"Nothing's going to be solved here..."

In my opinion, there are two Indias: the “modern India” that is publicized in the West and the “establishment India” that actually runs the nation. One generates money for the nation, and the other swallows money from the nation. People would like to believe that they live in the former, when in all actuality, they live in the latter. The privileged want to stay far from this “establishment,” while the average Indian drowns in the madness.

In my past trips to India, I somewhat naively stayed inside the high, protective walls of the glamourous five-story shopping malls and the trendy over-priced coffee shops. It's important for people unfamiliar with India to realize that these glitzy, posh locations certainly exist. India cannot all be characterized by Slumdog Millionaire, but nor can it be summarized as being a Bollywood fantasyland of song and dance. India most certainly is not that either.

However, this trip to India is consisting of more diverse, mundane experiences – experiences which were not of luxury, but of necessity or function. These experiences are in a way democratizing. Malls and department stores are only for the rich; the poor do not dare approach them. However, paying the telephone or gas bill requires people from all walks of life to congregate at one building.

These buildings are often old, rotting buildings which are run with no concern for maintenance or proper (or even minimal) upkeep. My encounter with the ugliness of the Indian public sector came in the form of a routine trip to the telecommunications company BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) to enquire about a broadband connection at home.

My complaints about this establishment will easily turn into a rant, so I will list some of my grievances here in bullet form:

• The building was DIRTY...as in, I am yet to see a dirtier building in India that is still standing for a legitimate purpose.
• Information is so decentralized that it takes around half a dozen people to answer one question. You are constantly pointed from person to person.
• In addition to the inefficiency, the disorganization is unbelievable. India honestly surprises me; seeing all this, one is startled that the nation is even running. There were files everywhere: sitting in piles on every desk and in thousands (maybe millions) in storage rooms.
• The definition of bureaucracy in India: people given offices to do absolutely nothing but keep pushing the work (and the customers) onto other people.

Finally, I can't always help but notice the connections between religiosity and inaction in India. I feel like people are so overwhelmed themselves with what is happening around them that they almost subconsciously give up, recognize their incapacity against the system, and paste god pictures and posters on the wall. One of the rooms we were pointed to was a two-person office with every single inch of wall space covered with two to three dozen different deities. Had it not been a bureaucratic office, the room was quite aesthetically pleasing, if nothing else. My reaction when I walked into this room: “ *SIGH* Nothing's going to be solved here...”