Just getting on with it

India – well what can you say.

Almost anything you say about it is going to be true ?

The one thing that really hit me on this longer visit (October 2023) from UK is the sheer spirit of “let’s just get on with it”.

Before I start – the thing to say is that India certainly operates at multiple speeds and one of the best recognised ones is either stop or high speed. But here is what I witnessed over several weeks in the neighbourhood where I live in Bangalore.

Every morning starts off slow and easy, a few people walking by – going to the shop to get some milk or their newspaper. Or, perhaps, coming home from a nightshift. The pace picks up bit by bit with scooters and motorcycles, most of whom are not wearing helmets, but some are (ludicrous) wearing masks to protect them from a non-threat of covid!! Anyway!

As this volume picks up you start to see vegetable vendors, wastepaper collectors, knife sharpening services, guys calling out their products and services, using their pre-recorded messages on phones and broadcast with mini-speakers! Your neighbour then comes out to wash his car or gets someone to do it.

The pace of activity is picking up. Now you are getting the commuters and school traffic. I loved seeing the grandpa carrying all the bags for his two grandchildren who were joyfully skipping their way to school. Admittedly he was shuffling!

We needed some plumbing done. We call down to the watchman of our building and about 20 mins later – there is a plumber. A quick call and the electrician arrives. And the lady who does our ironing is at the door, as is the lady who provides us with flowers every day!

The flower vendor has a cute business model. A monthly retainer from each home and if the prices go up or down in the wholesale market – so the amount of flowers you get will go down or up!! She gets her flowers delivered by her son on his scooter and walks around to her customers with a basket on her head! She has financed her son to get English medium education and he is now progressing further.

While each of these individual stories seems trivial, when you aggregate the scene, every day, get this awesome collective energy of movement, aspiration, spirit of “can do”.

To be honest – it sits as a huge contrast of what I hear from many of my middle-class friends and family – moaning about this and that and sometimes grumbling about mental health challenges. That is not to say these are not real – but I get my inspiration from seeing people who have next to nothing getting on with it. One of my cousins offered an explanation – they do not have the time to grumble.

A few more examples – I had to go to a government hospital for treatment while in Ladakh – at some 14,000 feet above sea level. There were two doctors there – both excellent and from other parts of India. They were there from choice and looked so comfortable with their tasks. Each of them had about 3 – 4 patients in the consulting rooms, all in a queue, and multi-tasking as papers were exchanged, X-Rays completed, prescriptions handed out. Of course, if there was some close physical diagnostic to be done all the people would be asked to leave! So – they were dealing with volume, with alertness and the sheer volume of work. Maybe this is not how we want the NHS in the UK to operate but my goodness these two doctors were dealing with a massive workload in good cheer.

One of them came out for a short break as I was leaving and gently told me off for having mentioned that there was a friendly stray dog! No sir - she is not a stray dog, she is just a dog!! What a lovely attitude.

Without getting into line-by-line detail of my experience – all I can say is I saw a dozen different ways in which creative energy and can-do spirit was being applied at the hospital. I saw the same for income generation in my neighbourhood and the way that people and society moves in India.

The somewhat tinged remarks that India will one day be a leading nation “blah blah” by so called expert bankers have missed seeing what is in front of them - that for about 1.3billion people India is already that country. They compare numbers, with other nations, spirit. And in this context – living in UK and travelling often to Europe (well UK was in Europe) I see a very different complaining, slow environment where process and procedures have become dated and unfit for the future.

What I do note is that on some points India and Indians are behind the curve, for example with climate. But as I said earlier, India has two speeds – stop and high speed. Here is to be hoping that India will become high speed with adopting climate friendly measures.

Shailendra