The pungent smell of rotting rubbish that gets the back of your throat. The acrid odour from the open sewers that makes you retch. The eye-watering pollution that stings your eyes. The urine soaked pavements. You would be forgiven in thinking that this was hell on earth.
Well that's where you would be very wrong.
I love it.
It is easy to dismiss India as being a poverty stricken country. But I suppose it depends on your definition of poverty. In financial terms, then yes. There can be no doubt that there is a great deal of poverty in India, with a sizable proportion of the population surviving on only 10-15 Rupees (15-20 pence) a day, and no effective social benefit system, the poverty is very evident.
Of course India is the third fastest growing economy in the World, but it seems to be growing too quickly; stretching society upwards, without the bottom end catching up. The infrastructure is pretty terrible, but a state of the art elevated Metro system is being completed. It is elevated above the city and swathes its way through the chaos below. It will take the more affluent traveller away from the everyday squalor into the sanitised tranquility of the 21st Century. Then again, it is easier to ignore the poverty and to travel above it, than to do something meaningful about it.
But degree of wealth can be estimated in other ways. I like to think of social wealth. To look beyond the financial poverty and see what this country really has going for it. Here is the real wealth of India - Its people. Others have written about this relative wealth in terms of culture, religious diversity and community spirit, but it is the people that are truly responsible for all these things. Everyday I am surprised at their sense of humour, their eagerness to please, to help you out, their resourcefulness and courage in the face of adversity.
But it is the children that provide India with their true wealth. Gladstone said something along the lines that a society can be judged by how it treats its dead, but I think the future of any society can be estimated by the conduct of the next generation.
The children come out of school, each and every one of them immaculately presented. The girls with their hair all identically tied up in pigtails with the same coloured bows, the boys with their shirts done up to the collar and their ties neatly tied. They are well behaved, polite and above all happy, despite their poverty. They don't have a games console, or mobile phones. Most don't even have a TV, and can be seen crowded in the doorways of some of the little shack shops trying to catch a glimpse of the cartoons on the proprietor's set. They don't hang around street corners drinking and taking drugs, abusing people and being anti-social.
Considering this, and looking back to UK society, I would be ashamed to have people from India to see how our society has dealt with (and is dealing with) social deprivation. I suppose it leaves me thinking which society is really the better off.
Oh, and by the way, there is no Human Rights Act in India.
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