2004-01-12

Progress

I sent the pictures from Malaysia and Vegas to the cleaners and they said that I should take them to a place that develops photos. In any case, they'll be ready Tuesday.

In the meantime, I'd like to share a couple things that I think are good for the motherland. Of course, you may not agree that this 'progress' is good,so feel free to login and try to change my mind :-)

• Privatization

The Indian government has always meant well by trying to keep private businesses, and more importantly foreign businesses, from taking advantage of the massive population. However, in some areas this has really hurt India. I've heard that in the 50's and 60's both Ford and GM were forward thinking companies and had offered to build roads all throughout India. The government declined the offer because it had hoped that Indian companies could take care of the country.

Not sure what happened after that, but only in the last few years have Indian companies been allowed to build roads. The government has allowed private companies to build highways and collect tolls.

What's weird is that you see anti-privatization graffiti around town. It seems that these companies would provide jobs and the work they do will help India as a whole.

• Information and Communication

Another mark of progress came in the form of tiny pieces of telecommunication technology known as 'cell phones', 'mobile phones', or 'hand phones'. The technology was somewhat at a standstill because they were just too expensive until a company called Reliance showed up. Reliance shook up the market and the rest of the carriers had to engage in some fierce competition to survive. In order to abruptly transition to my next point, I say: all the service plans have incoming calls free. This means that almost everybody (Taxi cab drivers, milkmen, postmen, etc.) carries one around.

In addition to the CDMA cell phone network, Reliance has also spent 500 crore rupees (i.e. Rs 1 billion, i.e. $22 million) building a cable TV, telephone, broadband infrastructure covering all of India. I thinkaffordable information andaccess to communication will allow the general population to learn more and take advantage of each other's underemployed skills and unused resources.

• Air quality

Last two things: traffic lights and cleaner burning engines. A growing number of traffic lights have countdown timers on them. This means if a driver has 60 seconds to wait, he'll cut his engine, save on fuel, and help with pollution (may God bless his heart). Furthermore, the introduction of four-stroke engines as well as natural gas burning engines meansmuch less pollution. They've just been introduced, so I hope they'll take.