Country Manners

I picked up Thomas Freidman's The World Is Flat a few years ago.

Interestingly, he spent almost all of his time in India in Bangalore. And from his account, you might think that India is on economic fire, and every Indian is an absurdly intelligent entrepreneur destined to overtake their US peers.

So it's important to keep some perspective: India is still a very, very poor country.

As Fareed Zakaria, an Indian-born US political commentator puts its, India is "Mumbai, Bangalore, and three Nigerias in between."

The vast majority of Indians still live in the rural areas, many of which rival sub-Saharan Africa in terms of poverty. Some one out of every three Indians lives in an area not accessible by road. Many have never seen a train or bus.

This creates a gaping disparity, both economically and in terms of values.

For example, on the train from Mumbai to Bangalore, I sat next to a group of women travelling down to Kerala. At one of the rural train stops, a man boarded the train and rudely demanded that the woman move her feet so he could put up the chair next to her.

The request was reasonable enough; the problem was that it wasn't a request so much as a demand.

And then I witnessed first-hand the values of a society evolving. The woman erupted at the rural guy. Fortunately, India's bewildering linguistic diversity meant that she had to speak in English to make sure he understood:

"How dare you speak to me like that! Where are you from? You go back to your village [said with emphasis]; you talk to your wife, your daughter that way, but not to me! You listening to me? I'm a woman but not your woman. So you show some respect!"

This went on for a good ten minutes. The man, now very awkward because everyone was staring at him (and everyone knew that he was in the wrong), meekly stared out the window, probably hoping to disappear.

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting to note. Read into it what you will.