The Myth of Indian Progress

...Indian after Indian approaches the Western visitor wanting to buy his watch, his camera, almost anything he owns...

...Thus, while unlikely, India could one day follow Chile's precedent-shattering example earlier this month and vote itself Communist...

...Surely the answer was obvious...

...or "triple M.A...

...Even now the huge cfa block (former French colonies of West and Central Africa) maintains an internationally accepted currency, as do Zambia and Malawi...

...The crowds, the beggars and the hucksters clutch at you...

...is considered difficult because the candidate must attend at least 75 per cent of the lectures...

...The average diet in rural areas of this rural country consists of chapati, a bread dough rolled flat and quick-fried, and dahl, a thin sauce extracted from vegetables that occasionally contains lentils or a small piece of potato...

...African schools, certainly from the secondary level on, are not nearly so lax in granting examination certificates and degrees...

...The fewest number of children any of these families had was six, and each included fairly recent additions...

...If you try to tell people that under capitalism sellers can take their goods anywhere in the country and market them for whatever a buyer will pay, they stare at you in disbelief...

...A second Communist faction, the Naxalites, has been getting a great deal of publicity by resorting to terrorism and illegal demonstrations, but the government's Rightist opposition represents a far larger number of people...

...He pays a fee and enrolls in five courses, including his native language and English...

...Living conditions in India do not fare well either when compared with Africa...

...Like most everyone you talk to here, it attacks the government from all sides...

...The Bombay industrialist, who dealt in air conditioners and other goods, lived with his family in an apartment that was attractive and tasteful, but neither luxurious nor spacious by West African—let alone American—standards...

...under natural conditions, the people of the area are among the best fed in black Africa...

...Increasingly people are turning to Communism, and the only Indians more optimistic than the Communists are those who think they can go abroad...

...East African currency was solid until the British devaluation (East Africa refused to follow suit) and the mass alienation of Asian businessmen...

...Watching these people eat, one soon gets the impression that a significant proportion of India's vegetarianism is not the result of voluntary religious practice...

...even buildings constructed during the last few years have cracked walls, crumbling bricks, peeling paint...

...The two countries, claiming a "fair share" of the earth's wealth on behalf of the entire Third World, might then set out to collect it from the industrial nations by whatever means possible—a course that could lead to a war in which consideration for human lives would be almost nil...

...Items such as wrist watches, transistor radios and battery-operated phonographs are common in most parts of black Africa...

...When a doctor whom I visited in Nagpur offered to give me a lift with my baggage in his ancient black sedan (it actually started with an outside crank), eight friends and relatives crammed themselves in for the thrill of going less than a mile...

...The United States government apparently has not quite caught on to the prevailing mood...

...The law limits the amount of land a person may own—usually 35-50 acres, although this varies from state to state...

...And what does this tremendous growth in population mean we must do...

...A Bombay businessman manufactures several hundred room-size air conditioners a year, and sells them for $700 apiece...

...the minister asked...

...Toilet paper —generally present in Africa even if in the form of old school exam papers or soft leaves—is not used in India, except sometimes by the upper classes...

...Run by a private corporation, it charged a tuition of $50-80 per year...

...One meets so many Communists in India that at first they almost seem to be an honest majority of the population...

...The much publicized starvation in Biafra was due entirely to the wartime blockade...

...Small animals do roam about, but cows are kept in herds...

...Another possibility is that India's ever-strengthening tradition of a free press and wide open politics— perhaps the most heartening thing a Westerner can find in this country —will preserve a substantial degree of democracy in the form of electoral competition among the various branches of the Communist party, and complete independence from the policies of Moscow and Peking...

...Before the feature came on, the minister of something-or-other to do with finance appeared on the screen to talk about India's economic needs...

...Cotton, rayon, nylon," heralds the usis brochure, "In the home and foreign markets Indian textiles satisfy a primary need...

...This usually means they couldn't find a job and went back to collect another degree or two...

...the clatter, the ugly decaying buildings, the ragged clothing, the cows, the sight and smell and too often the touch of cow dung underfoot (and sometimes it's probably human dung) are inescapable...

...In Nigeria, a graduate teacher earns about $190 per month, a clerk about $50, and an unskilled laborer about $20...

...This is a country of despair and almost universal dissatisfaction with the government...

...Indian students are forbidden to study abroad unless they are given a full scholarship plus all expenses...

...I met a husband-and-wife doctor team who had worked 12-hour days for years...

...In Bombay I went to see The Graduate, filmed under the direction of Mike Nichols and edited by an Indian censorship board, whose members probably hold M.A.s in fine arts...

...India is still importing food and the people still do not have enough to eat...

...They're trying to get American production standards and Russian social justice," one urbanite said, "and they wind up getting neither...

...Most of black Africa is blessed with an exportable commodity that supplies capital for domestic investment and enjoyment: in Ghana it is cocoa, in Nigeria it is palm oil (and now petroleum oil), in Zambia it is copper, and so on...

...Yet of greater significance, perhaps, is the fact that the shortage of arable land fundamentally affects the Indians' psychology...

...Indeed, not only states but individual municipalities set up customs stations on the roads and tax food, creating a surplus of wheat or rice in one area while a shortage exists in another...

...In the long swath of African rain forest, mud houses are swept out daily and the walls and thatch or tin roofs are patched as often as needed...

...He says he could sell thousands of them, but the Indian government will not give him a license to import enough copper and other materials...

...True, the government has been conducting a family planning program, praised in the usis brochure mentioned earlier as "the world's largest...

...A joke making the rounds notes that if Indians stopped eating rice seven days a week, the entire problem would be solved...

...Strikes, demonstrations and disruptions are common, and the city has changed the name of the street where the American Consulate is located to Ho Chi Minh Road...

...He paid each of his 20 tenant farmers 1,000 rupees ($133) a year, and hired as many three-rupee-a-day workers as he could find in planting season...

...But it soon becomes clear that the Communists are simply eager to engage Westerners, especially Americans, in conversation, and even to offer them hospitality...

...If India did turn Communist, it might well ally with China...

...as this is being written, they are regrouping along new lines for the election to be held September 17...

...Fellow passengers on my ship across the Indian Ocean came laden with phonographs, cameras, watches, and various other goods they hoped to bring past the Indian customs agents...

...They can arrange to own large plots of land whose titles are divided among various friends, relatives or party functionaries...

...In West Africa a university graduate considers an automobile to be his almost by right— and not a Volkswagen either, at least a new Peugeot...

...The exodus would be huge if the government did not strictly regulate who can leave...

...Nonchalance about the quality of education seems to descend to the kindergarten level...

...If he decides to buy one, the only foreseeable consequences would be the firing of 80 per cent of his tenants and seasonal laborers, and his obtaining a little extra income from renting out the tractor to other farmers or landlords...

...the majority of salaried people and many farmers can afford them...

...As for the Congress party, which has held power since independence, it is itself split into rightist and leftist factions, with the leftists holding a plurality behind Prime Minister Gandhi...

...Both, of course, are major parts of what has come to be called the "underdeveloped world...

...In India, a graduate teacher earns about $30 per month, a clerk about $25, an urban laborer about $12, and a farm laborer about $7.50...

...People openly admit that couples of every class, regardless of their faiths, have rejected sterilization or other serious efforts to reduce the population...

...Before my trip here from Kenya, an Indian friend teaching school in Africa asked me to bring nylon material for saris to his family in Bombay...

...One can wait on the main Bombay-Calcutta highway for hours and not see a single private car...

...I have been a guest in the homes of a school headmaster who is a Communist party member, the founder of another school, three doctors, and an industrialist...

...Unemployment is an enormous problem, too...

...With cow slaughter still widely prohibited by law or custom, the cheapest meat is mutton—about 12 cents for a small helping...

...Even if clearance is granted, the law forbids the traveler to take enough cash out of the country to pay for a week in a New York flophouse...

...The system, apparently, has a strong advantage for the ruling Congress party politicians, however...

...Communists and other Indians describe this as "capitalism...

...The roads are crowded with them...

...The Communists talk about a wealthy industrial, professional and landlord class that is victimizing the peasant and causing the country's misery...

...Doctors complain that this spreads worms, tetanus and a list of digestive ailments as long as your arm...

...The usis library, requiring a 12-man military guard around the clock, gets far less use than usis libraries elsewhere...

...But the unemployment most talked about is among the educated...

...Emigration is a glint in millions of eyes...

...When Communists have come to power in other countries, one party faction has taken over, claimed sole rights to speak for Marx, and simply wiped out the opposition...

...When I visited one of the free schools and observed that it did not seem crowded, it was explained that half the students were absent, apparently not an uncommon occurrence...

...The grading criteria are anybody's guess...

...Most Indians, not just the poor, seem to live in cramped, dirty quarters...

...the whole audience must be waiting for him to talk about family planning...

...The United States must prepare for the gruesome decision it may one day have to make about just how much it is willing to do to keep India from going Communist...

...Scientific techniques are improving the yield per acre, but the fixed acreage of small plots rules out any dramatic advancement from mechanized planting...

...he still does not have to write a research paper...

...The examination consists of five questions in each subject, with three hours per subject to answer...

...So great is the novelty of auto-motion that if a private car does pass it usually is full to bursting...

...And Indians who do have the money find modern consumer goods of desired quality difficult to locate or outrageously expensive because of high import duties...

...estimates are that a million homeless people live on the streets of Calcutta alone...

...In Africa the clerk who sells you a shirt often buzzes around on his own motorcycle...

...But their differences, I think, go a long way toward explaining the uniqueness—and hopelessness—of this vast nation's poverty...

...Sheer nylon, highly favored for saris, cheaply available throughout black Africa, is difficult or impossible to obtain in India, even for the upper classes...

...The theater was silent as he paused...

...The student demanded a 10 per cent reduction of the passing grade as compensation...

...He finished his meal of chapati and dahl and rode off on a battered old bicycle...

...Still, the voice of the Communists is turning more and more heads...

...Until recently black Africa maintained solid currencies, except for the countries that flirted with the Communist bloc (Ghana...

...Yet even the best educated, most politically-oriented Indians do not appear to have been touched by it...

...While this may seem reasonable, the earnings of Indian farm families in the village I visited amounted to about 25 cents a day...

...Obtaining a B.S...

...It is difficult to appear 20 seconds on a city stree' without being offered something illegal—hashish, Playboy magazines, "dirty pictures," smuggled merchandise, or rupees themselves (you can get 12 to the dollar on the street...

...One keeps meeting people who hardly seem the academic type, yet announce that they are "double M.A...

...Clearance takes six months, and is possible only in cases where travel is officially approved—school scholarship abroad, attendance at a friend's wedding with proof of when it will occur, purchase of a packaged tour that includes a return air ticket...

...The earnings gap is reflected in personal possessions...

...Recent buildings in the growing towns of black Africa are frequently attractive and generally wear well...

...The standardized final examination is easy enough for most students from both the free and private institutions to pass—if not on the first try, then at least on the second or third...

...The cows that roam everywhere litter walkways, doorways and streets with their filth...

...All the student has to do is find a college, and he cannot go far without encountering a crumbling old building that calls itself a college...

...Some wealthy urbanites manage to obtain them, but only by joining a factory waiting list four years long...

...Similarly, although the usis brochure trumpets a quadrupling of the rice yield achieved by a new strain of seed, rice sometimes is unavailable in village areas...

...India does put manganese, iron ore and tea on the world market, but in nowhere near the quantities necessary to pay for desired imports...

...In each subject he is assigned books from which the examination questions will be drawn, and offered a series of lectures that he need not attend...

...The government is under strong pressure from the flood of new B.A.s to open more schools of this kind, and thus provide new teaching jobs...

...Practically everyone in India seems to be critical of the government's attempt to cut a line between capitalism and communism, especially as this affects agriculture...

...The real majority, while not necessarily silent, is confined to Hindi or one of the other native languages...

...One student admitted he could pass an exam in any of the three optional subjects with two or three weeks' reading...

...Students frequently sit on the floor and do not have textbooks...

...True enough, India has forbidden the importation of automobiles...

...With farmland saturated, with hundreds of millions of Indians walking around with half-empty bellies and scant other possessions, the government's approach is to increase the production of industrial goods for export and buy fertilizer that hopefully will squeeze more food from the land not to feed the already starving masses, but the starving masses yet unborn...

...Some of the more poverty-stricken tribes on the southern fringes of the Sahara approach this level of uncleanliness, but most blacks on the continent do not come near it...

...Carrying farm products between India's 18 states is illegal...

...The production of cars and other wonders of the machine age is limited in India because necessary components and raw materials are not locally available...

...A line of other would-be riders was turned away...

...Guinea, Mali) and strife-torn Congo...

...Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's banks give only 7.46...

...Other avenues are open to the Indian Communists, too, and the Chinese Army is reportedly building one such avenue in northern Burma...

...Farmed and unfarmed land are balanced closely enough with population to provide food and recreation—and to stimulate young men to dream of growth...

...In some states by law, in others by practice, the government also determines the price of each commodity and often tells the farmer where he must sell it...

...A recent brochure published by usis follows a theme sounded by Ambassador Kenneth Keating in his foreword: "India is on its way toward becoming one of the world's leading industrial nations and has attained virtual food self-sufficiency...

...Ten years of primary and secondary school are required for taking the final exam that entitles one to enter a college...

...In addition to rural people lacking sufficient land to be farmers, idle men clog the cities trying to hustle foreigners into buying some trinket or visiting some black marketeer...

...Mechanization merely means less work for farmers...

...They cannot find office jobs and will not do anything that involves manual labor...

...In West Bengal, the state that throbs around Calcutta, the majority of people also support them...

...Whole families live openly on the streets and roads...

...the typical Indian farmer cannot find enough land to strain a team of animals, much less enough to require a tractor...

...Most Indians do not understand communism or capitalism, they simply want a change...

...Anthropologists call this a cultural preference, but it may have economic origins...

...India's Gross National Product has been rising greatly over the past few years, he said, but this rise has been eaten up by the increase in population, so that individually Indians are no better off than before...

...In the free schools, these 10 years may be spent under a single roof, with classes having as many as 40 pupils enrolled divided by four-foot walls...

...But the result is that there are few cars (other than taxis) in India...

...The flat Indian landscape, on the other hand, with farm following farm in dreary monotony all the way to the horizon, tells of much more than the inability of the soil to give adequate nourishment...

...The educated class is huge, because Indian degrees have become as cheap as Indian rupees...

...Communists won control through the ballot box in the southern state of Kerala, although their coalition later dissolved...

...Most farmers still don't own the land they till, nor can landlords acquire enough land to run a single efficient farm...

...A foreign visitor cannot learn how frequently this happens, of course, but many Indians complain that it is commonplace...

...the dahl, frequently the only food available, is unpalatable...

...For one thing, it means that in India, unlike in Africa, the potential benefits of improved agricultural technology are limited...

...After a student receives his B.A., he can pick up an M.A...

...One seldom sees such petty luxuries among the bulk of the Indian population...

...Probably the most ludicrous single statement in the entire usis brochure is this one: "India today is self-sufficient in automobiles...

...They did not even dream of a car, although they did have a radio...

...In this situation India has a distinct edge over Africa, for two decades of political and press freedom have gotten the people used to the relief of popping off at their leaders whenever something riles them...

...In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce recounts a priest's description of Hell as a place where each of the five senses is under constant assault from some abrasive phenomenon...

...Compare all this to West Africa, where farming or working-class families eat meat regularly, often two or three times a day, consume a variety of fresh vegetables and have an abundance of rice, as well as root starches...

...Tractors, at 30,000 rupees, were out of the question, but the government was considering making some smaller, 20,-000-rupee tractors available...

...The opposition parties are in disarray, though...

...Some countries, notably Zambia, actually need additional people to bring in bread from the abundant bush...

...Only three years ago...

...That is why the foreign tours are prepackaged by the Indian government airline...

...India is a lot like that...

...A COMPARISON WITH BLACK AFRICA The Myth of Indian Progress by jonathan kwitny New Delhi Arriving here after having returned to Africa for several months, I couldn't help being struck by the contrasts between the Dark Continent and the Indian subcontinent...

...In part this is because they must preserve standards acceptable to foreign colleges and universities, where many students continue their studies...

...The unavailability of consumer goods reduces the economic incentive of the manufacturing and wage-earning classes alike, and inspires one of the world's most flourishing black markets...

...Virtually every building you see in cities large and small looks shabby, run-down, and in need of repairs...

...In rural India, you go in the rice paddy or vegetable field, or you don't go at all...

...Their family of six slept in one room of a cramped apartment overlooking crowds, cows and filth...

...The Nigerian pound fell because of the war there, but is sounder than the rupee...

...nevertheless, the free market is only about 15 per cent above the official price of the East African shilling...

...A farm landlord in central India, dressed in a torn and worn peasant's costume (baggy white pants and shirt), sat in a rickety, dirt-floored roadside restaurant and complained that he could clear only 8,000 rupees ($1,066) a year from his 45 acres, the most the government would allow him to own...

...But our greatest hope for keeping India out of Russian or Chinese hands may be simply this: The Russians and Chinese might come here, take a look, and decide they just don't want it...

...But the intelligence that will underlie this decision is questionable so long as Ambassador Keating thinks that India is "a strong, industrialized, agriculturally self-sufficient nation...

...the same way, but he only needs to pass an exam in his major subject...

...Calcutta, India's second largest city, forbids the public sale of rice on Thursday because of the acknowledged shortage...

...A small can of water is used instead, and I am still not sure exactly how...

...A recent letter from a student in a Calcutta newspaper complained that for the first time, this year's examination failed to contain any of the sample questions announced in advance...

...Unlike most Indian houses, these compounds usually have a hut or room for private bathing and a hut with a pit that serves as a semisanitary latrine—otherwise, a field not used for growing food is set aside as an open toilet...

...These exploiters are hard to find...

...Children play in the excrement and many Indians, believing it has antiseptic qualities, spread it on their walls and brush their teeth with it...

...A significant minority of her support comes from the so-called Marxist Communists, one of three factions of the Communist party...

...India's population continues to grow enormously, increasing each year by more than the entire population of Australia...

...For motor scooters the wait is five years...

...I also visited a large school where each class had its own room, and where there was a science laboratory and a small library...

...It means we must produce still more goods for export," the minister continued...

...To earn a B.A., his other three subjects might be political science, sociology and literature...

...One of India's few assets is the freest press in the Third World...

...This, he explained, would pay for the added fertilizer India would have to import to increase the crop yield to feed the growing population...

...Except for Rwanda, Burundi and Malawi, black Africa has no worries about overcrowding...

...Even these figures do not tell the whole story, because a larger percentage of the Indian population is unemployed or receiving below standard wages...