The good news of yesterday. Samba Siva, our dear friend from Patni Computers, who used to be in Finland and is now working in Electronic City outside Bangalore, rang Jacob to tell us that his wife has delivered a beautiful baby boy, 2.6 kg. He was off to see them as they are near her parents place in Andhra. I have conveyed best wishes on behalf of our entire Findian community to them.
It is difficult to know how to start this piece. We are not writing this to offend anybody. But we are seeing reality, our way.
Yes, we are in Incredible India.
Yes, we are in Ahmedabad, from where Mahatamaji started a mission.
We are about to try to start a mission or be clobbered by all of you for even thinking of starting it!
It is 10 years since we were last in India. Jacob came back a few months after our visit to his niece, Suchi's wedding, to say his last farewell to his mother. At that time, by some quirk of fate, there was an enormous traffic jam just outside Chennai Airport and it took Jacob about 2 hours to reach his mother’s home. That was an unusual morning.
During that visit he did also make a visit to Bangalore. He noted that the city had exploded. It took about an hour for a journey which used to take him just 15 minutes 15 years earlier. Progress?
Yesterday evening, as we watched Indian TV, there appeared an ad in which someone opened a car window and tossed an empty bottle onto the road in front of a scooter rider and his passenger. The scooter rider picked up the bottle, sped through the traffic, probably breaking hundreds of traffic laws in the process, caught up with the car, knocked on the window. When the window opened, the bottle was tossed back into the car!
Effective ad? Effective message?
When you are living in a garbage dump, shifting the rubbish from Point A to Point B, hardly seems a worthwhile activity. And breaking laws to do that seems even more of a “No! No!”.
This time, for our visit to India, we landed in Mumbai at 02:30 am and were duly impressed by Sea Link, designed just like many of the cable stayed bridges in Finland.
Above is a picture of the Replot Bridge (Swedish: Replotbron; Finnish: Raippaluodon silta). It is a cable-stayed tuftform bridge connecting the island of Replot with the mainland in Korsholm, near Vaasa, Finland. It is 1,045 metres (3,430 ft) long and the longest bridge of Finland. Two supporting pylons are both 82.5 m (271 ft) high. The bridge was inaugurated 27 August 1997 by the president of Finland Martti Ahtisaari. (Acknowledgement: Wikipedia)
Our visit to Mumbai taught us that the traffic situation had got worse and even with all best intentions, there would not be much improvement.
Our daily blogging of our India trip, which is reaching many thousands of people in all corners of the globe, has got us some good and interesting comments. One, from a dear friend in Finland, sticks out. He commented how nice it was that we were not writing about all the dirt in India.
We could hardly contain ourselves - Dirt in India?
People in India are living in the largest Garbage Dump in the world. This is what The Honorable Jairam Ramesh, the Environment and Forest Minister in the Indian Government said last week:
If there is a Nobel prize for filth, India will win it: Jairam Ramesh
NEW DELHI: Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh, known for making forthright comments, today said if there was any Nobel Prize for dirt and filth, India would get it.
"Our cities are dirtiest cities of the world. If there is a Nobel prize for dirt and filth, India will win it, no doubt," he said at a function to release a report of TERI.
Ramesh lamented the poor facilities for disposing municipal waste in majority of the cities in the country.
The ministers' comments assume significance as the TERI report on 'Green Indian 2047' says that waste management is not given priority in local bodies.
There is poor compliance with the solid waste management rules.
Dirt and filth could have both the physical and philosophical interpretation! In India, it has both, which are intertwined at the hip.
Mumbai was bad, but on our first few days we were too busy to notice this. Although the stench and dirt was everywhere, we somehow coped with the situation, seeing all the positives.
We then went to Cochin.
In the old days, Kerala was always considered to be the home of the clean.
The very first evening, Jacob needed to buy a camera, so he walked to the shopping centre nearby. It was like walking through a sewer. And this was just metres away from one of the top radio stations in Cochin, a couple of hundred metres away from the local home of one of the largest media conglomerates in India.
Anyone oblivious?
The drive the next day between Cochin and Kottayam confirmed to us that this was not the Kerala of yesteryear. With all the progress, the roads were just as wide as before. The traffic had tripled, quadrupled or x-upled. The entire infra-structure is in shambles,
As we walked around Kottayam, Jacob was amazed how such a clean and beautiful city of his childhood could have become yet another amazingly large rubbish tip.
If Kerala was bad, our next stop, Bangalore, Jacob’s birthplace, was infinitely worse. It used to be referred to as the Garden City as lush green parks, well maintained, were the heart of the town. Beautiful buildings, well laid out roads and avenues, fountains, were all part of the landscape of the city centre.
This is a city which is now in terminal decline. Every nook and corner is filled with rubbish, every road is a metal jungle. there is no such thing as civic sense. Home to the biggest IT giants, these mighty men, who are among in the richest in the world, care two damn hoots for their surroundings, the health and well being of their workers or the people of Bangalore. All they provide is lip service and then point to corrupt politicians. They may know something about IT but they know nothing about urban planning, health or welfare. They know how to stash away their billions, and leave their industrial bases in total and complete turmoil.
In all this, Jacob came upon one little oasis, where the small corporate group run by his friend, 59er Elijah Elias, was trying to keep some degree of sanity in this madness. A losing battle, but it showed Jacob that if one wanted, it was possible to have a sense of civic sense and pride and maintain an atmosphere of dignity for one’s workers.
To our surprise, Chennai, our home between 1969 and 1976, was a welcome change, although the frailty of the system was exposed by the heavy rain which caused much of the city to be flooded, roads to be clogged and traffic to be severely hampered. As we wandered to the far reaches of the city to meet our friends, we found that the civic sense of the new centres was lost, especially once the IT companies moved into a region. The only intention seemed to be to maximise their bottom-line while throwing the rest of the area to the dogs!
Yes, there were plenty of stray dogs around.
Knowing several of the professional chiefs in many of India’s top IT companies, we do hope that they will suggest to the top management and corporate owners that they should change their ways.
The longer subsequent visit to Mumbai revealed to us that opulence is living side by side with filth and dirt on a scale which is hard to imagine.
Yes, the fisher folk in the small hut on the seashore do have a satellite antenna stuck on their roof, but they have no sanitary conveniences or “education” as they foul the rocks daily in full view of the enormous sky scraper world behind them.
Does anyone care?
Some of the worst possible slums in the world are located around the city. They harbour infections, breed diseases and the slum dwellers are the scum of this earth to the surroundings.
As 59er Anil Ruia put it, Mumbai generates 7000 tonnes of garbage every day. Even with 10 tonne garbage trucks to haul this away, it would require 700 trucks moving in and out of the city every single day just to take this rubbish “somewhere”.
Where?
The garbage trucks presently plying the streets are fit only for some metal junk yard, These toy trucks are probably filled by just going down one street. The hydraulics do not work and no compactation is possible. So the streets remain filled with garbage and stink to high heaven.
Over 15 years ago Jacob had written an article “Western Recycling Doomed; A lesson From India”.
He now eats his words, as Incredible India has moved into the darkest of ages, while the rest of the world has progressed in civic sense, concerned about the environment, health and hygiene of the population. India has given up its past ways and now follows neither its old philosophy or the western model - moving the country into chaos surrounded by filth and dirt.
What was an ordered established system that worked has now descended into nothing but hell. Instead of trying to give dignity to the untouchables who did yeoman service to the entire country, they were treated as animals and forced to give up their profession. Instead of uplifting them, giving them the tools of the trade and a salary and honour for the noble work they did in keeping a country clean, they have been denied their right to improve themselves. And there has been no one to take their place.
The Jerrypuranwalas who used to roam the streets gathering the junk, have virtually been done away with, only causing more and more rubbish to be dumped onto the streets around the country. Almost all open spaces are strewn with rubbish.
What a terrible sight. What a health hazard!
But who cares?
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, meeting yesterday the US President Barack Obama, would probably have been better off asking for help in converting the Garbage Dump called India into a habitable country, rather than asking for assistance on the nuclear front!
It is not that Indians do not know what is to be be done and how to do it. But it is greed and rapid expansion of a middle class into existing urban areas, led by an even more greedy corporate leadership, who remain “uneducated” about social values and responsibilities, that is partially responsible for this chaos. The corrupt politician and bureaucrat, a corrupt police force, all lead to the same way - chaos.
About 30 years ago, Mr. Thomas Abraham (Ebbi), a philosophical and brilliant engineer with an equally deep financial sense, the then Managing Director of Southern Investments (P) Ltd., a large construction company operating out of Chennai, wrote a wonderful small book called “The Affluence Machine” about the way cities of the future should be designed. Even then he was not talking futuristically, as all the technologies existed at that point of time to execute his dream.
Based on his book, he and I authored a paper called “Rural Urbanisation” which would take the development away from the existing urban centres and move them into to serial distances away from them which were manageable but would help each centre to benefit the hinterland. The idea was that every two hours away from a metropolis, two hours on a high speed motorway, there would develop a self-generated urban spread, which with the minimum of Government inputs, could be developed into thriving economic power houses, where the people would self generate their wealth.
Just imagine, 2 hours (roughly 150 to 180 km) between every metropolis all around India.
The concept of Mr. Thomas was to have a central core of the city where all the major services would be located, enough to serve the population of that region. The old and elderly would have housing generated near to this city centre and the city would expand along the radial axis. The suburbs would develop to serve the younger local population who were mobile enough to use their own transport. A very efficient public transportation system (futuristic in some sense) would be created for most of their needs. The circular rings would generate areas of economic activity. From the circular rings, high speed transportation, which at that time would have been considered futuristic, would bring the outlying population into the City Centre.
The major traffic would be kept out of the city area as the economic public transport system would be developed to serve each suburban community and link them to the central hub as well as the outer rings.
Facilities such as sports fields, etc, would be on the outer rings, ensuring environmental harmony.
Mr. Thomas, who is a builder of great repute had crunched the numbers. He knew that with the seed capital, this model was a self supporting, self generating one, which he as a builder would have been happy to be part of.
Our joint paper was submitted to many Chief Ministers, but only one showed interest, but he too was out of power before he could commence his intention of following through this model.
In response to a recent email from me, this is what Mr. Thomas wrote yesterday:
It was wonderful to remember those days.
"The Affluence Machine" was the name of my book, which was of interest to just four or five people. I remember that Mr. V. Suresh, the CMD of HUDCO once took a copy for a Minister friend. The report that you prepared was once used by Tamil Nadu industries Development Corporation in their proposal for an industrial township. I have a (not yet moth eaten) copy of that particular report.
After the failed attempt at building new cities, I got into this far out idea that human intuition is a pattern recognition algorithm. I have a website www.intuition.co.in which describes that idea.
More tilting at windmills!
Still, the property development thing is going OK and my son now runs it.
Do keep in touch.
Ebbi
His new website is fascinating. But it is sad that Ebbi moved away from developing a concept which would have avoided the present random development followed by utter chaos.
Take for example the development of Panvel on the outskirts of Mumbai. This would have been an ideal centre to develop the City Model described in “The Affluence Machine”. But presently Panvel demonstrates how one should not allow growth to occur.
The decision to build the new international airport there and the way Mumbai has clogged itself, caused the property speculators to rush into this one paan shop ( biriyani restaurant) town and ruin not only the area, but make it one of the dirtiest centres in India, even before the first stone for the airport has been laid.
And the journey from Panvel to Mumbai is tragedy in itself.
Our visit to Ahmedabad, from where Gandhiji was able to run his mission to free India, was to see how things were shaping in Western India. We were totally disappointed with what we saw. Although not as bad as Mumbai or Bangalore, it is another city which is falling quickly by the wayside.
Gujarat had started its trunk road system way back in the 60s and 70s, making intercity transport fast. But they stopped there and allowed the uncontrolled city growth to happen within existing city centres while not developing the civic services to meet the demands of the expanded population. What now exists, like all the other cities that we have visited, is a junk yard and garbage dump as far as the eye can see.
One wonder what the residents feel like living inside a garbage dump?
Beautiful buildings of the past are no longer visible as hideous constructions as overbridges are developed a few feet in front of them. Beautiful monuments reflecting a glorious heritage are covered in dust and tucked under the rubble of even more monstrous flyovers and approach roads. The left hand does not know what the right hand does. NGOs battling to look after our traditions are left powerless and speechless by the financial muscle of the corrupt politicians and industrialists.
And when you drive along any street, what you see is that every second shop is an eatery, every third house is a “bank”, every fourth house is a mobile phone dispensing centre. Each one is struggling to keep alive. They live together in squalor and spread more. Are these the only industrial activities that we can be involved with? Are these the "industrial activities" which push up the GDP?
We do not want to appear to be purveyors of doom. We still hope to see some of our faith in this country be rejuvenated when we visit New Delhi and Chandigarh. But from what we have seen so far, greed and corruption pervades all.
Constructive suggestions:
1. Road construction:
We give a simple example how in Finland an activity of building a new road or bridge is done. The first step after the designing of the construction is to set up the diversion route which takes the traffic away from the construction site so that there is no disruption to normal life. Once this is constructed and the traffic pulled away from the area, the area is cordoned off so that building work can proceed rapidly. Target dates are hardened, special areas for materials designated, service roads built. Materials move in on a Just-In-time basis and work is done on a 24 hour basis to ensure that the dates are kept, as otherwise severe penalties are imposed on the contractor. Usually the work is completed ahead of time, and the well planned diversion becomes an emergency road, not to be just done away with because the main job is done.
In all this, the normal work of the citizen is hardly affected. Time is valuable - but in India, only the time which affects the pocketbooks of the rich and mighty is considered valuable. The rest of the citizens be damned.
What is more important is that the quality of the work is never affected. The materials are not contaminated, there is little waste, and everything can be done "on time".
2. Household garbage:
Or let us look at how household garbage is handled in our small town of Oulu. Each house is provided with two bins. One is for mixed waste, the other is for bio waste. Every wek a truck comes to the area and collects the waste, just one man with his well equipped truck where he wheels the dustbins onto a loading platform which automatically lifts the bin, empties it into the back of the truck and this is compacted immediately. the whole operation takes hardly a minute and it is clean, neat and with no spill or left overs.
Recylable rubbish, such as newspapers, cardboard boxes, plastics of all forms, glass, metal are kept by home-owners separately. Nearby centres with huge well like dustbins, lined with ultrastrong tarpaulin fabrics are built into the ground. residents take there rubbish there at their convenience and empty them. The special trucks with gear to empty these wells and put fresh storage bags arrive as soon as the bags are filled. being located in strategic places as petrol stations and supermarket complex compounds, it is not much of a problem for residents to take and dispose their recyclable rubbish at these points.
In addition, near every colony there is a large container which is especially meant for newspaper and pure paper waste. No other waste is permitted in this container as it goes directly to the paper mills for making new paper.
In addition to all this there is a huge rubbish centre just on the outskirts of the town. there you can take all your different types of waste like electronics junk, refrigerators, fridges, radios, wood, all metal containers, and dump them into huge containers which are then sent to special recycling centres.
There is a huge mixed waste centre where you weigh your vehicle and trailer when you enter and you can dump this into the tip. You weigh your vehicle and trailer on the way out and pay a small fee for using this tip, as the city has to find suitable means for disposing this. (A biogas centre has now been developed to utilise this waste.)
In addition, any dangerous and hazardous materials have a special section where they can be dumped.
As a result you see no rubbish lining the streets of our town. Once established and the residents educated, this is like clockwork and any rubbish lying around sticks out like a sore thumb.
When, Oh when, will this happen in India?
Incredible?
If India is to survive, it will not be because of the rapid growth of the middle class as an "uneducated" mass which trundles to work regardless. It will be when each citizen can be proud of his or her country. Sadly that vision of that day is receding by every hour that passes.
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