Shity India vs Beautiful Pakistan

In a span of two days I came across two articles, one written by a person who traveled across India, and another by a someone who traveled across Pakistan. This makes these articles a brief travel log of the two authors.

The gentleman who visited India is Sean Paul Kelley who "is a travel writer, former radio host. He is also the Global Correspondent for The Young Turks, on satellite radio and Air America. He blogs at The Huffington Post from time to time as well. He's traveled in more than 50 countries including Iran, Turkey, Oman, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, China, Nepal and India." (See complete Bio here).

The gentleman who visited Pakistan is Mahanth S. Joishy who is Editor of usindiamonitor.com, a business man and a traveler.

There is an interesting similarity between the two articles not in terms of content but in terms of structure as both writers are expressing their feelings and observations about the country they visited. Here is an excript from both, the readers can read them one by one, and get amazed by the stark contrast in the two:

Kelly writes:

"In my opinion the filth, squalor and all around pollution indicates a marked lack of respect for India by Indians. I don't know how cultural the filth is, but it's really beyond anything I have ever encountered. At times the smells, trash, refuse and excrement are like a garbage dump. Right next door to the Taj Mahal was a pile of trash that smelled so bad, was so foul as to almost ruin the entire Taj experience. Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai to a lesser degree were so very polluted as to make me physically ill. Sinus infections, ear infection, bowels churning was an all to common experience in India. Dung, be it goat, cow or human fecal matter was common on the streets. In major tourist areas filth was everywhere, littering the sidewalks, the roadways, you name it. Toilets in the middle of the road, men urinating and defecating anywhere, in broad daylight. Whole villages are plastic bag wastelands. Roadsides are choked by it. Air quality that can hardly be called quality. Far too much coal and far to few unleaded vehicles on the road. The measure should be how dangerous the air is for one's health, not how good it is. People casually throw trash in the streets, on the roads. The only two cities that could be considered sanitary in my journey were Trivandrum--the capital of Kerala--and Calicut ... I could go on for quite some time about my perception of India and its problems, but in all seriousness, I don't think anyone in India really cares. And that, to me, is the biggest problem. India is too conservative a society to want to change in any way. Mumbai, India's financial capital is about as filthy, polluted and poor as the worst city imaginable in Vietnam, or Indonesia--and being more polluted than Medan, in Sumatra is no easy task. The biggest rats I have ever seen were in Medan! ... One would expect a certain amount of, yes, I am going to use this word, backwardness, in a country that hasn't produced so many Nobel Laureates, nuclear physicists, imminent economists and entrepreneurs. But India has all these things and what have they brought back to India with them? Nothing. The rich still have their servants, the lower castes are still there to do the dirty work and so the country remains in stasis. It's a shame. Indians and India have many wonderful things to offer the world, but I'm far from sanguine that India will amount to much in my lifetime." (Click here for complete article)

Now read Joishy:

"Fortunately I got through immigration at the Quaid-e-Azam Airport quickly, and a friend was waiting for me with his pickup truck.  The first thing I saw outside the airport was… a giant McDonald’s restaurant surrounded by a large and well-manicured green lawn.  An  unexpected welcome from the golden arches on a sunny, hot day. Two uniformed bodyguards with rifles who were exceedingly friendly and welcoming climbed onto the pickup truck bed as we started on a 45-minute drive.  I was impressed by the massive, well-maintained parks and gardens surrounding the airport.  I was also impressed by the general cleanliness, the orderliness of the traffic, the quality of the roads, and the greenery. Coming from a city government background, I was surprised at how organized Karachi was throughout the ride.  I also didn’t see many beggars the entire way.  I had just spent significant amounts of time in two major Indian cities, Mumbai and Bangalore, as well as several second-tier cities like Mangalore, and none would compare favorably on maintenance and city planning, especially when it came to potholes and waste management.  This was the first surprise; I was expecting that piles of garbage and dirt would line the roads and beggars would overflow onto the streets.  Surely there is dirt and poverty in Karachi, but far less than I was expecting.  Karachi was also less dense and crowded than India’s cities. My second pleasant surprise was to see numerous large development projects under way.  I had read about Pakistan’s sluggish GDP growth and corruption in public works and foreign aid disbursement.  This may be true, but construction was going on all over the place: new movie theaters, new malls, new skyscrapers, new roads, and entire new neighborhoods being built from scratch.  In this regard it was similar to India and every other part of Asia I had seen recently: new development and rapid change continues apace, something we are seeing less of in the West." (Click here for the complete article)

It is interesting to read the above as it comes from an Indian ... How contrast, I repeat, how contrast it is from the picture portrayed by Indian and Pakistani media everyday. Why the Pakistani, let alone Indian, media doesn't show this side of the picture is a question we all should ponder upon.

Now tell me that I am being biased... Watch this video as well