The Nonsense That Is India

I was born in Calcutta (I'm American) and lived there for the first ten years of my life. I returned when I was forty years old.

Calcutta looked like a nuclear bomb had hit it; there were people lying on on the sidewalks obviously dying, beneath billboards advertising Internet services. The road to Dum-Dum airport was littered with dead dogs that the aging taxi had to swerve to avoid running over yet again.

Buildings, some ten stories high, had all their windows broken, as if someone had dropped a bomb nearby.

Gangs of little kids, most only six or seven, rushed up to me, the "white face" and cried "Uncle, uncle, please give us a rupee."

India would dearly love to project an image of itself as a first-world nation and since I could apply for an Indian passport tomorrow I am inclined to think it so, but it is actually not much more advanced than the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Think about that for a second.

Please read the book "Maximum City" by Suketu Mehta to get a true image of the India of today.

India is not the Third World. It is not the Fourth World. It is the Tenth World, a private hell for billions of people.

I realise this is not a great writeup for a tourist brochure but India has no business trying to run a "Commonwealth Games" when billions -- yes, billions -- of its citizens are literally dying in the streets, like the flattened mangy dogs that litter the road to the airport in Calcutta.