Shams Ahsan

It’s unfortunate but true: When you become part of a system you quite often fail to spot the ills or see the changes taking place in everyday life.



Before coming to work in Saudi Arabia 15 years ago, I lived and worked in India as a journalist with a leading English daily, but the negatives and the ills of the system that I observed in India at that time were never so great as those that I see now during my yearly sojourns to the country. It is an eyesore as an NRI to see garbage accumulating on the roads, people urinating on public walls, clerks spitting betel juice in the corners of offices, and passengers sleeping on railway platforms surrounded by filth.



Electricity is in short supply; water is scarce. Yet people go about their daily chores with a stoic indifference that befits a mechanized robot.



Corruption and crime are now part of their daily routine. A murder, a kidnapping, or a robbery no longer makes news beyond the pages of a newspaper.



Prices of daily commodities have skyrocketed, yet markets and shops are crowded. I feel the pinch whenever I go shopping in India. Whenever I buy a few kilograms of vegetables or fruit, I feel for my relatives and friends and realize how difficult it is for them to make ends meet.



Yet despite all these problems and shortcomings, the lifestyle of people in India has changed so much in the years since I left my country for greener pastures abroad.



My father was a law secretary to the government of Bihar before being raised to the bench as judge of Patna High Court. As a senior government official, all he could afford at home was a desert cooler. We owned a 1976 ubiquitous Ambassador car. But today, I feel happy to see the luxurious lifestyle of my relatives: They all have split ACs, luxury sedans, laptops, LEDs and whatnot.



There were no McDonald’s, KFC and Dominos when I left India, neither were there BMWs, Mercedes, Hyundais and Hondas. Watching a movie in a centrally air-conditioned theater was the ultimate luxury simply because no one had even heard of PVRs and multiplexes.



Today SUVs and sedans have shrunk the market of the Ambassador to the level of taxi drivers in Calcutta …err Kolkata. The Ambassador was the official car of India. But today only a few officials drive an Ambassador.



Legislators have developed an uncanny love for SUVs, sturdy and road-hardy as they are.



The iconic “Hamara Bajaj” is history simply because the families which once rode on these scooters today feel infra dig to go out on a two-wheeler.



They prefer and can afford a Maruti or a Nano.



Today the gap between the middle class and the upper strata of society has become narrower thanks to a lifestyle which is mortgaged up to the hilt.



Everyone is a king in a castle of cards.



The political landscape has changed, and so have the priorities of news coverage. We were conservatives as journalists who never allowed anything beyond politics on the front page of our newspaper. Page One was always politics, politics and more politics, because that was what sold or so we thought. We could never have imagined in our wildest dreams displaying Bollywood photos or news on the front page. Today it’s the order of the day.



The advent of electronic media has not only increased the size of a journalist’s pay packet, but has also drawn up new rules and opened up new frontiers in India.



Politics is no longer centralized. Earlier political clout percolated from the center, i.e. Delhi, down to the regions. Today the regions and their leaders stage-manage politics at the center. The Laloos, the Mulayams, the Mamatas and the Jayalalithas have turned the political pyramid upside down.



Yet there are many things that have remained unchanged: The passion for cricket, for example. The format and the techniques of the game have changed, yet the people’s love for cricket remains as strong as ever.



What has not changed is the lively spirit of Indians to keep smiling in the face of adversity.



Indian values as opposed to Western individualism and materialism have not changed. Indians still take pride in peaceful co-existence, spirituality, respect for elders, and strong family ties.

The writer can be reached at [email protected].