UNDERSTANDING THE PARADOXES OF INDIA

After several long flights, we have finally arrived in Bengaluru (or as the British called it, Bangalore), India. Just like the United States and in particular, Washington, D.C., India is full of contradictions, but because of the size of India, these paradoxes are on a much grander scale which makes a big difference! While we may be grappling with some of the same problems here in the United States as in India, the size of India makes it much more challenging to solve these problems in an efficient way. For example, India has a population of 1.2 billion people, while the U.S. has a little over 316 million people. The landmass of India is also slightly smaller than the U.S (see the map below). India has many megacities (a population over 10 million people), such as Delhi, Calcutta, and Mumbai, whereas New York City, the most populous city in the U.S., is just 8.4 million people. In addition, India has over 22 recognized languages and many more, which are not recognized by the government. At the school we visited today, at least 3-4 different languages were being spoken. At 450 million, India also has the largest number of people under the age of 18.

In a presentation with Maya Menon from the Teacher Foundation here in India, she explained 10 key paradoxes of India. I’m going to highlight three here.

1. Pride versus Shame: Pride in achievements in technology and education, but shame in the extreme poverty in India.

2. Beauty versus Ugly: Beautiful colors in clothing and jewelry and religious statues can be seen all over India, but trash and squalor is everywhere you turn.

3. Individualism versus Authoritarianism: Indian young people respect the authority of their teachers and parents, but also like to express their individual personalities.

Today our group of teachers visited a government (public) school in Bengaluru, which highlighted all the contrasts listed above. At this elementary school, children were very eager to learn and showed the highest respect to their teachers (see pride and authoritarianism). However, the lack of shoes, materials in the classroom, a run down building, and a major construction site directly behind the school highlighted the poverty in India (see shame and ugly).

Question: Of the three paradoxes mentioned above, which do you think most apply to Washington, DC and/or the U.S. today? Explain why and how they may differ from India.