Two Years in Mumbai

The stalemate of organized chaos?

I lived in Mumbai from 1996-1999 and if India had a personality, I would call it organized chaos.

From the time that I lived in India, now over 20 years ago, China has been built on infrastructure, investment and manufacturing yet it seems India in comparison has barely scratched the surface on all three.

I wonder why? Is it the particular form of Indian democracy where nothing gets done? Or is organized chaos the character of a nation that slows progress down?

In 1996, I arrived at the Mumbai airport with a cat, a laptop, and a futon. Customs let the cat go through without papers but took my computer for inspection. They tied used twine around my laptop and then melted a large wax seal to keep it in place. I was worried I’d never see my computer again.

Little did I know that I would end up sleeping on the futon for 6 months due to a dock and transport worker strike. I did get my computer back after a month.

This was when I realized that travelling through India is very different than becoming a resident for a period of time in India.

Living in India one is absorbed into the chaos and absurdity of it all and there is no other way out than to adjust to the pulse and intensity of everything around you. You can’t help but become rooted in the present.

I often say that travel opens your eyes to the world but experiencing living in India is one of the most intense experiences in my life.

Every day ALL your senses are confronted ALL at once.

Every day feels like you’ve been embraced, whirlpooled around and spit out as if you didn’t matter.

Swirling colors, the noise, the constant honking, the smell of spices or of cow dung, the lawless driving, the overcrowded street, trains, buses, cows blocking the roads, bicycles, motorbikes darting all around you, the garbage on the streets, pan leaf red spit everywhere.

And then the magic wallah system that gets anything you need to anywhere you want.

One does not have a sense of privacy in India. In 1996 there were no supermarkets in Mumbai so one had to order groceries and supplies through a middleman. The first time I went to one of these middlemen to order basic groceries was at a place called Ridge Cafe. It was nowhere near being a cafe, instead it was a hole-in-the-wall place on Ridge Road with products lined up on shelves on the wall. One would order the products and the middleman would arrange for them to be delivered.

Of course I expected the whole order to be delivered all at once.

But no.

Delivery happened in drips and drabs and it was a constant flow or doorbells and barefoot wallahs walking in to drop items in the kitchen.

Then if by magic, the papaya and mango sellers started coming to the door.

If something needed to be fixed, it seemed the same barefoot teenagers on their cell phones to their uncles would show up with the same 3 tools to fix the hot water tank, the fax machine, or a door knob or even an electric socket.

Then the day arrived, the one day of the year where you were to give a small tip for the year of service to the people who helped you with deliveries or some cleaning or repair. These people you would recognize. Yet on that day a whole range of other people would ring the doorbell - they were the special wallahs outsourced to do specific tasks by the person you hired to do the job you asked them to do.

It was confusing, but perhaps that’s the way India works. Everyone gets a small piece of the pie and everyone benefits. Trickle down effect.

I have not been back to India since then.

Fast forward to today.

Just last month India’s population reached 1,425,775,850 people, matching and then surpassing the population of mainland China.

Der Spiegel, a German magazine printed this cartoon above and it was met with criticism from Indian commentators.

Certainly India has advanced since the days I lived there. People power is there, brain power is there, development is there, but what is it that has driven China beyond expectations?

One thing I can point out.

India began its economic reform in the early 1990s, more than a decade after China. I remember in the late 1990s Bangalore (now called Bengaluru) was being developed to become the Silicon Valley of Asia.

Now Bengaluru is the IT hub of India and is one of the most developed cities in India. It went from Garden City to Silicon Valley in two decades.

I’d like to think that the organized chaos and a linear yet non-linear way of thinking in India stimulates disruptive innovation.

Maybe a new modern day digital wallah system could emerge, something new and original, a unique form of modern day democracy melded with past traditional history.

---

Many analysts compare the rise of China in relation to India:

About a decade ago, some optimists thought India could leapfrog over the manufacturing and physical infrastructure stage of development (widgets) to build the whole economy around digital (bits). Today, it is clear that, while India’s tech sector is fantastic and growing, the whole, massive country will have to develop the old-fashioned way with better infrastructure and more manufacturing.

What will determine whether India can become a bit more Chinese when it comes to infrastructure and manufacturing? Unlike China, the answer will not be government investment because the Indian state is hamstrung by endemic budget deficits of big subsidies and limited taxation. The good news for India is that the private sector is ready to step in. But it seems that the private sector won’t act until it is more confident about politics.

But there is hope that India will rise along with the other BRICS nations as they work together to build each other up.

India is a land of juxtaposition that I’m still striving to understand.

Below are two videos that show the disparity between new development and traditional 130 old systems.

Read the article “3 Reasons India Isn’t the ‘Next China’” HERE

Read the article “ Why India Can’t Replace China” HERE