Far-fetched Correspondence

I imitate what foreign correspondents write when they write about India.

Andrew S. Shole’s journey to India, and his subsequent career as a foreign correspondent here was a long and illustrious one. In an extract from his memoirs, we discover India like never before.

After spending three years in India, one gets used to the hyperbolic and often dismissive narratives that surface during conversations about the country and its future. There seems to be a set of preoccupations with which a majority of books written on the topic are inflicted. The effort with this book was to tap into the space left in between the travelogues that romanticise the subcontinent and news reports that miss the bigger picture, and present a first-person account of a country trapped in a tug-of-war, with the privileged on one side and the deprived on the other.

The seemingly incomprehensible “Idea of India” can reveal itself to the onlooker in individual spectacles that he encounters on a daily basis while navigating the subcontinent. When seen in isolation, the reason behind a traffic jam or the condition of a road may seem trite or banal, but with a probing eye, one can see something bigger, something emblematic of that tug-of-war. More than anything, it is an attempt to provide readers with an intimate sketch a country whose economical and geopolitical significance will increasingly affect the rest of the world.

After embracing the Nehruvian socialism for more than 40 years, India liberalised its economy, opening international trade and investment, which helped create the huge private sector. If we care to find them, there are innumerable stories written by acclaimed journalists and authors about this transformation, providing a montage of the country as a whole.

The effort with this book was to tap into the space left in between the travelogues that romanticise the subcontinent and news reports that miss the bigger picture, and present a first-person account of a country trapped in a tug-of-war.

The new India comprises of glass-enclosed buildings for an ambitious middle-class, while those stuck on the lower strata of economic ladder populate the slums nearby. Mumbai, the financial capital of India is the home to the biggest cabbage-town in all of Asia — Dharavi, a bustling hub which can be easily mistaken as a city in itself, inhibits about a million residents, whose somewhat less remarked-upon priorities — there are more televisions than toilets — are reflective of the deep desire to escape from the miserable state of affairs.

Even though the economic liberalisation lifted a large chunk of population from below the poverty line, this progressive upward mobility is still haunted by the customs and beliefs of old India. Not too long ago, when I went to meet an IAS officer, he turned up an hour late. The reason that he gave me is a telling reference of the compromised modernity that India has negotiated with itself. “I had accidently broken the rear-view mirror of the car and my wife didn’t let me before saying prayer to the deity”. “It’s a bad omen,” he added, sounding ominous. The modern Indian isn’t an extremist as far as religion goes but they aren’t ready to completely detach themselves from it either.

Not too long ago, when I went to meet an IAS officer, he turned up an hour late. The reason that he gave me is a telling reference of the compromised modernity that India has negotiated with itself. “I had accidently broken the rear-view mirror of the car and my wife didn’t let me before saying prayer to the deity”. “It’s a bad omen,” he added, sounding ominous.

When I met a couple of employees at Infosys’ Bangalore campus, they had similar stores to tell. Infosys hired Rohit, who graduated from IIT Roorkee, one of the most prestigious institutions of higher studies in the country, before he finished the course for an annual salary of Rs 9 lakh. Bear in mind that the state doesn’t count those earning more than Rs 32 a day below the poverty line. Rohit is a devout Hindu, as he tells me, but doesn’t empathise with the extremist views of the groups like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh that spearheaded the movement that led to the demolition of the Babri mosque in Uttar Pradesh in 1992.

However, it’s not just the issue of religion where the old India can impose itself on the aspirations of a country aiming to be a superpower. For a nation where everything is changing fast, the government offices in India can be shockingly depressing. I was shocked while trying to make sense of the Kafkaesque proceedings but what is even more interesting is that the earliest signs of bureaucracy in subcontinent date back to 300 BC. Arthashastra, a text written in Sanskrit, describes the duties of the state, not one of which can be traced in the uninterested characters who, by the looks of it, are only in office for chai (tea essentially, but with a lot of sugar). In the 40 minutes that I spent in a little room of the Ministry of Home Affairs, a boy (not more than 10 years old) served chai thrice to the employees.

Arthashastra, a text written in Sanskrit, describes the duties of the state, not one of which can be traced in the uninterested characters who, by the looks of it, are only in office for chai (tea essentially, but with a lot of sugar).

Despite the dusty computers running on out-dated operating systems, there is no sign of an IT revolution in these offices. Almost all of government data is still available only on paper.

But the mercurial nature of India’s vision of itself aside, during the course of writing this book, I learned that the world’s biggest democracy provides endlessly fascinating anecdotes that can be used to tell the India story in a number of ways, all of which can be true. I have tried to weave these narratives together to provide the reader with a montage of this enigma of a country.

I must also thank Edward Luce, Patrick French, Ramchandra Guha, Nandan Nilekani, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Siddharth Deb, William Dalrymple, Shashi Tharoor and many others from whom I have learned a great deal about India and without them this book could not have been possible.