After living in two different cultures, one thing I realized, we in India don’t value our resources. It simply clicked on my mind, so thought of writing it down and re-activate the blog. I know what I am about to write could be controversial, but I will present some of my observations. Things which I observed while living in Germany for more than 4 years now. When I compared them with how we do it in India, I found that we are not much different. But there are little things that are done differently which later lead to bigger differences.
India is a resource-rich country, yet it is considered as a developing poor country whereas Germany which is almost the size of Maharashtra, a state in Western India, is developed. I think it is because we in India are so rich in resources, we don’t value them. We are constantly making, breaking and remaking mode. We have resources and cheap labour, so we use them. Germany is not so rich in resources, so they spend a lot of time in planning and proper research and development and management of resources. In the old days, German industries survived by exporting high-quality steel. Germany didn’t have many resources, but it had coal to burn. To make steel. Germany imported ore and exported steel. Then, when other countries started making cheaper steel, they shifted to making cars. Their focus has been the collective development of a single sector.
Secondly, I felt we are lazy and don’t think long term. We are always trying to find shortcuts. I think we are willing to comprise quality if we find a shortcut. We don’t think much of consequences, we just want to get done with things and get back to bhog mode(bhog means pleasure in many Indian languages but as expected for Bengali like me, it needs to have a connection with food as well, follow this wiki link to know more). Which often lead to bigger problems later. But when required, Indians can outwork anyone. This I think has to do with the climate. Germany is a cold country with limited resources. In harsh winters, the availability of food is limited since ancient times. So the mentality is to preserve as much as possible for the harsh winter.
The list may go long, and there are a lot of things that Indians do better than Europeans. For me, it’s not a competition of who is good and who is bad. If we as a species have to survive, then we have to go ahead with co-operation. The goal of this post was to write something after a long time, with the hope of writing more in the coming days.
Godspeed!
Jeet Biswas 