Countries, Rich and Poor

I am posting this from Stockholm, Sweden. This is one of the richest countries in the world. Coming from India it is difficult to fathom how people in such countries look at the mundane problems of ordinary folks. Having waited indefinitely for the city buses in Trivandrum (which never turn up on time, and sometimes do not turn up at all) and traveled by the mofussil buses in other cities where passengers are packed like sardines, and the great KSRTC buses that ask you to run back or forth from the stop, it was a wonderful sight to see the long and silent buses, often in two compartments connected by bellows, that arrives on the dot, halts exactly at the bus stop and moves on slowly when all are in, and the doors are closed. Through the large windows you can see mostly the empty seats occupied here and there by a lonely passenger. The buses are run on biogas, and release little or no poison to the atmosphere. I wondered how many generations it would be before our country achieves this level of perfectio

In my eagerness to enjoy a bus ride, I got into a bus and asked the driver for a ticket (Conductor is an extinct species in the West, and in all ‘western’ type countries like Singapore and Korea.) He smiled indulgently and pointed to the bus stop, muttering something in Swedish which of course I did not follow. Rather late it dawned on me that I should have bought the ticket before entering the bus. The driver was pointing his finger at something when I got out of the bus. I felt like Mahatma Gandhi famously ejected from a First Class compartment at Pietermaritzburg station in South Africa. When I was about to freeze into a statue at the Vasteras city bus stop two students came to my help. With what little English they could marshal to their command they revealed the technology of getting entry to the bus. Instructions are clearly written (in Swedish) on a board in the bus stop, where the diver’s finger pointed earlier. All that you do is to pull out your mobile phone and send an SMS to 72372; the content of message is just “VV”, meaning one adult. In a couple of seconds an SMS comes to you deducting the bus fare from your mobile account. Now open the message and hold the phone for the driver to read. Into the next bus I entered like a visiting Maharajah in full regalia, holding the mobile phone like a baton of authority.

There are many assumptions and imperatives in this model. If you do not have enough money in the mobile account, no journey is possible. Payment in cash (if permitted) is always costlier than electronic payment- prohibitively costly. So everybody carries a mobile phone, keeps sufficient money in the account and always abides by the law of the land. Otherwise a country with just nine million people (less than two districts’ population in Kerala) cannot maintain such an efficient public transport system and sustain a thriving industrial base. They devise such automated systems because manpower is either too costly or unavailable. This is where countries like ours have to be cautious installing automated systems. When we go for similar systems the collateral damage is the loss of jobs

The environmental awareness in this country is not limited to running buses on biogas, but in the conscious use of bicycle by all sections of the society. Cyclists have safe tracks and parking lots on the main road; and bicycle is popular even among old people. Unlike in the US, you don’t see many obese people here; the average Swede is handsome/beautiful with no fat around the girth. Womenfolk proudly display their beautiful legs of athletic shape and textbook perfection. At the first sight I got a feeling that bicycle is the secret of their health and beauty.

All of us have a tendency to compare every new situation to what we are already familiar with. I dare not imagine an SMS ticket in Calicut-Wynad route or in Trivandrum city. We should be happy that mammoth systems like the Indian Railways have established a very reliable e-ticketing and reservation system for the gigantic railway network of the country. I could withdraw local currency in Sweden from my account in India with an ATM card. Compare this with 25 years ago when you had to empty your pockets of all Indian currency and buy, twenty US dollars in the airport waiting in a long queue with the boarding card for the international flight. What did our rulers and bureaucrats think Indians would do after landing in New York? Beg in the streets, steal, or pickpocket? They knew the answer, and that answer was in the channel of smuggling. Small time smugglers of those days matured as underworld Dons, mafia chiefs and many other things we all know now.

There are certain things we could change in our style and methods. Those who wait patiently for their turn in any queue abroad make a muddle at service counters in India, claiming priority over everyone else. Where does this habit come from? The cause of most of our fatal road accidents is not the condition of the road or vehicle, it is the condition of our mind. Unless we are ready to respect the rights of the “other fellow” we cannot escape from the present quagmire. This is true even if we land a man on the moon.

After seeing all the advancements in this country I do not dream of SMS bus tickets or the beautiful people in my country; but a country where everyone has easy access to safe drinking water twenty four hours a day and 365 days a year; a country where the politician-criminal-terrorist nexus does not divide us and rule, making peace and prosperity a mirage for ever.