Change nihal.com Can Believe In

Last Tuesday’s inauguration reminded me of turning thirty. What once seemed impossibly distant rushed toward reality. The buildup was overwhelming, the pre-gameday hype thick with clichés. But a week later I was the same Nihal, with the same 55 mph fastball and ability to touch my nose with my tongue. So I found the talk cheap in President Obama’s inaugural address. A few suggestions on how to bank the change:

“We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals… Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.”

Federal agents walk onto the set while Hannity and Limbaugh are doing their shows, snap the cuffs on them, and begin to lead them away. “On what charges do you dare arrest me!?” they’d thunder. “Charges? No, it’s just that the President believes you are a threat to national security,” the agents would answer. “Gitmo awaits.” Instantly these two would see what it feels like to be on the wrong side of a system of justice that has surely swept up innocents and given extremists a powerful weapon to whip up hatred against America. Point made, the federal agents would unsnap the cuffs and leave the two to wallow in the irony (and perhaps a bit more, if their bowels behaved badly during the mock arrests).

“On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

True to the fears of his most paranoid foes, President Obama signs an executive order banning the use of public airwaves for debates on issues where a layperson can take a side without thinking twice. Abortion, gay marriage and gun control are three examples that jump to mind. Because while we’ve been arguing about whether gay couples can have abortions during deer season, gays with health insurance have been subsidizing straights without it. Hunters in Arkansas and the hunted in North Philadelphia both suffer when the federal government refuses to legislate cleaner air. Thus muzzled, CNN, Fox and the gang will be forced to turn the spotlight on issues that can’t be reduced to a 15 second soundbyte or three-minute debate. I think it’s called “reporting.”

“In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned.”

After an administration led by a man who earned none of what was handed to him, President Obama should strike a different tone in his first State of the Union address. To put the emphasis on earning and saving, he should replace the income tax with a national sales tax on consumption. He should promise to stop living off the levees, airports and trains that our parents and grandparents built, and build some of our own. Give interest-free loans to anyone that’s worked hard enough in high school to go to college. And provide an honest accounting of what we’ve promised to pay in Medicare and Social Security benefits ($54 trillion), how much we’ve saved so far ($0), and whose taxes will be raised and whose benefits will be slashed to close the gap.

The icing on the cake would be á la carte cable pricing, where I could buy just the four channels I actually watch and not be forced to buy a package that includes the Hallmark Channel. Lifetime and E! desperately applying for federal bailout money? Now that’s change I could believe in.

Nihal In India: Part 2 of a Series

Affluence, But to What End?

If you want to observe civic order taken to its logical extreme, visit Zurich. During my first visit, I found myself at a crosswalk over a two meter-wide trolley lane. Though there wasn’t a trolley in sight, I dutifully waited with half a dozen Swiss, waiting for the crossing light to turn green. The city lives up to the precision of its citizens: the streets are spotless; the trains go everywhere and get there right on time. Even the airport monorail was whisper-quiet, with only the noise of recorded cowbells and mooing adding a bonus helping of creepiness to the eerie silence. My return to New York felt like a UN fact-finding trip to Mogadishu.

The first morning after my arrival in Mumbai, I found myself at an intersection not much wider than that Zurich trolley crossing. There was no traffic signal, no crossing guard, and no mercy shown by a vicious and continuous stream of traffic. The expression worn by an elderly co-pedestrian was an only-in-India mixture of nonchalance and determination. Suddenly, the man saw a lull and made his move. My New York-honed instincts told me that he had miscalculated badly—I jumped back and cringed, bracing myself to witness certain injury (or death). But he made it with inches to spare and a honk from a taxi, and continued on his way.

To live in Mumbai as a local is to realize that while India’s economic muscle might have fattened wallets, everyday life beyond its citizens’ front doors is spiraling downward. The only thing thicker than the traffic is the air pollution. The 5 km, 8-lane Bandra-Worli Sealink bridge promises to create a bypass between Mumbai’s downtown and its suburbs, but planners have terminated the Worli end onto a quiet residential street. Streets are routinely widened at the cost of footpaths, forcing pedestrians onto the road itself. My uncle counseled me to avoid an express commuter train, lest I was unable to fight my way out of the car at my stop. Imagine a New York where the sun disappears into an oily haze an hour before sunset, the George Washington Bridge terminates onto 79th St., old ladies are forced to walk on Fifth Avenue inches from taxis and buses, and commuters breathe a sigh of relief after jumping from doorless trains that stop for seconds and depart without warning. Imagine all of this, and you’ll get a sense of the price that Mumbaites pay for their affluence.

The argument that Mumbai’s civic planners are challenged by their city’s runaway success was often rolled out to rebut my critique. And it’s true that the city represents only 2% of India’s population, but accounts for 40% of the country’s GDP. So Mumbai attracts countless migrants that live in unconscionable conditions by Western standards and overwhelm the city’s infrastructure, but keep coming to enjoy a life that would be impossible back in the home village. “What can be done?” the argument concludes with a sigh.

But just as democracy permits freedom of movement within a country, it provides all the tools for citizens to mobilize so that the common welfare can be improved. You’d expect that in an India that’s growing richer and where labor is plentiful and cheap, countless large-scale civic works that ease transport, improve sanitation, and create green spaces would naturally follow. But India’s urban and educated middle class doesn’t see their rising affluence as an opportunity to demand more livable cities. My insistence that cars should yield to pedestrians and that each intersection should be properly signed (and each road named, for that matter) were met with bemused smiles, as if I was insisting that Santa Claus was a real person.

Instead, the middle and upper classes retreat into their spotlessly-kept flats and emerge only when absolutely necessary. At the top of the economic ladder, the world’s fifth richest man is building a $1 billion house in South Mumbai. A man who could leverage his influence to catalyze the populace and intimidate corrupt bureaucrats into building the civic amenities that European and American urban dwellers take for granted has instead chosen to build the world’s most exclusive prison. Because when his new home is complete, Mukesh Ambani won’t be able to step out and enjoy a pleasant stroll through his neighborhood.

The contrast with Indians’ chosen benchmark couldn’t be starker. In the West, high living standards are measured by the charm and vibrancy of your surroundings, not by how expensive a house you can build on your property. My favorite memories from Boston, Munich and Madrid were rambling walks through neighborhoods and parks that spanned hours without having a single honk directed at me. My parents can choose between three parks within a five mile radius of their suburban New Jersey home. Walks in Indian cities couldn’t be more different, with the ideal stroll being short, and ideally within the confines of your housing society.

I found India on an unfortunate trajectory, in which the dividends of economic success are being invested in building affluence that ends at the front gate. “I think India more powerful than America soon,” said my driver as we made our way to the airport. I remember thinking that it was an odd thing to say after 45 minutes of being stuck in standstill traffic.

But at least the cows mooing around me were the real deal.

Editor’s Footnote: Well, that was a bit longer than your average nihal.com entry—sorry about that. And to add editorial balance to a decidedly negative piece about Mumbai: We loved “Slumdog Millionaire.”

Nihal In India: Part I of a Series

Initial Reaction

My flight from Mumbai touched down at Newark Airport before sunrise this past Thursday morning. Bags collected and customs fooled into thinking that I was the only Indian not returning with kilos of food products stashed between saris, the terminal doors whisked open, and I stepped out into the darkness of a January morning. The temperature was balmy for the time of year—right around freezing—but other than exactly two taxi drivers, no one else was about. The only sound I could clearly hear were my heels, clacking their way toward a clearly marked, well lit sign: “Passenger Pick-Up Area 2.”

The contrast from my arrival in Mumbai exactly one month earlier couldn’t be more striking. My loyalty to Delta is fiercer than a dog to its master, so the airline tagged my bags to be the first ones off the plane. So I was the first one out of the terminal and into a sea of five thousand people, each anxiously making direct eye contact to see if I was a friend, relative, or potential taxi fare. I felt like Barack Obama in front of his adoring public, but instead of a message of change, I was carrying bags of used clothing. I wasn’t Barack, I realized with a shudder. I was John McCain.

Over the next month, I would dodge traffic in Mumbai, ponder the timelessness of medieval Rajasthani forts, and drink from the same Konkan village wells that quenched the thirst of my grandparents nearly a century ago. I’d buy a cup of tea for $0.06 on the platform at Pune, and the same night be treated to a cup of coffee in Mumbai that was nearly as good, but 15 times the price. The richness and frustrations of India’s linguistic diversity would be on display in nightly family conversations that would bounce between three languages with ease. Even I would try to parlay this chaos to my advantage by speaking Marathi to my Hindi-speaking Mumbai cab driver, hoping to fool him into thinking I was only a simple kid from the interior, not someone who converts every expense back into dollars.

I was ready for another tour through India’s gut-wrenching poverty, which was most notably on display in Rajasthan, where legions of men idled their time away waiting to be interviewed by Tom Friedman. But even though I grew up in an Indian family, my Anglo-American sensibilities were completely unprepared for the enveloping warmth of my aunt’s extended family, who welcomed our visit to their Konkan home as if a world war had ended, and we’d returned home.

Words can’t fully express the dichotomy between two places separated by only 16 hours of flight. I’ll do my best in the essays to come, but the contrast was illustrated to be most sharply on the morning I landed. I was walking to work through midtown Manhattan, where I was struck by the cleanliness, the orderly way cars, trucks and people interfaced with each other, but most of all the silence. Was I in New York, or was this Geneva? For a split second, I missed the chaos of the Maximum City, Aamchi Mumbai, India Rising, and all the other references to an ancient civilization that sees itself poised to take its rightful place amongst the world’s powers. That is, until I came to an intersection, and a taxi politely came to a halt to let me cross.

Nope, I was glad to be home. More to come.