The word on everyone's lips in India is 'development.' India is big, India likes being big, and India wants to be bigger. There are an amazing number of signs and posters which the government posts around bragging that India is 'Number one in ____" or "India produces __% of the world's _____!" Nationalism takes on a really different feel here, but there are flags a plenty, pride in Ghandi is near universal, and an appreciation of India is easy to find.
Perhaps the strongest showing of this Indian loving fervor was that I have observed was at the Indian International Trade Fair. One of my contacts here, an Italian woman named Sabilla who is working with Navdanya, mentioned in passing that the trade show was going on - and it just so happened that this year's focus topic is Food Processing and Agriculture. Big-time jackpot on the weird collection of information lottery.
I paid my first visit to the fair on Saturday and was initially amazed by the crowds. It is hard to communicate that there are crowds everywhere in India. With a billion people, there simply isn't enough space for there to be places without people - you walk down any street, especially in Delhi, and you will see throngs of people. Every street looks like it is the busy street. While I expected there to be people at a trade fair, I didn't expect anything near what I found. Hordes of people - but most astonishingly, lots of teenage boys meandering about and staring at dioramas about how the bee industry in Bihar is growing.
The fare itself had an amazing array of displays. The whole thing spills over an expansive series of buildings and fails to follow any sort of logical order. A display on traditional carving was right beside a display selling back-massagers (As Seen On TV); A woman working a hand loom as a "live demonstration" was placed beside a man working on a standard sewing machine, beside a man sitting at a computer terminal while a pool-table sized machine placed sequins on a piece of cloth. Anything which could be made, bought, sold, or traded in, by, or around India is here.
Each state was awarded its own hall for peddlers to hawk their wares and for the state government to brag about just what they were doing for food processing in India. More importantly, the Ministry of Food Processing Industries had a hall all to their own to sell foreign investors on the opportunities which are available in India. It seems that down is up and left is right - everyone is still trying to figure out just what is going on in this mixed up world of fast-paced growth. As am I - more to come.
Perhaps the strongest showing of this Indian loving fervor was that I have observed was at the Indian International Trade Fair. One of my contacts here, an Italian woman named Sabilla who is working with Navdanya, mentioned in passing that the trade show was going on - and it just so happened that this year's focus topic is Food Processing and Agriculture. Big-time jackpot on the weird collection of information lottery.
I paid my first visit to the fair on Saturday and was initially amazed by the crowds. It is hard to communicate that there are crowds everywhere in India. With a billion people, there simply isn't enough space for there to be places without people - you walk down any street, especially in Delhi, and you will see throngs of people. Every street looks like it is the busy street. While I expected there to be people at a trade fair, I didn't expect anything near what I found. Hordes of people - but most astonishingly, lots of teenage boys meandering about and staring at dioramas about how the bee industry in Bihar is growing.The fare itself had an amazing array of displays. The whole thing spills over an expansive series of buildings and fails to follow any sort of logical order. A display on traditional carving was right beside a display selling back-massagers (As Seen On TV); A woman working a hand loom as a "live demonstration" was placed beside a man working on a standard sewing machine, beside a man sitting at a computer terminal while a pool-table sized machine placed sequins on a piece of cloth. Anything which could be made, bought, sold, or traded in, by, or around India is here.
Each state was awarded its own hall for peddlers to hawk their wares and for the state government to brag about just what they were doing for food processing in India. More importantly, the Ministry of Food Processing Industries had a hall all to their own to sell foreign investors on the opportunities which are available in India. It seems that down is up and left is right - everyone is still trying to figure out just what is going on in this mixed up world of fast-paced growth. As am I - more to come.
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