So I finally have a chance to post - would love to show you my pictures, but will have to leave it till another time. I write from northern India, Dharamshala, where I find myself and my girlfriend Raven, after a week of travelling.
Since my last post I finished exams (just found I got an A+ in one of them, which is awesome), went to a Ecological Economics conference run by the Green Party of Aotearoa, and then shipped off to India (OK, flew. Sorry future generations.)
The Ecological Economics conference was an interesting way to spend time the day after my last exam (on more conventional macroeconomics) but I couldn't pass up the chance of seeing David Suzuki speak. He's an inspirational speaker, and started the conference with putting us within a bio-centric perspective. Instead of the economy, society and the environment being three interlocking, equally-sized circles, a more accurate model, he suggested, was one big circle, signifying the biosphere, and thirty million circles within it - one for each species. The human one though, takes up 40% of the area, and is rapidly expanding. Population and consumption of resources by humans has sky-rocketed almost vertically and many times in just 200 years - a tiny blip of time in the 150 000 or so years of modern humans. Although lost on some other speakers in the conference unfortunately, Suzuki also pointed out that 80% of resource-use is by the wealthiest 20% of the worlds population - a fact no leader of a wealthy country will freely admit. And so a few days later I was off to where the rubber meets the road in this reality - India.
India is one of the great emerging economies, with a high economic growth rate, a poor population overall, around one billion inhabitants, and an emerging wealthy class, taking more than their fare share. I arrived late at night in Delhi, after a day tour around Singapore, which also has a high growth rate, but is more wealthy overall. Four million people situated on a tiny island, with 90% housed apartments in the sky through a government scheme. It's a very clean and wealthy city, with a mind-bogglingly busy port, and an ironically interventionist, single-part government; ironic given it's incredibly high rate of economic growth. It was a great juxtaposition from the city we were about to find ourselves in.
We had heard Delhi was a horrible place from many different people before we got there, and we arrived a quite Indian man from our hotel to pick us up and take us there. The ride from the airport felt like a destruction derby - with less destruction, and more derby, but the car with the front bumper hanging on by a couple of screws, squealing around beside us, certainly increased the destruction side of things. They are incredibly skilled drivers, as we were to discover, weaving in and out of optimistically-painted lane dividers, fitting in as many vehicles into a small space as possible, and beeping to say "I'm coming through!" rather than relying on the silent and leisurely indicators we use in the West. Our room was nice - three star, and we quickly fell asleep.
Our first day was a bit of a walk to get orientated, around Conaught Place, near our hotel. Dogs, dirt, and toilet smell all through the street. Many an eager rickshaw driver, tout and salesman tried to sell us something, or convince us to use a "Government" tourist bureau. Lots of people complimented my beard before trying their tricks - the next day it was Raven's Indian dress she bought the day before to fit in more appropriately with the culture. Despite our best efforts we were screwed over a couple of times - something that gets easier to avoid the more time you spend in a place. I thought this was free market capitalism at its best - game theory of each person trying to screw over the other, especially as they don't think they will ever see you again in the vast city of millions. Needless to say it was quite horrible.
We got to the Red Fort and a Muslim temple on day two. It was also the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, where they sacrifice animals (best to read the link to get a less simple an naive account...). Coincidentally there were lots of goats being traded that day, and lead around the city to people's homes or wherever. We ate some spicy food and gave ourselves horrible stomach pains, and the next day got the hell out of there, to our relief.
Yesterday we flew into Dharamshala, and got a taxi to just north of it, Mcleodganj. Here the Dalai Lama resides, we're at the foot of the Himalayas, and everything is Free Tibet. It's a nice quiet place - slightly spoiled by all the rubbish and fast traffic through its narrow one-way roads - but it's great to be here. We're here for at least the next week, and the internet is surprisingly good, so you'll hear from me soon!
