To Bangalore and Beyond
 I’m watching the Indian countryside scroll past through a window tinted sepia by either age or pollution or both, between Chennai and Bangalore. The option of flying was wisely declined. Although it is primarily a means of conveyance, and most people are sleeping it away, the view from the train, of the hills, of the plant life and local fauna, the villages about which we’ve heard so much heretofore, and witnessing in fleeting vistas the agrarian lifestyle of the villagers delimited by modern infrastructure like the railroad itself and communication and utility lines is as fascinating as anything I’ve seen in the cities. I’ve taken a number of long road trips across eastern parts of the United States, and the landscape has never been much to look at. American “villages” are only microcosmic American metros, with a lifeline commercial thoroughfare of fast-food and grocery stores, connected interminably by an easy interchange of the highway and surface streets. The train, instead, is isolated from the environment through which it passes. The passengers and villagers have only the opportunity to  gaze at each other, should they care to, and only little more than to be aware of each other, never to interact, never to homogenize as American villages do, and never establish the feedback loop of economic interdependence. There is evidence that these villages have direct connections with the outside world. The buildings are evidently constructed from materials that were not allocated locally, although they are as poorly maintained as anywhere in the cities. The nexus of roads in which the buildings are cradled are entirely dirt, and sprawl out into fields where the healthiest cattle I’ve seen all trip are grazing. Copses of palm trees carpet the foreground of the foots of small, green mountains which are gradually changing into rock formations similar to the American West. It’s astounding to me that there is so much wide-open, undeveloped space in a country so populated. That nearly one billion people can be concentrated in a handful of cities ensures a harrowing cultural divide. It goes to show why organizations such as the Desicrew Solutions, who we met at IIT Madras, are working to facilitate modern development in rural locals. In Delhi, India’s troubles seemed overwhelming and insurmountable, but as I drift across the country and the spectrum of its wealth and development, I am growing more optimistic that India will become a worthy and useful competitor for the United States, and that it will, in the foreseeable future, approach the forefront of global innovation and prosperity.
|
To our readers:
We appreciate your comments, so please leave substantive comments related to entrepreneurship or the blog entry to which you are commenting. We love to receive personal comments by email!
For many entries we have provided our geographical coordinates. Cut and paste these into the Google Earth search field and hit enter to see exactly where we are!
External Links:
|
