they are not preparing and eating meat within the veg only complex, what is the harm? The complex requires that within it's walls, only vegetarian meals are prepared and eaten. Outside do whatever you want! I would still rent to them as long as they were following the rules of the complex while within it.
I thought Jains were vegan and abstained from even milk?
At least two of my closest friends in Mumbai, who were Jain, did just that. Weird to hear of a Jain eating eggs.
Oddly enough some of these people are vegetarian solely for "ritual purity" reasons, which irks me, a vegetarian for ethical reasons. You would think that they would be vegetarians from the heart, with a concern for the welfare of animals, but some of them will go so far as to even kick and throw stones at street dogs yet boast of a shakahari diet. This is one of those things about the desh I will never understand. Better for such people to just be straight and eat meat rather than carry on with some hypocritical "purity" standard.
Although I don't necessarily agree with him, the guy has some other very interesting articles on his website: http://www.jayantbhandari.com
The only thing that has changed in small town and village India is the presence of cell phones. Other than that, it is much the same it was 10, 20, even 200 years ago in many cases.
There is such a stark difference between metro and village life in India that you almost feel as if you are entering a different country when you arrive in one from the other.
Villages are better at least on the cleanliness level. Small towns, or villages that are turning into towns are the absolute worst. There is no recovering from open sewers during the monsoon season when the streets are flooded with sewage up to your knees.
So "India Then and Now" type of articles really only apply to a few metros. For the rest of us it's more like "India Then and Then".
Sonika: have you really read the article? This is what he says, that not much has changed in India. There is a lot hype.
Dev