[Reader-list] Of differences between India and China

[zainab at xtdnet.nl]

Perhaps last night's post warrants more elaboration from me.

It was last evening that a friend and I were talking and he spoke of how
Bangalore is perhaps the only city in the Milky Way which has a crossover
flyover with a traffic signal on it and how Narayan Murthy and co. have
destroyed Bangalore with their style of planning. While discussing this,
he mentioned to me that he was watching an interview on NDTV or so where
Thom Friedman asked Nandan Nilekani what was the difference between India
and China and Nandan replied saying that China does not have the problem
of democracy that India has. When my friend heard Nandan say this, he
wondered whether Nandan was even conscious of what he was saying. In
another interview, Narayan Murthy was telling Pranay Roy that cities need
czars to rule over them.

What intriguied me about Nandan Nilekani's remark that China does not have
the problem of democracy that India has is what is this democracy that
Nandan Nilekani and co are afraid of? As I look through Bangalore,
whatever bits I have come to see of it and now in Bombay as I watch forms
of urban renewal renewing this city, I understand that the aim is to
flatten contests. Taking off people from pavements and roads is a form of
flattening of democracy, the way I understand it to be. Moving poverty
away from the visible eye is flattening democracy. That occupancy is a
statement of democracy and these multiple claims are perhaps what are
urban nightmares for technocrats who need to straighten out cities.

I have no answers at this point in time, but questions that I am grappling
with. What on earth is democracy? And what on earth is this problem of
Indian democracy which according to Nandan, China seems not to have? Are
these third reichian times that we are living in?

Best,
Zainab



I was left struggling by the time I reached the end of
> the
> piece. Poetic and rather imagistic as the article was, I was slightly
> confused as to what of Democracy and further, what parallels between India
> and China are you reading in these observations? What makes you dis/avow
> the
> similarities or differences between the two? But more than anything else,
> and because I have known you and talked to you in person, I think you seem
> to have a reading between governance, democracy and this reading of the
> otherwise invisible Mumbai which you are not making clear to the readers.
> I
> am thoroughly intrigued by the connections you have made in your head and
> would love to hear them out... especially interested in knowing you take
> on
> democracy; for instance, is it a mode of governance? is it a political
> aesthetic? is it ideology? where do you place it and where do you anchor
> it
> within these city bytes that you have produced?
> Nishant
>
> On 12/26/06, zainab at xtdnet.nl <zainab at xtdnet.nl> wrote:
>>
>> China does not have the problem of democracy that we have
>>
>> It was sometime in the month of June. At 10:30 PM, I was waiting at
>> Dadar
>> for a BEST bus to get home. Quiet, lonely, just a few people around.
>> There
>> was no bus in sight.
>>
>> I leaned against the bus stop. On the footpath were several shops, all
>> shut at this hour. Outside the Bata Shoe Shop, an old man and an old
>> woman
>> were setting up their bedding. They were pavement dwellers. They sat
>> chatting once the bedding was up. They were very old and perhaps very,
>> very poor. About ten minutes later, a man on his bicycle came up on the
>> footpath. He stopped at the bedroom of the old man and the old woman. On
>> his bicycle was a steel filter. This man was a traveling tea seller. He
>> stopped by the old man and old woman and handed them out a cup of tea
>> each. The couple then brought out a piece of bread each and dunked it in
>> the tea. Perhaps it was their dinner. The tea seller chatted with them
>> for
>> a bit with and went away. The couple blessed him as he was leaving.
>>
>> Last night I was walking from Mazagaon to Byculla to get to home. I
>> passed
>> by what I thought were the familiar streets of Love Lane, but they did
>> not
>> seem so familiar yesterday.
>>
>> As I entered Love Lane from Mazagaon, I found several hawkers who had
>> spread out clothes and things to sell on plastic sheet. A little ahead
>> was
>> a man, obviously struck by a schizophrenia seated on his knees, staring
>> at
>> the ground and oozing out saliva as if there were a fountain stored in
>> him. A few meters ahead were stray hawkers selling peanuts and bhel
>> puri.
>> Further down I saw a swank new Sahkari Bhandar store which was never
>> there
>> earlier. One side of the road in Love Lane is under repair. The laborers
>> who are here, working on the road repair have set up their tents and
>> there
>> are preparations being made for dinner. One aspect of poverty lives in
>> my
>> face. On the other side of the road is a huge garbage dump with an
>> overflowing municipal rubbish bin.
>>
>> Further down there is a sense of quiet. Here are the upper middle class
>> buildings where Bohra, Marwari and Gujarati residents reside. Ahead
>> there
>> is a gutter burst open and sewage is flowing. The Udupi restaurant is
>> well
>> lit and abuzz and people are walking in and out of it. A little ahead of
>> the Udupi restaurant, a man is asleep on the pavement. His beard his
>> thick
>> and there are tinges of white on it. His face is flush with calm and
>> restful sleep.
>>
>> The regular coconut seller is dumping the left over coconuts in a steel
>> box. This space is now permanently occupied by him ever since I have
>> known
>> him. The flower seller by the wall of the street has already packed up
>> and
>> left. The road repairs have intensified further up towards the end of
>> Love
>> Lane. The sandwich fellow is also packing up his stall. Another
>> development is the painted picture of the Shirdi Sai Baba which has been
>> framed on the wall along the street. It has now become a semi-shrine
>> where
>> people have started throwing coins. A little down a Muslim wedding is
>> taking place and usual flower seller is making business selling exotic
>> bouquets. On the opposite side of the road is the Shiv Sena Shakha
>> office.
>>
>> I have nearly reached the Byculla police station after which I turn into
>> the lane to go home. The police station is lit up and there is a Hindu
>> prayer ceremony taking place in the police quarters. A woman is sitting
>> on
>> the pavement. Asleep a little ahead is her man and at his feet is their
>> child. At the child's feet is one shoe which is meant for a child and a
>> lady's shoe. I don't know if this is an irony of some sort.
>>
>> This evening, a dear friend of mine tells me of Nandan Nilekani's
>> interview he recently watched on television. Thom Friedman, the
>> interviewer, asked Nilekani what is the difference between India and
>> China. Nilekani replied saying that China does not have the problem of
>> democracy which India has.
>>
>> My word!
>>
>>
>>
>> Zainab Bawa
>> Bombay
>> www.xanga.com/CityBytes
>> http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html
>>
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Nishant Shah
> Ph.D. Student, CSCS, Bangalore.
> Visiting Scholar, NCU, Taiwan.
> # 886-911-508346
>


Zainab Bawa
Bombay
www.xanga.com/CityBytes
http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html