Pressing rewind: How India became Third World again

紧迫的倒退：印度为何重回第三世界

Both as a nation as well as respiration, we’re back to being Third World again. No matter how many Howdys we’ve got and moonshots we make, or how much geopolitical heft we’ve gained, describing what lies outside our doors and windows as ‘saare jahan se achha’ would require a lot of pluck, straight face and magic mushrooms.

If a few decades ago, India’s Third World tag was globally advertised by poverty-stricken faces, filthy streets and power outages that embarrassed many of us both here and abroad — and periodically turned into ‘heartwarming’ slum aesthetics in films like Roland Joffé’s 1992 City of Joy and Danny Boyle’s 2008 Slumdog Millionaire — today, it’s manifested in the fare the country offers as civic features and amenities to its citizens. And as anyone with a pair of nostrils, lungs and eyes will recognise, it is dire.

This tag is not just about how our governments treat its chosen people, whether in Kalkaji or Kashmir, but how we ourselves choose to live in our surroundings. In a recent interview, French novelist Michel Houellebecq rightly observed, ‘God didn’t build cities, he made the countryside. Man built cities.’ Man also maintains cities. In India, for the most part, people have simply chosen to outsource that too to god.

The searing air pollution levels that have turned north Indian towns and cities into seasonal gas chambers, the regular deluges that Mumbaikars have simultaneously come to tolerate and gnash their teeth about, the complete anarchy on the roads that almost every Indian city embraces as part of its intrinsic ‘traffic culture’, all seem far removed from the environmental concerns of the First World. It is more connected to our toleration and celebration of filth. More than giving a damn about carbon footprints and climate change, crop stubble-burning or the dum of toxc industrial waste is an extension of our throwing out garbage onto the streets, chucking plastic and spitting from cars, and the habit of public urination.

在国家层面和空气层面，我们又重回第三世界。不管我们有多少诸如“射月计划”的成就，也不管我们获得了多少地缘政治分量，直面我们的窗外环境，我们需要很大的勇气、紧绷的面孔和神奇的蘑菇。

几十年前，印度的第三世界标签因为民众被贫困所扰的面孔、肮脏的街道和电力中断而被全球各国所知，这让我们在印度境内外的许多人都颇感尴尬，后来印度变成了罗兰•约菲1992年执导的欢乐之城，丹尼·博伊尔2008年执导的《贫民窟的百万富翁》等电影中“令人动容的”贫民窟美学——而今天，它则体现在该国为其公民提供市政设施的价格上。任何有鼻子有眼有肺的人都会承认，这有多悲惨。

这个标签不仅仅关乎我们的政府如何对待国民，不论是在卡尔卡吉或克什米尔等地区，而更关乎我们自己选择如何在我们的环境中生活。法国小说家米歇尔•维勒贝克在最近的一次采访中说得很对：“上帝造的不是城市，而是乡村。建造城市的是人类。“人类也维护城市。在印度，在大多数情况下，人们只是选择把这些义务也外包给上帝。

严重的空气污染，使得印度北部城镇变成季节性毒气室，孟买人必须咬牙忍受时常爆发的洪水，几乎每一个印度城市都面临道路交通的无政府状态，已经成为“交通文化”的一部分,这都跟第一次世界相去甚远。它更多地与我们对污秽的容忍和庆祝有关。除了对碳足迹和气候变化、焚烧农作物秸秆或倾倒有毒工业废料不屑一顾外，我们还有把垃圾扔到大街上、丢弃塑料垃圾、向车外吐痰以及在公共场所小便的习惯。

In India today, the very rich have the option of spending a substantial amount of their time in cleaner, easier, less stressful, less polluted environments abroad. Public amenities like streets, parks, views, facilities, not to mention museums and libraries are there to be utilised by the rich and not-so-rich alike the moment they step out of home.

In Gurugram, Mumbai or Kolkata, no matter how lavish your home may be, the moment you step out, you face ‘unavoidable India’ that you manfully keep out.

The poor have borne such surroundings as part of their lives. Going into a mall is going to Davos. But sandwiched between the rich and the poor lies the middle-class(es). They experience the First World through media and movies. Many of them go on vacations to these places, while some of them have ‘experienced’ life abroad while pursuing higher education or work. As India is unable to provide the quality of life swiftly enough, if ever, that they are keenly aware of being available, these middle-classes aspire to join — or have their children join — the hordes of non-resident Indians we glimpse in stadiums these days, who had earlier left India for economic reasons.

在今天的印度，非常富有的人可以选择把大量的时间花在国外更干净、更宜居、压力更小、污染更少的环境中。那里有着街道、公园、景观、设施等公共设施，更不用说博物馆和图书馆了，富人和不那么富有的人一走出家门就可以利用它们。

在古尔冈，孟买或加尔各答，不管你家里有多奢华，只要你走出家门，你面对的就是“难以摆脱的印度”。

穷人已经把这样的环境作为他们生活的一部分。去商场就是去达沃斯。但是夹在富人和穷人之间的是中产阶级。他们通过媒体和电影体验第一世界。他们中的许多人会去这些地方度假，他们中的一些人在求学深造或工作时也“体验”了国外的生活。印度无法提供足够好的生活质量，这些中产阶级渴求加入—或者让他们的孩子加入—印度海外侨胞的群体，他们早年间因为经济原因离开印度，移居海外。

But today’s urban middle-classes are getting more restless to have a better life by leaving India, rather than to find better opportunities. It is another matter that immigration to First World environments today is harder than it was before. So, it is possible that while queuing up to ‘get out’, many Indians will become more vocal about, what many still condescendingly call, ‘First World problems’.

Which is why, regardless of how we may blanch on hearing that there could be people among us who aren’t in love with India, we want our kids to settle in a nice, clean, uncrowded place, preferably with a window looking out at a park rather than a parking lot, that in all likelihood will be in the First World.

但如今的城市中产阶级越来越急着离开印度，他们追求的是更好的生活，而不是更好的机会。另一个问题是，如今移民到第一世界国家比以前更难了。因此，在排队“出走”的同时，许多印度人可能会更加直言不讳地谈论那些仍被许多人屈尊称为“第一世界问题”的问题。

这就是为什么，无论我们听到我们中可能有人不爱印度的说法时，我们会澄清，说我们只是希望我们的孩子能在良好、干净、宽敞的地方过上好日子，最好在家就能看到窗外的公园而非停车场，这种地方只会存在于第一世界国家。

印度经济时报网站读者评论：

 译文来源：三泰虎      http://www.santaihu.com/48726.html     译者：Joyceliu

外文链接：https://economictimes.indiatimes.com

GY

What to say , the first world countries were the country who formed alliance during 1st world war and Second world country who got added in Second World war. India has to be 3rd world country because it has not joined any group in any of the world war

可以说，第一世界国家是在第一次世界大战中形成联盟的国家，第二世界国家是在第二次世界大战中加入的国家。印度就该是第三世界国家，因为它在世界大战中没有加入任何阵营。

Realdeshbhakt

130 crore is very high population. All nations in asia-pakistan,afghanistan,india,nepal.bangladesh,indonesia,burma suffer from huge population.Unless nature or war wipes out 90% of population,nothing will change.

13亿人口非常庞大。所有亚洲国家——巴基斯坦、阿富汗、印度、尼泊尔。孟加拉国、印度尼西亚和缅甸都忍受着人口众多的问题。除非自然灾害或战争消灭掉90%的人口，否则一切都不会改变。

Amey Kapoor

Smart indians have already left India.Anyone left behind is basically incompetent.BJP wants India to compete with only Pakistan

聪明的印度人已经离开了印度。留下来的基本上都是无能的人。人民党希望印度只与巴基斯坦竞争。

Robin Pandey

If we put a Chaiwala as PM, what else is expected ?

如果我们把茶贩子都推选为总理，还能期待什么呢？

Kis Ore

Did India improve under Cambridge educated PM ?

在受过剑桥大学教育的总理的领导下，印度有过什么发展吗？

Anthony Barbosa

Sri Lanka is ahead of us. I won''t be surprised if Pakistan also moves ahead of us.

斯里兰卡已经走在我们前面了。如果巴基斯坦也走到我们前面，我也不会感到惊讶。

Kis Ore

You may move to Srilanka and settle there as NRI. Not Required Indians

你可以搬到斯里兰卡，在那里定居。不需要印第安人

Anthony Barbosa

NRI stands for Non Resident Indian. NRIs can live in India since they are Indians who are non resident. How can Indian become NRI in Sri Lanka? Think.

印度海外侨胞代表非常住印度人。他们可以住在印度，因为他们是非常住居民。印度如何在成为斯里兰卡的非常住居民？想一想。

Anthony Barbosa

Maybe it is time for the present government to resign if they are not able to do some real work on the economy. Even they should be worried by now. Nothing they do economically, works for the country.

如果现任政府不能在经济上做些实事，也许是时候下台了。即便是现在，他们也应该感到担忧。他们在经济上的所作所为都对国家不起作用。

Tochii60

Just a few have been touched by economic development where masses remain in abject poverty.Development at any cost has consequences.

只有少数人得到了经济发展的好处，大多数人仍然处于赤贫状态。不惜一切代价发展是有后果的。

Chandra Y

having grown up as a poor country in the last generation, we probably adjust to anything and accept bad circumstances. We are still happy.The contrary personality is not to accept anything, if it can be improved further - which is western.It will be up to the next generation to motivate everyone to bring cities up to at least second world.

我们上一代人在贫穷的国家长大，也许能适应所有事情，接受糟糕的环境，依然很快乐。相反的性格是如果任何事物可以进步，那么绝不接受现状，—这是西方的特点。得靠下一代人来激励每个人把城市至少带至第二世界。

Gopal Sriniwasan

A huge population almost 2/3rd of them in absolute poverty living in swamp and squalor with no access to clean drinking water, basic education, hygienic food.In the name of Human Rights, individual freedom and personal liberty Human Development Index was completely ignored by the planners and the government in Power. Political parties used poverty and unemployment as an alibi to capture power and a few oligarchs cornered the massive state resources leaving the vast majority to their fate

几乎三分之二的人口生活在沼泽和肮脏的地方，没有干净的饮用水，没有基础教育，没有卫生的食物。在人*的名义下，个人自由和人类发展指数被规划者和当权者完全忽视。各政党以贫穷和失业为借口攫取权力，少数寡头垄断了大量的国家资源，把绝大多数人自生自灭。

Shiva Shankar

Let us talk only about post-independence India. The country was very poor when the British left, and had a population of about 330 million. Today, the national fertility rate has fallen to about 2.2, much lower than that in several states. This is the result of higher literacy and reduction in poverty over the last quarter century. I speculate that, if our country had NOT gone “deep Soviet” because of Indira Gandhi, poverty and illiteracy would have been reduced a generation sooner, with a corresponding decline in population growth. If, today, the country had 750 million people, it would still be crowded, but much more liveable. Ideological economics of unschooled, stubborn, and drial leaders have lasting consequences - in this case, very adverse ones.

我们就谈谈谈独立后的印度吧。当英国人离开时，这个国家非常贫穷，人口大约有3.3亿。如今，全国的生育率已降至2.2左右，有几个邦还远远低于这个数字。这是过去25年识字率提高和贫困减少的结果。我推测，如果我们的国家没有因为英迪拉·甘地而进入“深度苏联”，贫困和文盲的人数将会减少一代人，人口增长也会相应下降。如果今天印度有7.5亿人口，它虽然还是会很拥挤，但会更宜居。未受教育、顽固、独才的领导人的意识形态经济学产生了持久的后果——在这种情况下，是非常不利的后果。

Ramesh Shah

AMAZON''S DEADLY ANTS IS OUR CORRUPTION TO DRAG US BACK TO THIRD WORLD LEVELS........

亚马逊的夺命蚂蚁，是我们的腐败把我们拉回到第三世界的水平。

Sonti Svln Sastry

We have to go for EV no other waywe have to stop burning of agri waste population should be controlled irrespective of religion.every one should atleast plant 10 treesone use plastic should be used be used to make petrol and diesel to used in the place coal until we devolop solor sector these are some measures

我们必须采取引入电动汽车，停止焚烧农业废物，控制人口，不管信仰的是哪个宗教。每个人都应该至少种植10棵树，用汽油和柴油代替煤，直到我们研发出太阳能发电，这些是一些可以采取的补救措施。

Baiju Bhaskaran

Although a good article,it is written without knowing fully the truth. The pollution problem in Delhi is 90 percent natural made. The pollution in Delhi is caused by temperature inversion which happens few times in a year.During this time the nano particles get stuck up in the atmosphere. Our environmentalists put the blame on stubble burning,bursting crackers and coal power plants which is 100 percent false. These three does not produce nano particles. Nano particles are produced only by vehicular exhaust and construction dust.This is the reason pollution did not occur for centuries inspite of stubble burning and bursting crackers. It also did not happen during decades of coal power plants. The real smog and pollution of delhi started only in the last twenty years due to increased construction and vehicles.The only solution is to ban construction and private vehicles during the period of temperature inversion. For erratic traffic it is only the people who has to be blamed. When this government tried to solve the traffic issue by increasing the fines,instead of welcoming it people made it a political issue.

虽然这是一篇好文章，但它是在不完全了解真相的情况下写成的。德里的污染问题90%是自然造成的。德里的污染是由每年发生几次的气温倒转引起的。在这段时间里，纳米粒子被困在大气中。我们的环保主义者把责任归咎于燃烧桔梗、燃放爆竹和燃煤电厂，这是百分之百错误的。这三种方式都不会产生纳米粒子。纳米颗粒只会由汽车尾气和建筑灰尘产生。这就是为什么几个世纪以来，尽管有燃烧秸秆和燃放爆竹等现象，却没有产生污染的原因。在燃煤电厂建设的数十年内，这种情况也没有发生。德里真正的雾霾和污染始于最近20年，原因是建筑和交通工具的增加。唯一的解决办法是在气温倒转期间禁止施工建设和私家车出行。交通不稳定只能怪人。当政府试图通过增加罚款来解决交通问题时，人们并没有表示欢迎，而是把它演变成了一个政治问题。

Umesh Bandaragal

good observation and analysis

观察和分析的不错

Goswami Boy

Just picking on the world ''Third world''. It is independent of development level. First world is west. Second world is Russia and allies. Even now, as per original terminology, is part of third world. It will remain third world even if it fully develops. It was not about development, but about cold war era alignments.

我只想批判“第三世界”这个词。它与发展水平无关。第一世界是西方国家。第二世界是俄罗斯及其盟国。即使是现在，按照最初的说法，也属于第三世界。即使得到充分发展，也仍将是第三世界国家。这跟发展无关，只是因为冷战时期的结盟情况。

Aditya Sinha

The biggest issue is Population growth. Sanjay Gandhi was right when he started aggressive crackdown to control population. If Congress (which has ruled most) kept Sanjay Gandhi’s crackdown going our country would had been much today.

最大的问题是人口增长。桑杰·甘地为控制人口而采取的激进惩罚是正确的。如果国大党(它统治了印度大部分地区)继续采取桑贾伊·甘地的强制措施，我们国家今天就会有很大改观。

Chaitanya

l please take a moment to appreciate the beauty with which this article was written. not just the current or previous govts, but the country and it''s citizens, as a whole, are responsible for the current state of environment.

请花点时间欣赏一下这篇文章的优美之处。不仅仅是现任或前任政府，整个国家和公民都要对当前的环境状况负责。

Kaushlendra Tripathi

Complete failure of central and three state governments in solving a simple problem. That all governments are of different dispensation and NONE cares is the moot point. With such apathy, we will not see a liveable let alone loveable India in next decades . Most Indian adults will live and die in this THIRD world state.

中央和三个邦的政府在解决简单问题上遭遇了彻底的失败。所有的政府都有不同的分配方式，没有人关心才是争议点。正因为这样的冷漠，我们在未来几十年将看不到一个宜居的印度，更不用说可爱的印度了。大多数印度成年人都将在这个第三世界国家生存和死亡。

SANJAY Hasija

True story and Sad to see the ignorance from all of us (citizens) and there is no point including another word “Governance”

真实的故事，看到我们所有人(公民)的无知，真让人悲哀，再加上一个词“治理”也无济于事。

Anil Kulkarni

We tom-tom about our so-called demographic dividend, but in reality huge population is the biggest curse that India has continued to suffer, more so after independence. Congress which ruled India over most of the first 6 decades, is the most to blame for disregarding population control in the garb of "secularism" and so-called personal liberties. All this was done to remain in power forever. Now, with a huge population, and yet no uniform civil code in place, we will go more backward and poor, since, the largest part of the new population that is being added, is of poor, who only demand freebies and politicians continue to splurge public funds, just to garner votes.

我们对所谓的“人口红利”欢欣鼓舞，但实际上庞大的人口是印度长期以来最大的诅咒，独立后更是如此。在前60年的大部分时间里统治印度的国大党，是最应该受到谴责的，因为它披着“世俗主义”和所谓的个人自由的外衣，无视人口控制的必要性。所有这一切都是为了将权力永远捏在手中。现在，印度人口众多，却没有统一的民法，我们会变得更加落后和贫穷，因为新增加的人口中，穷人占了最大的比例，他们只会伸手白拿，政客们则为了选票继续挥霍公共资金。

Amey Kapoor

I agree with you.Hindu population from UP Bihar is growing like cockroaches.

我同意你的看法。来自比哈尔邦的印度教人口像蟑螂一样繁衍壮大。

Mohanqp Thomas

1500% right. Population is the biggest curse for India.

1500%正确。人口是印度最大的祸根。

Mayank Malik

It''s a shithole country

印度就是个粪坑。

God

Don’t call Pakistaz that, it might hurt someone’s feeling and they might blow up.

不要那么说巴基斯坦人，那可能会伤害别人的感情，他们可能会气炸的。

Realdeshbhakt

talk with few people from any state in north india and you will find why india is third world nation.

跟北印度任何一个邦的人交谈看看，你就会发现为什么印度是第三世界国家了。

Aishvaraya Gupta

India is the worst country in the world.. worst quality of life.. drama politicians & corrupt bureaucracy & judiciary... population exploding like ants

印度是世界上最糟糕的国家…生活质量最差…政客、腐败官僚、司法…人口像蚂蚁一样爆炸