Balram: I Have Read About

Balram:

I have read about your predicament with interest. You say that" "if you were making a country, I would get the sewages pipes first, then the democracy, the I would go about giving pamphlets and statues of Gandhi to other people, but what do I know? I am just a murderer" (White Tiger, p*). But you know something, Abraham Maslow who was not a murderer and is rated as one of America's greatest psychologists agreed with you. In his hierarchy of human motivation needs, he listed basic drives such as satiation of food and provisions of protection, both of which you speak as primary, before attention be directed to the higher needs on the echelon which include education and equal rights.

Living smack in the middle of the country, one is bound to see the county in a different way than if one were living in another. Zakaria, for instance, living in over-glutted, greedy, stumbling China, and comparing it to India, sees the faults of a nation, whilst non-democratic, readily usurping all the faults of the West, particularly America.

The more upward the nation becomes (i.e. The more economic progress it makes), the more Westernized, it likewise becomes, accompanied by all those Western problems. China, for instance, Zakaria claims is becoming a country incrementally more prone to pollution of all sorts, whilst depression (a Westernized syndrome) is on the rise, alienation from family and social upheaval is existent, too, and its way of life and ethos threatened by the Internet and by globalization. Zakaria, in fact, sees it as only being a matter of time before China's communistic philosophy and orientation is threatened by Westernization and, gradually, eroded. It is, in fact, something that is happening right now, and communism, according to Zakaria, is bound soon to be replaced by Westernization. Progress does that to you. It is not all good. India, by contrast, is better.

You, however, living in India see it (particularly, perhaps, the urban centers) as a 'dark' place. Having been compelled to murder because you were saddled with your mistress's wrong and victimized for it, as is the common lot of servants in India (to be treated unfairly and unjustly with no, or little form of escape) you see India as lacking the basics (too many cell phones for instance instead of drinkable drinking water) and of offering a way of life that is no 'way' at all for the poor of its population, but 'rather a dead-end impasse to stultification and stagnation ("There is no water in our taps', and what do you people in Delhi give us? You give us cell phone (*)").

You might not even understand many of these words that I am using for, lacking education, and bound in a corrupt system, slaves, indeed, do seem mired in a 'kismet-type of situation where on the one hand one seems fated to remain in enslavement to capricious rulers for life, whilst lacking the rudiments to shake those gates of slavery and attempt freedom.

Democracy, therefore, it would seem may be more important than paving the pyramid with basic needs, such as healthy drinking water and progressing to democracy. With democratic rights, at least, one can be in a situation where all of life is open to oneself and one can battle for the fundamentals of economic development that include sewage pipes and drinking water. Your predicament, Balram, is tough and there are merits to each side of the problem.