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| Devangshu Datta: Awaiting an ABCD impact | | VIEWPOINT |
| Devangshu Datta / New Delhi Dec 05, 2009, 00:01 IST |
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An ABCD (America born confused desi) recently pointed out that the acronym was less than accurate. Indians who met ABCDs were more often confused by their amalgamated cultural values than the so-called ABCDs themselves. She enjoyed pau-bhaji as much as pizza and she did not subject her soul to searching examinations when she snacked.
Like many other ABCDs, she has fled recession in her land of birth. Global economics has led her to India. You could say she’s outsourced herself. Some familiarity with the local food and languages, and a renewal of ties with extended family are bonuses.
Less than reliable infrastructure, and casual work environments are drawbacks. Like most Americans, she slices her day into 15-minute chunks — “meeting 13.15”, “lunch 13.30”. A meeting at “one-ish” followed by lunch “post-meeting” is destabilising.
She’s also had problems adjusting to power cuts, and colleagues, who disappear at mid-day because of a cousin’s sangeet. On the other hand, the local shops deliver groceries and she can afford a plumber to fix air-blocks. She’s happy enough. Once the economic situation changes, she’ll move on to wherever the jobs are.
My guess is she’s representative of a horde of NRIs, ABCDs, PIOs, etc, who have migrated to India recently. They’re professionals who see India as a work environment that offers regular paycheques when that is not a certainty elsewhere.
It is deceptively familiar. There are uncles and cousins to chill with. Colleagues speak English. The TV programmes are the same. But there are far more holidays, the legal system is a mess, punctuality is rare, corruption is endemic, and discontinuities are caused by strikes, religious festivals, infrastructure breakdowns and the like.
Some deal with it better than others but all migrants crib about the negative aspects of living and working in India. Perhaps because they come from environments that are closer to ideal, they see the flaws more clearly than born-and-bred desis (BBDs). Quite often, their carping arouses defence mechanisms. This is odd because “we”, meaning BBDs, complain about the same things.
I hear resonances from Anil, my general factotum, who hails from a village in Alwar district. He doesn’t complain about life in his jhuggi-jhopri colony in Delhi. To him, this is far closer to an ideal environment than his village.
His village is dirty, there’s no running water, and there are 15-hour power outages. His kid’s education is stuttering because of endemic teacher absenteeism at the local school. Interaction with the land registry is a nightmare because everybody wants bribes. His occasional craving for a dosa is considered weird. His relatives tolerate his eccentricities only because of his deep pockets. He is tired of the refrain that life in Delhi has “spoilt” him. He wonders why things back home cannot be more like life in Delhi.
From a broader perspective, the NRI-BBD divide is pretty much the same thing as the urban-rural divide, sometimes referred to as the gulf between India and Bharat. People migrate to urban India because it is a better environment. Ditto migration to the First World. Those migrant experiences can trigger positive development. Rural Punjab, for instance, has reasonable infrastructure largely because of high exposure to migrants. Ditto Kerala.
Is it too much to hope that larger populations of ABCDs doing stints in India will lead to the same thing occurring in urban India? An ABCD is less likely to shrug off power cuts, live with poor healthcare or ignore sexual harassment in the workplace. If there are more people complaining about these things, there is more chance of them being corrected. It’s really less about pau-bhaji versus pizzas and much more about the power cuts.
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