Day 162 - Shopaholics

Most conversations with Indians begin thusly:

Indian: Where are you from?

Us: America

Indian: Do you like President Bush?

Us: No

Indian: Every American I ask says they don't like Bush. If no one likes him, how did he get re-elected?

Us: Because the sort of people who vote for Bush are not typically the sort of people who visit India.

Occasionally the conversation continues into the realm of economics. In the short version, most Indians with whom we have had this conversation believe the US is the biggest Global superpower, but that the current government is poising it for a fall, and that China is ready to become the next superpower. Once China is the world's economic superpower, India (according to the strangers with whom we have had this conversation) believes that it is next in line.

There are many arguments both for an against this theory which I will not go into here.

Bangalore, where V and his family live, is a city experiencing an impossible growth rate. Within the last 10 years, the population has soared from 3mil to 6mil. In thirty years, it has gone from 200,000 to the current 6mil. Bangalore has one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and is the IT center of India. Property values in some neighborhoods rival the property values (in US dollars) of NYC.

That said, no city's infrastructure, no matter how strong the economy can support that rate of growth. Traffic, pollution, poverty, education, healthcare for the poor, etc are all MAJOR problems.

As Western visitors, we can see surface of both the good and bad sides of the growth. Everyday is an exercise in dodging cars and cleaning grey filth from our eyes, noses, and ears. At the same time, we have visited some of the nicest (and most shockingly western) shopping centers, eaten in some of the finest restaurants, and enjoyed a higher standard of living than almost anywhere else in India.

We spent much of today puttering around various shopping centers. On one street, prices are similar to the rest of the country - fairly cheap. Just around the corner, on MG road, we visited a shopping mall with shops (and prices) to rival anything we have Stateside.

It is impossible to call India a 'poor country'. True it has one of the largest populations of people living in poverty, but it also has some of the wealthiest, some of the best computer technology, and some of most advanced medicines. India is a huge, lumbering beast of a country. It currently lacks the infrastructure to distribute its wealth within the country or to mobilize on a massive global scale, and I believe it will be many years before such systems develop. But they are developing. China will probably be the next major superpower in our immediate future. India may well follow suit.