India actually isn't much like China at all!

I've been hitting the road in the spirit of truly comparative political science, going to last week to see my good friend and fellow field worker, Charlotte. I spent 8 days in Beijing. And now I can report back on all those "India versus China" comparisons one sees in The Economist, FT, and other papers. The outlines of the comparison that I had in mind going in: China is richer, but it's got an autocratic and corrupt system of government. India is poorer, but it's corrupt system of government is a democracy, so it might pull through in the end. (e.g. Thomas Friedman aka "that hack who has his own NYT colum despite the fact that he somehow thinks it is legitimate research to extract a whole theory of the Arab world out of happening to notice Chinese phone card salespeople" wrote on this point in 2005).

Still, even though I knew that these many journalistic comparisons all point out that China is the richer place (GDP/capita of about $7800 versus $3800 in India), I guess I still kind of thought that the presence of all these comparative pieces meant that the two countries were be more, well, comparable.

Now that I've been there, I'm amazed. Beijing is so fancy!!! There are so many skyscrapers and fancy malls. But it wasn't the private opulence that really struck me, but the lack of dump-like-ness that was so very un-Indian. We drove and walked over at least a fair portion of the city and I didn't see any shanty towns and only one beggar. The buildings are toasty warm , despite the snow outside, because of decent utilities. The roads have no potholes but do have sidewalks. And not just sidewalks but sidewalks with markings to aid blind people is recognizing they are coming to a curb. There isn't trash in huge piles anywhere. The buses are really clean and shiny. The cabs are all reasonably new cars and ALL of them use the meter instead of haggling for the price.

Of course, Beijing is also a showpiece city, especially with the Olympics coming up. The government no doubt threw a lot of homeless people out and maybe even razed housing to put up skyscrapers. And there are huge disparities between the city and the countryside. But even comparing oranges and oranges, India looks pretty bad. I live in India's capital and I've been to Mumbai, Kolkata, and Bangalore -- these are the cities that are getting India's new Chanel outlets, but they don't look like Beijing. And, frankly, India's government couldn't decide to raze the shanty towns of Delhi because of an up-coming international sporting event: doing so would create too much open space.

This is part of what makes political science so tricky. China scholars say their country is really corrupt. India scholars say their country is really corrupt. Scholars of both countries lament that the government is dependent on this corruption for stability so that even when the state wants to do something well, it often fails. But China's roads are SO much better. So, are China scholars just deluded about what actually constitutes "a lot" of corruption, sort of like when people in Florida wear sweaters because it is sixty degrees and, therefore, "cold"? Or is China somehow differently corrupt, in a way that makes its roads come out better?

Also, how do we figure out how important this "India is a democracy and China isn't" part of the comparison actually is? Particularly because both countries have a big gap between the laws on the books and what the judiciary actually does: so how much do the laws matter for the comparison? India is a lot more internally violent, though one can probably argue that China is more repressive. But both India and China get very, very bad marks from Amnesty International and keep parts of their country off-limits to foreigners, so how to know which country is likely to have more problems in future with internal stability?

I really want some of my China scholar friends to come here and tell me whether India looks like it is on track to be like China. China's GDP/capita is higher than India's. So maybe India is like China ten or fifteen years ago? Or maybe India is, as my boyfriend suggested, like "Bolivia if no one took care of it"? These options imply very different futures for my Indian friends.

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Stay tuned for more on "India versus China: Is this Comparison Really Worth Making?" series. Because I'm out of time now but I still have to explain my whole theory of how China's Olympic mascots reveal the reasons for differential success in population control between the two countries.

The tragic decorating consequences of the fad for English language signage

There is construction going on around my apartment and so I’ve been going to coffee shops to write quite a bit. Over the weekend, I wanted to break out of my Barista rut and chose to go to Brown Sugar, the other coffee shop that is less than ten minutes walk away. I really dislike Brown Sugar and wouldn’t have gone at all if it weren’t for the fact that they have milkshakes. My problem with the place is with the décor and becoming totally fascinated with what this décor looks like from the point of view of Delhi young people.

Let me pause to say Brown Sugar is extremely popular with the young, upper middle class Indians in my neighborhood. Big co-ed groups of them come in, wearing jeans and knit tops.

My immediate cultural reference point for “Brown Sugar” is the song by the Rolling Stones, which I always thought was supposed to be a (shocking in its day) ode to the joys of sex with black women. But my friend Ed tells me brown sugar is also heroin. Anyhow, parts of the Brown Sugar coffee shop make me think that the owners, too, associate the phrase with drugs. The sign outside actually says “Brown Sugar: Get Yourself Addicted.” And then, inside, there is a bead curtain as you walk in and the windows are flanked with about two dozen large, colored glass bongs. (I wonder if kids still call them that.) The coffee shop does offer hookas, so smoking is sort of an appropriate note to strike. But I don’t see why they just don’t display hookas. The marijuana theme continues, see below, but there is definitely no heroin chic going on anywhere.

But on the wall to the right is an indication that the owners might have the African-American and Brown Sugar connection in mind after all. There are framed covers of American LPs and these are a celebration of 70s disco and promiscuous black people. There are two albums by Boney M. (“Night Flight to Venus” and “Take the Heat off Me”) that are representative of the motif: check these out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boney_M. (This article is interesting in its own right since this group seems to have been the German – West Indies musical ancestor of Milli Vanilli.)

Two points: first, this doesn’t work with the marijuana references. It’s a drugs-music mis-pairing here. They need some Woodstock and Grateful Dead posters. Second, why is there also a framed LP of The Sound of Music?

The mismatched cultural references continue. The actual music on the stereo is US maudlin pop. With an occasional bit of classic rock, like a Zeppelin medley. There are a fair number of those raunchy dance tunes by black girl groups (like that “don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like me” ditty) but nothing that would qualify as hip-hop. Nor any disco. There is a lot of playing of boy bands and also those male solo artists who are essentially one man boy bands and, yet, the reduction in personnel in no way decreases their loathsomeness.

Then there are the tabletops, which are shallow wooden boxes topped with glass. And in each is a sort of diorama of still more mismatched cultural references. There are tables with seashells, rocks, marbles, trinkets. The other day, I sat at the sand and marijuana diorama. The table top contained regular sand, several stash boxes, and various pipes—again, "stash boxes" were what these items were called back when I was a young person. Busy being not cool enough to get invited to the house parties that actually had drugs at them. So I may be dating myself here.

All of the tables also contain (and the wall opposite the LPs is covered in) signs, buttons, stickers, cards, plaques, and magnets with various quips on them. The kind of quips you see on t-shirts sold on the boardwalk at Atlantic City, on greeting cards at the dollar store, and the coffee mugs at gas stations. Central subjects being beer, food/dieting, sex, money, aging, and gender roles. The sorts of quips that make you feel degraded just reading them. Some in the middle age despair genre: “Some people call it a six-pack, I call it a support group.” “When I die, bury me at the golf course so my husband will visit me 5 times a week.” “Thou shall not weigh more than thy refrigerator.” Some in the unreformed male chauvinist vein: “All women are bimbos, some just make better trophies.” Others in that phoney “Oh, snap!” vein of girl power: “Coffee – chocolate – men: some things are better rich.”

I feel a need to defend my country from this décor. True, each one of the horrendous errors in taste that makes-up Brown Sugar has been committed by an American. But no one American could commit all these errors in taste!

Every time I’m in there I get to wondering what this looks like if you are Indian. For one thing, I really have no idea what portion of the puns and sexual innuendos the average customer picks up on. Nor am I clear on which items seem funny or glamorous versus shocking or weird. What portion of the references and messages implied by this decor are intentional and which are just the unfortunate by-product of a decorating scheme that calls for putting up anything related to people who speak English?

I don’t know what I find most disturbing. To think that maybe these Indian teens think this is what America is really like and will grow ever more convinced that we are an immoral, petty, and soulessly commercial people? To contemplate the possibility that these are the parts of American culture that actually do appeal to these kids most -- that somehow they have seized on the very tackiest part of every popular sub-culture? Or that the steady training of Brown Sugar and like outlets might actually lead them to like this crappy decor? No matter what, I see nothing good that can come of that place. I believe it should be firmly stamped out, much like the opium dens that "Brown Sugar" may or may not be referring to.