Even though I have been in Goa for several weeks now, I have kept away from the Sturm und Drang in the political arena. In this brief note, I will touch upon aspects of life that do not depend directly on politicians and their misdemeanours. Indian pretensions notwithstanding, parenthetically it is an illustration of what constitutes “Third World.”
- Very, very few establishments in Goa maintain a website, the calling card of our time. Clinics, hardware vendors, medical test labs, restaurants, service providers. You will be hard-pressed to find a website with current information and contact details. In the uncommon instance you stumble upon one, it is a wreck - broken links, outdated information, or “Server not found.” The owners of these businesses breeze around town in fancy cars strapped to their latest iPhone but they cannot be bothered to put together a basic website. In real terms it means you cannot access information about products or services online. The alternative is a lot of wasted time, effort, and frustration. - Remember the buzz a few years ago about transforming India into a “cashless society”? On the tiny island in the middle of the North Atlantic I live, you can go through life without ever touching paper money. In Goa, the vendors - even dealers of reputed national and international brands - often demand payment in cash (a ploy to pocket the GST). The invoice (if at all provided) will be handwritten and vague, not the laser-printed line-item clarity you are used to in the West. A transaction that should take 2 minutes will detain you for 15. - Banks are another area of Stone Age practices. In America, the entire banking culture is centred around one principle: How can we satisfy the customer and have him out of the branch as quickly as possible? In Goa/India, it is the exact opposite - fill this form and that form, bring photocopies of passport, Aadhar card, and your butt crack. (“Sir, our printer and xerox machine are not working for the past 2 weeks” - true story.) It is clear that Indians are not early adopters of technology or best practices. Indians are shirkers. The goal is never to make life easier and efficient. - I gave GoaMiles a try for rides within Panjim. The app seems to work okay. Initially I was happy to see Goan names for the assigned drivers. But to my dismay, some of them turned out to be from out of state under assumed fake Goan Hindu names. Now, I’m perfectly fine with any young person, regardless of geographical origin, doing honest work for a living. But I don’t like chicanery of this kind. - It is hard to find Goans in basic trades these days. Carpenters, masons, painters, even barbers - all these métiers are increasingly serviced by outsiders. The quality of workmanship is uneven, mostly in keeping with shoddy Indian standards. I’m old enough to remember the superior skills of the old Goan carpenter (“mesta”) or mason (“gavandi”). - Scant respect for your time is a law of nature in Goa and India. Schedules mean nothing here. Follow-up is an alien idea. Any estimated delivery or completion date of a service or product must be disregarded immediately. Everyone’s proximate goal is to make you go away and that means making false promises. This lack of candour and basic honesty is an all-encompassing presence in Indian life. It strikes me that the Indian who makes a living in the West takes for granted all of the items mentioned above. But in his self-absorption and conceit, he seldom makes the obvious connection: the fruits of modern technology and life he enjoys were all conceived by White men (most long dead). Instead we see the puerile chest-thumping and hailing of putzes like Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella - all beneficiaries of “White supremacy” mind you. Indians who have migrated to the West had NOTHING to do with building the societies that have given them the good life. Every convenience of modern life the Indian embraces came not from the vaunted “Eye-Eye-Teeyan” but mostly from the mind and toil of a White male. It pains me to write the foregoing, for as a fundamentalist Hindu, I am enormously proud of the Hindu civilization, its character, richness, fundamental goodness, and its dazzling intellectual accomplishments. But the reality of today’s India cannot be wished away. r
