I sent Edward a mail from here which he has now posted in Bonoboland. Check it out. This is also posted it below. But you ought to check out the new look Bonoboland. I think Edward has managed to get some of the smartest minds on the blogosphere writing there with him.

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Varanasi is probably the most inappropriate place from which to write
about change. We consider it the oldest living city in Asia ; arguably, one of
the most traditional too. Cycles, Rickshaws, Auto-rickshaws,scooters,
motorists and pedestrians still struggle along in a general melee in the main
thoroughfares under a cacophony of horns, blaring music, angry exchanges, dusts and fumes . Monkeys still snatch food off the hands of the unwary
tourist, people still make way for Bulls which have an uncanny knack of sidling
up to you unaware.

Yet, this is where I heard one of our acquintances narrate the story of
the cycle rickshaw driver who stopped suddenly on the side of the road. As
the passenger anxiously asked wheather there is any engine trouble, this
guy said, "Nah, I got a call" as he casually took out his mobile phone. I
dont know if the story is true, but the increasing ubiquity of mobile phones is
certainly there to see. On the train from Calcutta to Varanasi, I saw people hopping in from from the mofussols (no doubt, travelling without ticket; Bihar is a lawless province) weilding mobile phones casually. Too many people in our village near Calcutta have also started carrying one for me to laugh it off as a regional fluke in Northern India.

Long distance telephone has also stopped being outrageously expensive.
I remember the times when we used to trek to the local PCO near our
village to make a long distance (STD) call. We kept these calls short. Now almost everyone seems to have STD facility from home. Friends call from other states frequently. The growth of telephony has been HUGE.

Obviously, it still has a long way to go before we should start feeling
thrilled. Apparently, you still pay different rates for GSM (Rs 2 /minute) and
CDMA (40 paise /minute) phones; Interconnect User Charges (IUC) still a
proposal. Economic Times quoted Gartner as saying that rates are still
high compared to other competitive economies. But I see enough ordinary men
and women buying phones in increasing number for me to raise a toast.

I am also glad about the ATMs! This probably will not make any
sense to those who did not have to suffer the ignominy of waiting in
line for hours before being verbally abused by the rude clerks in nationalized
banks to have their money handed to them. Only multinational banks in the larger metros had ATMs. Ordinary Indians had to line up for cash. Large
private banks like ICICI, HDFC etc saved us. ICICI and HDFC are now the second and third largest banks in India after SBI, the largest nationalized bank.

Last week I saw a Dhoti clad Bengali struggling with an ATM in Behala
Chowrastha (on the outskirts of Calcutta) when the security guard came
to the rescue. The instructions were in Bengali, Hindi and English. This is
still a huge cultural change in the suburbs! A family friend apparently asked my
mother how much interest needs to be paid to the banks for using ATMs.

You have to keep in mind that I am talking about regions which have not
been directly touched by the boom unleashed by BPO or IT industries. These
are pockets of West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh away from the heat and glory
of 'India Shining'. But when you talk to the young, you feel the hope. It is a
feeling in the air. They seem more animated. Many of the kids who used to hang around in the neighbourhood with a blank look on their faces and looked poised for hoodlumism, have found work.

While inflation seems to have eaten away at the value of Rupee, putting the
old at a disadvantage (the government now expects to keep inflation at
4 - 4.5% percent for 2004-05), there do seem to be more jobs, not just in the
hot, high profile sectors, but across board ....

But no letter from me can be complete without the obligatory rant :-)

As if the general feeling of euphoria wasnt enough, the BJP led
administration is all set to start a 'Feel Good' campaign. I liked the 'India Shining' advertising campaign of the Ministry of Finance aimed at Foreign Institutional investors. But now the government looks set to spend upwards of Rs 400 crores (Outlook,2/16/04,p26) of government money trying to make us 'Feel Good' on an election eve. It is tacky to spend that sort of money in a frivolous campaign in a country where 25% of the people live below the absolute poverty line, where violence is routine, where corruption has reached epic proportions. This is ridiculous.

But this government seems to set to follow the glorious tradition of previous ones of blurring the line between the state machinery and the party. I hear disturbing stories of changes in high school text books to reflect Hindutva ideals (I have not seen any yet). Murli Manohar Joshi (the outgoing Human Resources Development minister) is waging a battle with the IIMs and IITs which many feel are meant to erode their independence from the government.

When I speak to the older, retired middle class men,trying to cope with the rising cost of a growing economy, I feel the desperation.

But life here is certainly changing. Next week, I am spending a few days in Gurgaon,Haryana. Gurgaon has been one of the key beneficiaries of the economic growth of the last twenty years. I hope to send something more cheerful from there.