Any foreigner who harbours doubts about India’s growing economic clout should undertake a road trip in India, partake of the delicious food served in the small cafes that dot the highways, engage the waiters and cooks in conversation, observe the customers who frequent the cafes, and soon his doubts will be dispelled. Having lived in the US for more than a quarter of a century, my craving to visit India has intensified in the recent years. My six road trips in the last two years in South India have provided me a window into India’s economic prowess that no business article can match. My recent round trip journey from Coimbatore to Pondicherry (both tier-II cities) was a real eye-opener.
Our first stop was at a highway café near a small town called Attur. The clean toilets or the delicious and hygienic food did not surprise me. The sight of foreign cars of every imaginable brand (Japanese, Korean, German, American) outside the small café was not unusual.
Our waiter surprised me. As we placed our order in Tamil (the regional language), he replied in broken English. Over the course of our meal, I learned that he was a part-time college student majoring in business administration, with hopes of pursuing graduate studies. He came from a very poor family and earned his living by waiting on tables in the morning and honing his language skills by conversing with customers in English. Since he lacked Internet facilities, I encouraged him to regularly read India’s leading English newspapers.
Bar maids who are catapulted to top positions of leading organisations or waiters who launch successful dotcoms are hardly unusual in the Western world, where there is dignity of labour, unlike India where prejudices persist.
On our return, we stopped at a roadside café near a little town named Tirukkovilur for tea. This café had a breathtaking ambience that is on par with any formal dining hall in the Western world. I learned that the owner had a catering degree and multiple years of restaurant experience. He mentioned that he wanted his café to showcase the best of India unlike its projection in some of the Hollywood movies. I agreed that while the movie, Slumdog Millionaire, fully deserved its multiple Oscars, it was not the most flattering portrayal of India! By the same token, life in the US is not all adventure, wealth, and out-of-control teenagers, as depicted in the media. Our final stop was in a little town near Erode, a Tier-III city. There I found women cleaning the café’s toilets. They shared with me that they were the primary breadwinners for their families. They were seamstresses and were considering using micro-financing to launch their own venture. They vowed to educate their daughters to become engineers or doctors. The only thing missing in the rest rooms was toilet paper, which is not unique to India. Even in China, arguably a country far ahead of India on the economic curve, in the outskirts of Tier-I cities, Beijing or Shanghai, toilet paper is not available in some of the restaurants.
My biggest takeaway from this experience is that education, the last bastion of the middle-income and wealthy segments, is weakening and that with sustained effort one can pull himself/herself up from the bootstraps (an American cliché). Second, pride in one’s country and a desire to show off one’s best has emerged among India’s masses. Third, entrepreneurship is firmly planted even in the psyche of the poor. Finally, the masala tea I savored at each of the three cafés was unique lending support to the adage that variety is indeed the “spice” of life, unlike the golden arches of McDonald’s that dot US highways, where from Seattle to New York, Detroit to Los Angeles, one can be assured of being served the standardised burger.
krishnan@xavier.edu