I just returned from 17 days in India. I’ve still got some things to say about the trip.
India has a population of 1.4 billion people, the most of any country in the world. Its area is about one-third of the U.S. That makes a population density 12 times greater than the U. S. and 16 times that of Mississippi. New Jersey is the only state as densely populated as India.
New Delhi, the second largest city in the world after Tokyo, has a population density of 30,000 per square mile, the same as New York City. That’s 476 times the population density of Mississippi. So Mississippi has plenty of room for more people. Out west, states have about 15 people per square mile.
Despite all of that, India has huge swaths of sparsely inhabited land. Looking out the window of my plane flying over India, I was actually amazed at the amount of relatively empty land.
When I was growing up, we didn’t have global warming to worry about. Instead, we worried about the population explosion. We were going to outgrow the food supply and starve. The future didn’t turn out that way.
Now Europe, the United States, Russian and China are losing population. Only immigration is keeping the U. S. population from declining. India’s fertility rate is below replacement level and its population will soon peak.
There is one constant that cuts across all nations, religions, races and cultures: Affluence and urbanization lowers birth rates. One of the biggest problems in the future will be the declining global population.
The crowding in India is the result of urbanization and globalization. Agriculture has become a commodity-based numbers game. Only the big mechanized farms are efficient. Small farmers can’t make a living so they migrate to the big cities for better paying jobs.
The Internet and globalization has created a demand for low cost India labor. The cities are full of Indians using the Internet to do low paying white collar jobs all over the world. Indian call centers are a perfect example of this. The fact that Indians speak English and live in a democracy makes them the perfect low-cost labor partner for the United States.
India should be our biggest economic partner, not communist China, where labor rates have now skyrocketed. Expect the India-U.S. partnership to thrive over the next few decades.
There are some big impediments to the Indian economy. Petty corruption for one. Builders and developers have to pay off corrupt officials to get a permit. The Internet with its transparency is helping overcome this.
Little bodegas line every street selling everything from coconuts to luggage. Every street is an outdoor shopping mall. Each booth is manned by a shop owner who makes his meager living selling a handful of products. I never saw one grocery store while I was there. You buy produce on the street.
These little shop owners create a huge voting bloc, making retail consolidation impossible. Wal-Mart tried and failed to break into India. The political obstacles were impossible to overcome. This is a big headwind.
India is religious. You will see little temples everywhere, run by a Brahmin, the class in charge of religion. You bring an offering and a prayer request to the priest and he burns a flame over a statue of one of thousands of Hindu gods. People do this all day long. There’s a temple every five or six streets.
The Hindu religion is way more complicated than Christianity with thousands of gods, demigods and gurus. Eighty percent of Indians are Hindu. Fourteen percent are Muslim. Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains fill out the rest.
Different cities will worship a different deity, but when you press the issue, they will tell you there’s really only one god, Brahma, and all the other gods are different manifestations of him. It’s vaguely similar to all the different saints in the Catholic religion.
The Hindus even have a trinity, which they call the Trimuri. Brahma is the god of creation, Vishnu the god of preservation, and Shiva the god of destruction. Indians are quick to point out that their Trimuri is just like our Trinity.
The Indian people are so chill and their Hindu religion is a part of that. At no time did I ever feel threatened, even walking down a small ally in the middle of the night. I asked one guide about medical coverage. What happens if you get cancer? “Well then you die,” he said. “Death is no big deal. You live. You die. You live again.” (By the way, every hospital had huge lines of people waiting to get in.)
The disciple Thomas (doubting Thomas) came to the very southwest tip of India 2,000 years ago to spread the gospel in the gorgeous state of Kerala. Just by happenstance we stumbled upon a church in his name in Chennai, where he was martyred. On display was his tomb, a piece of his bone and the spear tip that killed him. To this day, Kerala is 20 percent Christian as a result of Thomas. It was powerful to see an actual relic from the time of Christ.
Flowers and color are everywhere in India. The flower markets are gargantuan and sold out every day. They paint their buses in dozens of colors of all shapes and patterns. The highways are all elevated because there was nowhere to build on the ground. The huge highway support pillars are always beautifully painted.
We went on a safari to Bandipur National Park in Karnataka in the far south of India. We saw leopards, thousands of deers, monkeys, peacocks, buffalo. We were disappointed not to see any elephants, But we did hear the roar of a wild tiger. It sent chills down my spine.
Bandipur reminded me of the Texas hill country around Austin, except the trees were taller and a thousand times more diverse. You may have a dozen main tree species in Texas. There were hundreds in India. No doubt the diversity of the flora leads to all the Indian spices.
It was the raging desire for these spices in England and Europe that made the East India Trading Company the most powerful and richest company in the world. Using a shrewd tactic of divide and conquer, the company essentially took control over India which was a hodgepodge of Hindu and Mughal kingdoms. A rebellion arose in the 1850s which was barely suppressed, at which point England assumed leadership of the country.
In the early days of the spice trade, ships would make a 4,000 times return on their investment. Ships full of men would sail from England to India only to never be heard of again. That makes my 24-hour flight seem like a piece of cake.
We saw the Taj Mahal, the only wonder of the world built out of love. The Mongol king built it as a tomb to one of his wives, who gave him 14 children and died in childbirth. It is the most impressive building I have ever seen, by far. The special India marble is translucent so in the morning sunlight it just glows. It is Huuuuge!
India has so many artifacts, ruins, monuments, palaces, temples, towers, forts, castles and the like. It never ends. The history is so rich, complicated and fascinating.
Indian food is just like Indian food in America, but better. Once in India, you realize there are a dozen or so different types of Indian food, all different and exquisite. You could spend a lifetime learning and eating.
Indians eat with their right hand only, no utensils. It’s much harder than chopsticks. You kind of use your thumb to push the food into your fingers and then use your thumb again to flick the food off your fingers into your mouth.
The dollar is so strong in India. Everything is so inexpensive. You can take a taxi for a dollar and be overpaying by a factor of five. The best restaurants in the city will be $30 per person.
Riding around the city in the autorickshaws is like being on a Disney ride. You’re zooming around in what seems like a death-defying manner, with every street teeming with life and activity all around you.
It was really fun meeting with my computer development teams in Chennai and Bangalore. They pulled out the red carpet for me. At one lunch, there were about 30 people eating at a beautiful outdoor beachfront restaurant overlooking the Bay of Bengal. The food was delicious and plate after plate kept coming. They gave me a bouquet of roses with “Mr. Wyatt” printed on it. I have worked with these people for four years building our web platform, which is the best out there. It was great to finally meet them.
I’m out of space and I have so much more to write. You can sit in front of your TV and travel in 4K all over the world, but there is simply nothing like being there. I understand this great and exotic country in a way I could never have without visiting. It’s part of who I am now. I will never forget India.
