ThePanda

I like jungles, seemingly the only places I enjoy going to are jungles. A few feel it’s because I am a panda, and well we are supposed to be wild, others differ, but whatever the reasons, I like jungles. However jungles differ, as do every two places on the face of the earth, and every jungle has its own distinct characteristics and presents different reasons for my visits. I go to Corbett for the experience of being in absolute wilderness (fun, relaxing), Dudhwa to see a different kind of jungle, Ranthambore to see a more civilized jungle with tigers which act like pets, and Sariska for a short getaway. Actually I do have other reasons for visiting Sariska, but it’s mostly because of its proximity (250 or so Kilometers, about 155 miles) to Delhi. Sariska is unique in being one of those places intermittently bring certain issues to the forefront, more so than any other jungle I have ever been to. Sariska was the subject of my first issue-based travelogue (back then people used to honk car horns and play stereos at insane volumes inside the national park), and has somehow directed my attention to a lot of issues which I miss out on while in Delhi. This could be because Sariska is pretty close to a major city, or because it’s in Rajasthan. Being near a major city forces a lot of the wealth issues into villages, which have until now been relatively poor, and still follow a social order which harps back to the middle-ages, but that is a result of it being in Rajasthan. Rajasthan for its own reasons has become the public face of Indian tourism, it is probably the place most people associate with India, and despite the fact that it has a distinctive culture, it has become the epitome of what a lot of people (especially on the LP message boards) expect from India. Rajasthan is also one of those regions which has strangely not adapted the newer social norms which most of the other states seem to be adapting in some form or the other, and that as such creates a few problems if you are a tourist in there. However there seems to be a growing awareness in Rajasthan, of the financial potential which tourism present and that is changing the way a lot of people think (though it hasn’t still affected society) and not all of those changes seem to be in the right direction.

Over-Capitalism
I generally support capitalism as a system, because free-enterprise presents one of the cleanest routes towards wealth, and wealth as such is something which people have a right to. However free-enterprise cannot exist with some modicum of trust and the concept of public space. Internationally, wherever laws do not prevent photographing public space (France for instance), photographers and people at large are known to photograph things, people, animals in public places, and you never really pay someone before taking a photograph unless they are modeling for you, and well taking photographs of pets is hardly something which is minded by anyone. After all without such socio-economic norms, street photography and urban photography would cease to exist. For sometime now I have been moving around Delhi taking photographs of people and places, without nary a worry about paying people. I generally don’t take photographs of people who objet to being photographed, but money has never entered the equation. Now yesterday while I was in Sariska, I came across this herd of camels who seemed to be pretty much driving themselves, and since the scene was kindda exciting, I clicked a few photos. The camels didn’t stop for my camera, I didn’t want them to, they didn’t change directions, they pretty much continued walking as they were, however the herder who was walking behind that huge herd of camel came forth running waving this long wooden stick at me, and he stood in front of our car and demanded money. Now the herder has a right to gain riches and gain money from the use of his animals, I however wasn’t using his animals, using his animals would have been closer to riding them, or at least taking them to a more suitable location. In this case I just happened to be at the right place, at the right time, and I was on public property and well neither the camels nor the herder really did anything to help me with my photo, the camera was as much of a bystander as I was, and well I detest the fact that he asked for money. It was a first but it does show a certain desperation to get rich, since people are pulling out all stops to earn that extra penny.

Then there is the hotel over the lake, well actually it’s more like a dirty hotel over pretty OK lake, it’s one of those places along the way where everyone spends a few minutes, well whenever they can, people peer into the lake, look at the scenery and then exit, without really paying anything. Umm well in a bid to capitalize on all income generation options, it now costs Rs. 50 (that’s a dollar, pretty steep if you consider the fact that museum and zoo tickets cost Rs. 10 which is about 20¢) to view the lake from a dirty viewing platform, and though the guy at the ticket counter assures you that you can “adjust” the money in the cafeteria up there, umm well the cafeteria is plain overpriced. Oh well so much for capitalism and free-enterprise.

Globablization Localized
A little more than ten years ago, Coca Cola, McDonalds, and other such brands were as alien in India as rainfall in the Attacama, we followed a policy of protecting industries, and well these were things you heard about from all those people who went abroad for short trips. You could find bootlegged Coke, but that used to be expensive, and since no one could be sure about any of the bootlegged stuff, people generally stayed away from it. Then we went through a period of economic liberalization, and well Coke and Pepsi became the ultimate symbols of a liberalized economy with bottles available even in the remotest corners of the country. While some areas were the exclusive domain of one company or the other, you could be sure that no matter where you went a shop within a 5 kilometer radius would be stocking either of these. Coca Cola and Pepsi flooded televisions with advertisements, promising a cool factor to those who drunk them, they bought out most of the cola companies which used to previously manufacture & sell in India, and entered a price war as intense as any they have in America. This was useful in more ways than one, because you could at least be sure of getting a certain drink, at a certain price wherever you went, and you could be sure about quality (they had a lil controversy about that a few months back) and the effects of what you were drinking. This time round Coca Cola and Pepsi both seem to have gone missing from the lil places near Sariska, and instead you have shops bearing the Coca Cola and Pepsi logos selling something named “Jayanti Cola”, which plays itself out on the Indian card. This is true of shops which are barely 5 minutes from NH8, the road which connects most of the business centers in the west with Delhi and other places in the north, and while it shows encouraging signs in terms of private-enterprise, it also shows a slightly disturbing trend. The fact that Coke and Pepsi have gone missing, probably because they are global brands rather than local as the Jayanti thing is (they are identically priced) is a weird way of competing, since it would be far more prudent, and far more entrepreneurial to actually have your local colas competing with global giants, since that would allow a fair competition on the basis of quality rather than an anti-globalization view point.

Ze Panda

P.S. If you feel I have misinterpreted socio-economic factors, please leave a comment explaining your take on the situation.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 10th, 2004 at 1:45 pm and is filed under article. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.