Random Musings on India

Ya ya, its been a long time since the glorious start but, you know, I have a real life too. So.

Anyway, this piece is inspired by televised scenes of India's cities. In this piece, I'll start off with my favorite folks - the police in India.

Has anyone thought about how every televised visual shows the inefficiency that is rampant in India's Government institutions? The most emphatic example of this has got to be scenes that show policement. In Indian cities, whenever there is an "incident" the lathi-wielding police are out in numbers. But that, of course, is no different from anywhere else in the world. What is different is what they seem to be doing. First, not one of you, I assert, wil be able to recollect any scene where the police personnel seem to be arranged in some kind of professional scheme. They are all usually clustered together, slouching, their shoulders in the eternal droop of the physically indolent, paunchy, and with a body language that practically screams "lackadaisical". Why? Why do we silently countenance the expenditure of crores of public monies in the maintenance of such a force, if we can call it that. I would say spent if I felt that they had ever exerted themselves.

The uniformed ones never ever seem to be doing stuff alone; they hunt in packs. Usually of tens. They are usually shown crossing the street towards no particular goal. And all together of course.

Another place you meet the police are at traffic stops. We must be one of the few countries in the world where we have traffic police and electric stop lights in the same place. Always. If we are going to spend money on policemen, then cant' we at least dispense with the electric lights and save some money.

And of course - reflecting our colonial past, our bureaucratic mindset, and the uniquely Indian conflation of responsibilities across insitutional boundaries, we have the police deployed at airports to check the passports and visas of those coming in. Not once, not once has any of these worthies said anything remotely like "welcome back", "hope you had a pleasant travel"; never. There is the surly, wordless extension of the hand into which you are supposed to divine the request for your passport and some other paperwork. There is some officious and noisy stamping of multiple pages. And then there is the surly turning away from you, supposedly dismissive in the worthies' mind.

A digression - The socialists and communists in India have robbed us of our soul. Anti-god by principle and anti-human in their practice, these worthies have reduced India's once splendorous architectural history to a soulless, uninspiring industry today. Government buildings are all uniquely drab, Orwellian nightmares. The buildings are solid blocks of badly built rectangular concrete blocks whose sides are punctuated with narrow slits creatively labeled as windows. The buildings are either unpainted or are painted in yellow or green with streaks of rust running down the sides.