JOIN USPeople in the West, or for that matter, anywhere else, do not seem to understand why India boasts of 600 million mobile phone connections on the one hand but, on the other, has 450 million who defecate in the open. The explanation is very simple.
Mobility is an integral part of Indian culture. When only fixed-line phone connections were on offer, the connectivity in India was miserably low, and did not cross 5 per cent of the populace for five decades. Came mobile telephony and connectivity has zoomed to 60 per cent in just a decade.
We are movers, if not shakers. We do not like stasis. Mobility is in our genes. We migrate from villages to towns, from slums to high rises, from cities to metropolises and then onwards to other countries. It is not just due to economic desperation.
Even highly qualified Indians, who can land plum jobs within the country, take wing and fly off to other lands.
The Indian diaspora is spread over more parts of the world than the natives from any other nation — from remote islands in the Pacific to the deserts of West Asia and from the jungles of Africa to the steppes of Russia. There may not be an Indian café at the North Pole as yet but there is a settlement of Indians now in the Antarctic.
Mobility is the lifeblood of our politics. Our politicians are never comfortable sticking to one party or one leader. They plan to move as soon as they join a party or as soon as the elections are over or as soon as the Cabinet is chosen.
It’s an itch they cannot resist. And it is not just followers who move on to another dispensation; even leaders abandon their flock to graze in apparently greener pastures.
The same urge drives defecation in the open. Fixed loos are not for us. Don’t believe me? Forget rural areas. Look around in our cities. There is more peeing on trees and walls than in built-up urinals. There you go. Freedom of mobility is what we prefer — phoning or going.