India Changing

India: A waiting tragedy any season (January 2010)

Everybody knows that matters move slowly in India given infrastructure bottlenecks, red tape, inefficient government etc etc working under a democratic political system that procrastinate decision making processes, unlike much faster growing, but communist China.

In the months of December and January, emerging economy India clamps down for one more reason --- fog, a factor that has played up due to the growing pollution levels that result in a thick envelop of cough inducing smog that reduces visibility to zero.

This year the week leading to the New Year witnessed hundreds of flights cancelled at the Delhi international airport, one of the busiest in the country. There have been similar reports from elsewhere --- Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore due to the inter-connections of planes and flights as well.

The situation continues to be on the brink.

Several status updates on social networking sites via mobile phones by stranded passengers read: ``flight fogged out, stranded in Delhi’’ or ``effed due to the fog.’’

As every year, the media has depicted pictures of depleted and exhausted families in various sleep postures --- against walls, on benches at the airport, even as many others argue with airlines and officials, to no avail as the aircrafts simply cannot take off or land.

This is because the Delhi airport, despite the critical role it plays in impacting overall Indian tourism and business travel, has not deployed intelligent instruments needed to enable aircrafts to land in low visibility conditions.

Yet, delayed air travelers could count themselves lucky as at least three major rail collisions have been reported across the country due to fog over the recent past, killing at least 10 people and injuring more than 50. A cancelled flight is better than losing life or limb.

The trains have been on a spin as hapless rail drivers need to rely on their naked eye to spot overhead train signals when heavy fog (smog) conditions limits visibility within cabin space.

Again, lax implementation of intelligent anti collision devices on trains that allows activation of automatic braking systems to detect barriers (including other trains ahead), is to blame.

There has been talk about such systems for years, but the ground work has been caught in severe red tape, even as number of trains and passenger loads has increased manifold.

Car and pedestrian accidents also rise round the New Year time, though one has to admit that the holiday season brings on its share of drunken driving incidents as well. But, massive traffic jams are reported along highways and other intersections due to dead vehicular movement due to the dreaded fog.

Indeed, despite the tall economy talk, India scores very poorly when it comes to handling elements of nature.

Like every year the ongoing cold wave conditions has killed many homeless who are forced to live in the open. Power supplies are on the brink due to large number of heating devices used by the better off.

At other times, during monsoons, Delhi, a city known for its wide roads, flyovers and underpasses comes to a standstill due to water logging as the drainage system remains archaic, harking back to the colonial times, resulting in massive spillovers.

Vehicles turn into bedrooms due to overnight traffic jams, while underpasses turn into impromptu swimming pools, where little boys and girls along with cows and buffaloes splash about.

Mumbai, the country’s commercial hub, turns into a sea of sewage, rain water and open manholes into which many are sucked in every year. The river Brahmaputra, meanwhile, ravages the north east while the state of Bihar goes underwater due to excess water from northern rivers bordering Nepal.

As has been written about a bit, summer and drought brings about its own set of problems with people dying of heat waves and farmers in states such as Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra committing suicide due to failed crops.

This is because adequate irrigation facilities or insurance covers have not been extended, despite big plans.

Indeed, life could have been much more of a clutter in India had it not been for a singular invention – the seamless Internet and its myriad permutations that allows some solace to a minor section of population (the number is estimated at 50 million) beyond traveling through broken roads, traffic snarls, fog and rain.

There is online banking, virtual payment of bills, entertainment, ordering grocery, food, managing investments and the home office. At a broader level, the Indian economy has been boosted by the outsourcing and software sectors that heavily rely on long distance functions.

Thankfully, India’s digital highway generally holds up to the various weather conditions and this has nothing to do with the government.
Just, some good luck and competition among many Internet service providers.

Otherwise, the only other reason that the country halts to a standstill has nothing to do with infrastructure --- it is the game of cricket, given the maniacal following of the game that cuts classes, social and economic.

Traffic dwindles, pubs fill up and office attendance dips dramatically while those at work, including target driven bosses, crowd around television sets along with the rest.

A clash against traditional rivals Pakistan or world champions Australia usually evokes the maximum interest, with some experts estimating negative impact on Indian economic and GDP growth due to cricket induced slowdown, apart from the other factors mentioned above. Cricket in its latest avatar, T20, has only added zeal, adding more and younger fans.

India’s losing battle with nature’s forces, meanwhile, continues.


India for better and worse (December 2009)

In an indication of a changing India, two lifestyle products that defined Indian middle class existence and aspiration in the 70s and 80s will soon cease to exist.

The decision (by respective firms) to phase out Bajaj Scooters entirely from March next year and entry level cars Maruti 800 from metros to begin with, is purely business related --- sales have sagged.

But, it also reflects a different mindset, another India and a new era that fancies faster motor cycles and bigger and better cars.

In the 70s Bajaj Scooters symbolized middle class stability, although the engine placed on one side, made the machine unstable.

And in the current situation of rashly driven powerful vehicles and 24-hour call center cabs, two-wheelers are very unsafe.

Yet, back then, father on the wheel, mother on the pillion, younger child standing in front with head bobbing out, older sibling squeezed between mother and father, everybody with their arms around each other for balance and protection, epitomized the complete Indian family, ``hum do hamare do.’’ (We two and our two)

It was idyllic. Needless to say, the famous ad tag line ``Hamara Bajaj’’ (Our Bajaj) translated into brisk sales.

The strict father, seeped in the idealistic hangover of Mahatma Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru, could have typically worked in a government department, university professor or even a trader; the mother, a housewife, dedicated to the family spent hours in the kitchen, cleaning the house and praying for their welfare.

The unified aim of the husband-wife duo was to ensure their children a good education to turn them into engineers (via cracking the coveted IIT exam) or doctor (via the equally difficult MBBS entrance exam) or make it to the IAS, the top government job (via the even more difficult UPSC exam).

With such focus on study, a big sprinkling of the Bajaj kids did make it and many of them went to America, the land of opportunity, to become software czars, top cardiologists, reproducing kids in turn who today call shots in political stakes as campaign managers, fund givers, Bobby Jindal, driving big BMWs or Mercedez Benz and collecting bikes for passion that probably cost more than their father’s whole life income, many times over.

Some of the kids called their parents over from India selling off the Bajaj scooters as junk, while others forgot about the elders, providing endless sob story themes for Hindi movies described as meaningful art cinema due to all the crying.

Meanwhile, the Maruti 800 was launched in pre-liberalized India in the 80s when the License Raj prevailed to shackle any enterprise, when only access to state authority or grease money counted for everything -- owning a telephone, a passport, a driver’s license or a gas connection and a house.

In keeping with authoritative behavior, most marriages were arranged. Gandhi and Nehru were forgotten entities their pictures framed in every government office, ideals obliterated.

The Babu (read lower government official) was King. Cordless phones a luxury item, compared to over 500 million cell phone users today.

The bulk of youth (everybody could not make it to IIT or IAS or MBBS) aspired to be part of this Kingdom and wield the power to dole out telephone connections or hand out nationalized bank loans and progress in life --- from Bajaj Scooters to Maruti 800s.

In a way the spiffy, quick pick up, not very expensive Maruti 800s that took on the ambling Ambassadors and Fiat cars that dominated Indian roads was the first challenge to the Raj, though there were car quotas still and one needed to bribe a Babu, maybe by offering foreign made liquor bottles.

The Maruti 800, fast, flexible and individualistic, though a tin pot compared to cars of today, indicated the 90s and new millennium.

Today a typical middle class Indian family travels in a snazzier Maruti Swift or a Hyundai I-20, financed out of quick processing private bank, visits choc a bloc malls during the weekend, watch high priced multiplex movies, while the kids feed on pizza and burgers, probably from MacDonald’s, home delivery or take away, resulting in new age problems such as obesity.

The parents lead jet setting corporate lives, grapple deadlines, keep global times; some fight lifestyle related heart problems and hyper tension, while others spend time at the gym or spa to de-stress and detoxify.

Telephone connections are not a problem, bank loans available online, cars can be brought off the shelf like a pair of jeans.

There is freedom to choose. Love marriages are on the rise, so are gays and divorce rates.

Discussions center on Nehru’s affairs with foreign women, rather than his beliefs and vision. Gandhi is remembered in context of Bollywood masala flicks such as Munnabhai MBBS.

The one’s who have made it bigger via the stock market or real estate wind falls, commute in bigger Honda cars or even a BMW and travel abroad for holidays and spend evenings at expensive clubs, discussing art investments.

Mobile phone toting maids connected to roaming parents look after kids who spend time on computer games and TV. The children imbibe good social skills in private schools followed by an expensive MBA (in India or abroad).

There are plenty of domestic service sector jobs that need more smooth talking and less thinking -- hospitality, banking, insurance tourism, outsourcing or at MNCs such as Coca Cola, Pepsi or Nestle, offering perks and foreign postings.

A lot needs to be improved, such as regular electricity supply and roads without potholes. A well behaved Babu is still a rarity.

Though there are masses poor in India still, there are masses of the upwardly mobile too, who like to leisure and dictate the market.

India has changed --- for better and worse. The era of Bajaj Scooters and Maruti 800s is history.

Pack of Indian Cards (August 2009)

The other day I did a check on my cards and identities.

I own a voter ID card, the PAN card issued by the income tax department, passport for foreign travel, an old irrelevant ration card, driving license, credit cards, two hotel loyalty cards, individual shopping cards from grocers, lifestyle stores, club membership card, one free parking card from a local mall…Depending on where I am headed, my wallet can get quite thick.

But, this is not the end of it.

In some time I should be the owner of one more card, touted by the government as the most important one that will finally and clearly define who I am and will also definitively pin down each individual in the country for fake or real.

New Delhi has appointed Nandan Nilekani, till recently head of software giant Infosys, as Minister to oversee the issue of this ultimate card that will form the basis of social security and poverty alleviation doles, free insurance and many more services that the government has failed to deliver so far.

Nilekani, who has since base shifted from Bangalore to Delhi and provided perks of power such as red beacon cars, accommodation in South Delhi and personal security guards, is to oversee the massive single identity card program and accompanying unique number that will cover the 1.2 billion Indian population.

As he is a professional, I expect Nilekani to do a good job, though the task is humongous, budget is in billion of rupees, cost estimated over Rs 100 billion and not at all easy to implement.

Take the example of Voter ID card.

One day, without appointment or warning, a government official (probably a school teacher) arrived at my house.

She said she was in a hurry and would not come again, following which she handed blank forms with many pages for me and my family to be filled out instantly, with photographs and other details.

As she waited, she complained incessantly about the delays being caused to her as she had to cover many more houses and seemed unhappy that I had agreed to fill the form.

Probably, it would have been easier to mark off one more household as not available for details sought.

I somehow managed to fill the forms, by ensuring the servant kept her plied with tea and other eatables, expecting nothing to follow, but the Voted ID cards did arrive in some time.

Others have not been so lucky, if they did not happen to be home when the government official arrived or asked for a later date.

Those who have tried to apply on their own have faced severe red tape, shunted around like secret files from one jurisdiction to another, between offices, desks and clerks.

Even worse off are those who have had their details filled in incorrectly.

I know people who have been recorded as male for female and vice versa with no redress despite several appeals.

Once a Voter ID card is made, that is it, whether for the right or wrong.

On the other hand, my experience with the PAN card has been quite good.

As suggested, I applied online and the card was delivered within a fortnight. Incorrect details can also be rectified via the Internet.

I am impressed by such efficiency by a government department.

However, there can be no such online short cuts for Nilekani. There are barely 50 million active Internet users in India.

A huge portion of the population will have to be accounted for offline, manually as the Voter ID process, in a country where long dead government employees continue to be paid salaries and pensions, while others own multiple passports and some more are listed as the wrong sex.

Speaking of passports, the system continues to be awkward, despite several announcements of reforms. There is an online system of filling forms, but the actual application needs to be offline --- through touts or individually.

Although it took me the full day in a queue at the very crowded passport office, the document did get re-issued.

The officer at the desk was clearly harassed by the work load.

Indians can be difficult customers at times --- one argued why the government needed information about neighbors, with whom his family did not enjoy good relations, when the concerned passport was his?

Another gentleman, who too had spent the day in the queue, turned out to be from Agra.

On being told that he was not eligible to apply in Delhi, he retorted that he had come to the Capital city as the passport office in Agra was more chaotic.

Driving licenses and ration cards are an even bigger mess.

No sane or honest person can procure them unless one works through touts (with links with officials whose palms need to be greased) who swarm the offices.

This means that innumerable drivers on Indian roads, with the highest number of accidents in the world, are quite ineligible to handle any vehicle.

Indeed, Nilekani has a big task to avoid pilferage, misuse and a-corrupt machinery spouting around the new card.

I have worked out credit cards though, the ones that are lifetime free and delivered at home.

I have a pack of them --- each offering different utilities --- holiday, hotel, movie, restaurants (could be different for separate cards), air line, golf course discounts or freebies.

The catch here is not to keep any balance pending as the interest is usurious.

I find the loyalty cards also useful if one patronizes a particular place often. The do get you some good deals sometimes and keep you abreast with the latest sales and offers.

But government cards, they need to get it right.

It could pay to be a beggar in India (March 2007)

In a country of myriad social and economic mixes, this is one more. Some say it pays to be a beggar in India, estimated to be a-Rs 2 billion (approx US $50 million) business, only in the commercial hub of Mumbai. Begging is estimated to be a-Rs1.5 billion industry in the capital New Delhi, employing 50,000 people.

Most beggars originate from the over 200 million Indians who continue to live under impoverished conditions, surviving on less than a dollar a day. Benefits of growth have trickled down with more than 200 million crossing the poverty line in the past two decades, but there is a huge mass yet untouched.

Innumerable visitors to India carry back images of beggars knocking desperately on their car windows or pestering them at tourist locations.

Though there is a very dark side to begging in India, of exploitation of children and forced amputations, the organized aspects of the beggary business has also come to the fore.

Some have been more than lucky. Recently, the media carried the story of a woman beggar Sarvatia Devi from the impoverished state of Bihar, who pays an annual insurance premium of Rs 36,000 (US $800), a princely sum for many in a country where 200 million eke out a living on less than a dollar a day. She has money stashed away in bank accounts and is driven to educate her daughter.

The report said that Sarvatia has traveled across the country and even been on a pilgrimage to many holy places. ``It’s a fun traveling on trains free of cost. I board any train and beg till I reach my destination,’’ she said.

Sarvatia’s case is similar to some the bar girls of Mumbai who have amassed huge wealth due to the largesse extended by their very rich clients. The scale of earnings of some bar girls who inhabited dance bars that have been banned now, is of course much more.

But, the begging business model is sound. Indians are known to be in a very partial mood during holy occasions such as festivals or temple visits, celebrations such as marriages or success in jobs or exams. Families follow traditions of giving away alms to the poor for generations. Beggar, like cows, are tolerated on Indian roads as many consider it their religious duty (dharma) to give away alms.

Some beggars have had it better than others. There have been several instances of beggars fighting cases in courts by hiring lawyers to defend their right to beg on being picked up by the police. A beggar found dead on the roadside in Mumbai had hundreds of thousands of rupees stashed away under the mattress on which he died.

Film director Madhur Bhandrakar known for entertaining yet meaningful cinema spent over a year researching the subject of begging in Mumbai that resulted in the recent movie release Traffic Signal.

Bhandrakar portrays beggars as human beings with emotions and attachments that is okay, but ends up preaching status quo rather than a way out the morass for the people involved.

However, the film does catch quite a bit of the back channel systems that run the show. It is a deep-rooted mafia, with politicians, municipal authorities, police and the underworld, that charges a fee as protection money from each beggar and ensures that the business keeps running.

The film, however only fleetingly looks at the several allegations of criminal gangs resorting to amputation of body parts of adults or crippling children so that they generate more sympathy and can make more money.

And like any other vocation, there are those who make it and others who don’t. Thus the half-naked fakir watches movies in multiplexes with his girlfriend while not working as a beggar; the desperately pregnant woman is filled up with pillows; the dead on the road is actually alive.

The basic principle on which the begging works is a very deep-seated belief among many Indians that their sorrow can end or happiness could continue if they help the poor.

A very noble principle except that ideally the alms should be channeled via more organized forums rather than car windows or a poor soul at the sidewalk. There is a nuisance value, danger of crime and encourages a wasteful industry centered round a parasitic existence and exploiting the poor.

Recently, noting the failure of Delhi government and the police to curb begging in public a court has directed both to house beggars in detention houses and train them in vocational trades.

The police also have to probe if “organized begging” was run by an inter-state mafia. Police officials say that they are quite helpless against permanently rounding up beggars due legal and cultural issues that looks at begging as a social rather than criminal problem.

A recent study conducted by a prominent non-government organization (NGO) and the Institute of Human Behavior and Allied Sciences (IHBAS), one of India’s leading mental hospitals, revealed that 77.6% of the homeless women were in the age group of 16 to 45 years.

While over half of the women (52.2%) of those surveyed were selling small items on footpaths to earn a livelihood, 18.4% were doing odd jobs as construction workers and contract laborers. Another 18.5% were beggars. Significantly, 98 % reported sexual harassment.

Indian social activists could perhaps take a leaf out of Bangladesh’s Nobel Prize Laureate 2006 Mohammed Yunus who has included the category of beggars in his massive micro credit program.

Beggars are provided to loans to procure items that can be sold over the windows, such as toys, eatables, stationary items etc, a process that allows them to ultimately move up the economic and social ladder. Many have managed to set up their own small businesses such as retail shops.

Indeed, begging is only one aspect of dark elements trying to advantage of the acute poverty in this country. Despite a ban on organ trade, there is a-ruthless machinery that is involved in a multi-million dollar exercise that preys on the poor desperate for money.

Many times organs are removed even without the knowledge of the victim who might have been admitted to the hospital on some other ailment. As Indians are very reluctant voluntary donors, the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu has attained notoriety for scandals involving illegal removal of kidneys.

India continues to be a story of vast contrasts. According to government figures, a new category of the rural rich has emerged in India creating a divide within the rural economy, as opposed to just a rural-urban income disparity.

Thus, the rural rich are 1000 times more likely as rural poor to own a motorcycle, 100 times as likely to own a color television and 25 times as likely to own a pressure cooker. It is a market estimated at over US $100 billion.

Investors looking at India as a market composed to 300 million middle class households, many employed in the services sector that contributes more than 50 % of the GDP, could do well to add another 100 million, at the least residing (or with a base) in rural locations.

However, beggars on the streets of India are one more-stark reminder of the distance that has yet to be covered.


There is More to Indian Malls (March 2004)

Lifts in order, escalators moving, friendly security guards, organized parking, clean urinals, plenty of space to fool around, cool air-conditioning, no litter, no betel-juice splattered walls, no graffiti such as Indians love Pakistanis, clean floors --- this cannot be India.

It is.

The last decade or so has seen the unshackling of the Indian economy courtesy liberalization and globalization. One positive fall-out of this has been a realty boom across the country whether in residential or commercial space. Another change has been sprawling and glitzy shopping malls erected at a frenetic pace in major cities such as Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Delhi.

The past year has witnessed the mushrooming of these buildings in Delhi that has not only changed the way Indians go about their shopping, which was usually in crowded, humid and jammed markets, but even changed the way Indians behave. As is said, economics is about behavioral studies.

There are three such malls, Sahara, City Center and Metropolitan located in urban Gurgaon, the satellite town of Delhi, described by Indians who have not visited Singapore as the Singapore of India.

This is because the buildings are state-of-the-art, but the rest of infrastructure, including roads, public transport and traffic leading to the malls are in an appalling condition.

There are gaping manholes formed every monsoon, that not only suck in people but sometimes cars and also trucks. Thankfully, the story is different inside as these complexes are of international standard if one can term the ones in south east Asia so.

And, herein lies the paradox.

Multi-storied air-conditioned buildings housing restaurants, multiplexes, clothing and electronic shops, coffee kiosks, fast food, girls in short skirts and tank-tops mesh together to create a very un-Indian scenario, seen only on television and events such as an Indian fashion show, where women have only heavenly figures and prêt wear includes micro-minis.

This could not be happening in India just a while back.

A Bit of History

Not too long ago, in Delhi, the only urinals one could visit were located at five-star hotels. The rest left an odor on the body that lasted till a change of clothes and complete rinsing. Hence, innumerable Delhiites relieve on the roadside while women have a bad time.

Similarly, the only places with free air-conditioning were the American and British Council libraries, where retired civil servants and sundry others without work, snoozed and snored in cool comfort during the afternoons. The rest of the unemployed, especially the youth, overawed by libraries, spent time at cheap movie halls showing equally cheap movies.

The one last bastion of coolness was the underground Palika bazaar at Connaught Place where there is no space to walk and a fire or bomb scare happens the day before or after a visit. This writer wouldn’t be alive otherwise.

That is until the malls happened. No family outing or dating itinerary is now complete without a visit to one of these. The same people who lined up outside temples or India Gate in the evenings, the most popular family entertainment for a long time, now visit the malls. There is equal space for elders to take a cool siesta while the youngsters can just hang-around.

The glitz is for real

I decided to check them out personally, to know for sure that the outward glitz did not conceal a whole lot of muck inside.

Having used the toilets, the cleanliness can be vouched for, the flush was working and even the toilet paper was in order. As a matter of fact an attendant waited outside and entered immediately after to crosscheck and clean. Slightly disconcerting. I sniffed around for dark dank corners that are usually visited by more normal denizens to ease their bladders, but found none.

A friendly security guard, not a regular specimen, came up to me and said, ``that way is a dead end, sir.’’

I scoured every lift to check for graffiti, the, I love you forever types. There were none. A friendly liftman, he was actually there, said, ``have a good day sir,’’ as I stepped out.

This is not India, I told myself. Talking of lifts, the one that was not working had a warning placard announcing the same. Generally, when lifts do not function, the authorities find out last. So, there are usually people stuck inside who bang and scream as if they are running out of Oxygen, although all of them must have been stuck in a lift sometime in their lives.

Even the escalators were working. The last time an escalator was installed in Delhi was at the Railway station, quite a few years back. It has never functioned; at least nobody claims to have seen it move.

Finally, I had to check whether the one bastion of Indianness was transcended --- litter. Littering is a birthright and some parents feel proud when their children eject toffee bites and potato chip bags everywhere. It gives them a sense of power and independence, of being able to do what one wants to, of freedom and democracy.

Sadly, there was no litter at the mall.

This writer tried to ascertain the behind-the-scene psyche that has resulted in the neatness and organisation. The corporate office of one mall was a venue for such answers.

The manager on duty was patient and heard out the woes. ``Where has India disappeared,’’ I asked.

His explanation was simple. Indians per say do not like to be the first to do anything. Only if one does it everybody does it and if no one does it, nobody does it.

``Just as we had one Miss Universe and now we have so many. It is the same syndrome,’’ he explained.

The critical issue over here, he further added, is to ensure that the first of such happenings do not happen.

``If one person spits in a corner, within minutes there will be 50 more spitting at the same spot which will turn into an impromptu permanent spittoon. Similarly if one person writes on the wall of the lift, 100 will follow in 20 seconds and the entire mall will be one American graffiti’’ he explained.

``The key is security, and we are very tight, though polite about it. But, at the same time apprehensive as one slip up (quite literally) means things will go haywire.’’

This writer did not agree with the manager. More and more Indians have been exposed to systems abroad and know of their spotless functioning. Perhaps, it’s a change of heart and mind. But, one could also be jumping the gun.

As they say, we are like this only.


Touting Credit Cards in India (July 2004)

The rapid growth of the private sector over the past decade has taken several forms (banks, automobiles, airlines, retail, real estate, etc), one of which is the proliferation of credit cards. Usually India is a land of scarcities (water, electricity, health care), but there is certainly no shortage of plastic money. In fact, it's a problem of plenty.

As with anywhere else in the world, the choices are unlimited as the players are innumerable: HDFC, Citibank, ABN Amro, American Express, State Bank of India, HSBC, Standard Chartered and ICICI to name a few.

As an example of the boom in credit card use, Visa International on Tuesday said its card sales volume in India grew by 80% to $3.2 billion for the first quarter of 2004m with retail sales volume rising by 61% to $569 million in the January-March.

With direct sales to the customer being used as the card providers' unique selling proposition, each company has an army of boys parked throughout New Delhi. They can be found perched just about everywhere. At market places these agents approach to say that buying their card could fetch huge shopping discounts.

At petrol stations they say the card allows its owner to fill up without surcharges, outside cinema halls movie discounts are offered, outside hospitals free life insurance is thrown in, at restaurants its pizza discounts, outside homes they offer anti-burglary devices, at five-star hotels its room discounts; some even hang around public toilets to catch relieved customers in a good mood.

There are personal innovations in their selling, too. For instance, outside hospitals they begin by quoting the Gita, or some other such religious text, to remind of the uncertainty of life and the need to plug it with the card.

One can catch their polite whispers all the time. "Excuse me sir," they gently butt in. The tone is familiar. In Bangkok any visitor knows very quickly that such messages mean massage girls are on offer; here it is credit cards.

At one time the paan waala (betel sellers) could be found around every corner, now it is the credit card touts. And they stand out: they are always dressed like corporate executives, but a bit sweaty (they don't perform inside air-conditioned conference halls). They have become almost a cultural fact of life in Delhi, and other major centers.

Such is the array of choice that it sometimes becomes difficult to choose one brand over another. After a little research one discovers that the cards all offer similar credit ranges, give and take a few tie-ups.

It also becomes apparent that the discounts are covered by the high rates of interest on the card. Over the past few years, millions of Indians have bought credit cards which have also spawned an institution of burly men who try to track down the huge number of defaulters.

As an example of similarity, most banks charge interest of 2.95% per annum; while international brands are lower: American Express charges 2.75%.

I wanted a credit card to replace the more risky debit cards I own, but I made a mistake. I gave my mobile number to five boys out in the sun, just to find out more details. The credit card companies are smart; for telemarketing they have employed young and sweet-sounding girls, who are difficult to refuse.

The poor boys rough it out in the open passing on the telephone numbers they collect to their female counterparts functioning from better environs.

The girls are similar in their persistence, though. After a couple of calls, they acted more familiar. One beseeched every morning: "Sir, pleeease, pleeease, you have to buy our card."

Another called a few moments later: "Sir, if you don't take my card I will not talk to you anymore." Three others also made it a point to call regularly to make similar difficult-to-refuse requests. Soon, I was on first name basis with the girls - Renu and Anu, to name a couple.

My wife thought I was having a swinging time. It is not often that so many women treat one with so much importance. Some friends tell me that their wives even changed their views about them, thinking they must be sexy with so many girls calling - their spouses even started behaving better, they said.

The problem was I couldn't decide. The girls do matter, but how does one choose from products that do not differ - it is like trying to choose from five pairs of black identical trousers with five similar-sounding girls pleading with you to take theirs.

Ideally, I should have taken all five, but I didn't require more than one card to begin with, and more than one annual fee.

Ideas occurred to me. One was that I should change my mobile number to avoid the girls as well as the plastic. But that would be escaping a situation and not solving my need for a credit card.

The second was akin to a swayamwar (marriage selection) wherein I meet the five girls one by one and eliminate them based on other criteria, as they all sounded similar. This, too, did not gel as I soon realized that that the ones who talk do not necessarily meet.

If there is a request for a meeting, it is again the guys out in the field who take over. I told one of the girls that I would like to meet her to solve my dilemma.

She took my address and sent across one person from the army of boys. As per some unstated rule, the boys do the running around while the girls only talk on the phone. I did feel a little cheated.

The boy came on a bike, smelling like a distillery of sweat given the hours he spends on the road. He spoke by rote and recited the same paragraph again and again for every query. I asked him a different question but he gave me the same answer. Even tourist guides are better.

He drank a lot of refrigerated water, asked me for my bank statement and whether I owned a car and a house. I signed at three spaces and he shook my hand and left, saying that the card would be on its way.

Soon, I was the owner of a new credit card, yet the other four girls continued to call. I had to bring my wife into the picture. Women have a way with each other. She simply asked them to stop calling and they did. "You aren't what I was beginning to think you were," my wife remarked.

Life is back to normal, except for a few behavioral changes in my wife and continuing calls from my current credit card provider that I should pick up an add-on card for her. Now that's risky. This one I have decided to handle on my own, be what may.

Queue Sera Sera (November 2003)

India's great leap forward into technology, accompanied by dollops of government services privatization, is doing away with the late and unlamented queue, in which private citizens used to spend hours.

Change is fast becoming more and more apparent, with the individual the beneficiary. Although no statistical evidence exists on the time spent standing in queues before India's querulous and ill-tempered bureaucrats, it must have amounted to quite a bit of the lifetime of several of our ancestors, grandparents, fathers, mothers and us.

The payment of electricity bills may have been the worst - it was so bad that there was a queue to get in the queue. That is, the actual queue to pay the bill was so long that private agencies and individuals took it upon themselves to pay the bills for other people for a fee. But so many people patronized the agencies that the queues to hire the agencies were bigger than the real queue.

This is no joke. Until recently - in most places less than the last year - some members of the family were forced to take a day off from work to pay the electricity bill. The lucky ones who had aging retired and often ill grandparents delegated.

But it was a sorry sight. Paying the telephone bill was equally arduous. The problem was the monopoly status of the government in dispensing these services.

Further, any reneging or delay in payment led some slothful public sector employees to take on unmatched speed and skill to disconnect the services. Harassment to make money was their motto. Then Internet-savvy private banks came to the fore. Both telephone and electricity bills can now be paid online.

A click on the "bill payment" section from the comfort of one's home or office computer takes care of a host of services - credit cards, electricity, loan premiums, cell phone bills to name a few. The queues have disappeared and the process takes but a few minutes.

Private foreign and Indian banks have further contributed their might to reducing queues - ATMs, online requests for drafts and fixed deposits have made the process of waiting for the cashier or manager at an unfriendly public bank a thing of the past.

Online share trading, with several banks acting as brokers, is catching on. The Internet has also resulted in the elimination of several other queues. Train reservations, another long drawn out affair, now are available online. So is the booking of cinema tickets, which at one time or other contributed to ever-increasing statistics of more and more Indians waiting unendingly their turn in line.

The filing of tax returns too once engendered an army of touts and agents who took turns to stand in line for a commission. Now the forms can be downloaded and submitted online.

Another queue has been nipped at the bud. Not too long ago, a telephone connection was the exclusive domain of bureaucrats and politicians who doled out the favors like feudal lords. The waiting period was years and the list more than a million.

There were even reports of women sleeping with politicians to avail themselves of personal telephone facilities. The advent of private players has meant that the public sector employees have finally been jolted by fears of voluntary retirement schemes and redundancy.

The customer service has never been better; as a matter of fact often better than even the private players who are driven only by money. Privatization has also meant that almost anybody above the poverty level can afford a cellular telephone.

The customer is the real king. One more example in this sector is the phone directory service - earlier one waited and waited for the operator only to be rudely told off. But now, India's directory assistance ladies are sweeter than honey.

Analysis has shown that the government people are reacting positively to the challenge of competition and in several cases are doing quite well.

They have even been known call to inquire whether a complaint has been attended to. Similar has been the case for cars, Liquefied Propane Gas (LPG) and airline tickets, all of which are now available over the counter or the telephone or online.

A few years ago, there were special government quotas to book cars and many a senior government official prided himself on having cars released for relatives.

The only planes one could use belonged to Indian Airlines, who took their own sweet time to fly and sometimes did not. LPG was delivered by whim. Food for the family be damned. However, problems still fester. Drivers' licenses and passports are still a hassle.

As cars become increasingly available through easy loan schemes, traffic has become a nightmare and Indians now find themselves facing the brunt of traffic queues as roads, the key infrastructure area, still leave a lot to be desired.

The airports too remain in a state of decline, with immigration and customs clearance a long-drawn-out process. Power is the monopoly of the government in most of India, making an irregular and often non-existent electricity supply a bane for citizens.

Nobody, however, can deny that technology and the unleashing of private entrepreneurial spirit has made things a lot easier for people living in India, as well as the many others who are part of the reverse brain drain process.

The queues are dwindling.