Streets
On a recent business trip, I visited 4 cities in India: Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai. Here are the pictures I took while there in October 2002. At the start of the trip, I had a day free which gave me time for a side trip to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal and a neat fort nearby.
I found India very interesting. As I arrived, I had a number of stereotypes in mind for the country. These stereotypes occupied two ends of a spectrum. Poverty and poor health accompanied by risk of food-born illness. Home to a new high tech community serving the world at low cost. While both were directionally true, the reality was a richer fabric than I had imagined and the actual extremes were even further toward the ends of the spectrum than I had dreamed possible.
I visited 8 companies in 4 cities. In each case, I met with executives and officers who were bright, passionate about their business and its prospects in the world economy, and possessing of great optimism. They shared a wild exuberance. Their world markets were essentially infinite. Their supply of labor was essentially infinite. It reminds me of the wild exuberance of the height of the dot.com days. The buildings and corporate campuses which house these businesses often looked as though they had been plucked out of Silicon Valley. And sometimes looked as though they were rehabbed warehouses.
On the street, devastating poverty coexisted with computers, cell phones and horrific traffic. Although the "tions" (sanitation, chlorination, refrigeration, vaccination) were all present, they were not widely or evenly evenly distributed. Malaria and food born illness abounds. I felt lucky. I came back with a new brand of cold, but nothing more. India benefits from the best of its British occupational history ... but that same history seems to have destroyed much of India's natural culture. A country of contrast.
In any event ... here are the pictures.
Read MoreI found India very interesting. As I arrived, I had a number of stereotypes in mind for the country. These stereotypes occupied two ends of a spectrum. Poverty and poor health accompanied by risk of food-born illness. Home to a new high tech community serving the world at low cost. While both were directionally true, the reality was a richer fabric than I had imagined and the actual extremes were even further toward the ends of the spectrum than I had dreamed possible.
I visited 8 companies in 4 cities. In each case, I met with executives and officers who were bright, passionate about their business and its prospects in the world economy, and possessing of great optimism. They shared a wild exuberance. Their world markets were essentially infinite. Their supply of labor was essentially infinite. It reminds me of the wild exuberance of the height of the dot.com days. The buildings and corporate campuses which house these businesses often looked as though they had been plucked out of Silicon Valley. And sometimes looked as though they were rehabbed warehouses.
On the street, devastating poverty coexisted with computers, cell phones and horrific traffic. Although the "tions" (sanitation, chlorination, refrigeration, vaccination) were all present, they were not widely or evenly evenly distributed. Malaria and food born illness abounds. I felt lucky. I came back with a new brand of cold, but nothing more. India benefits from the best of its British occupational history ... but that same history seems to have destroyed much of India's natural culture. A country of contrast.
In any event ... here are the pictures.
