BLOG #3 WEEK #3 IN MUMBAI, INDIA

Welcome to my third blog of my 2025 India trip. Susan and I are now in our third week, with one more week after this one in Mumbai. After next week, we will fly to the city of Madurai in South India for one week, where we will be guided by friends of our dear American friend who previously lived in Madurai.

Besides seeing old friends and enjoying the great food, my main aim for visiting India is to play music at every opportunity. I’ve played at a jazz club and also recorded a flute track for an album by singer Baiju Mangeshkar. Later this week, I’ll play a jazz club date with 84-year-old Louiz Banks, the “Godfather of Indian Jazz.”

OUR LINK TO RENO

We are linked with Reno by listening online to our local NPR stations, KUNR & KNCJ. We hear our good friends who broadcast online every day. I even heard my own long-running show, Saturday Night Jazz. It broadcasts on Sunday mornings in Mumbai, twelve and a half hours ahead of the time the program airs in Reno.

But this blog is not intended to be about my activities. I want to share thoughts about how visiting India affects my perspective on travel in general, as well as insights into the economies of India, China, and the US.

FACTS ABOUT MUMBAI

Mumbai is “the New York of India.” It is a major financial center and holds Bollywood, the world’s largest movie industry in terms of the number of movies produced. Mumbai has many millionaires and billionaires. Mukesh Ambani is a prominent figure in Mumbai. He has a net worth of approximately $116 billion. Antilia, Mukesh Ambani's $2billion 27-storey mansion, showcases opulence with a 168-car garage, three helipads, and a 50-seat theater. It sparks debate on wealth disparity in India.

India has now surpassed China as the world’s most populous country at 1.4 billion people, roughly four times as populous as the US, in an area roughly one-third the size of the US. Mumbai is the eighth most populous city in the world, estimated to hold over twenty million inhabitants. No exact count has been possible.

Dharavi is considered the “world’s largest slum” housing a million inhabitants in very crowded but inexpensive dwellings in Dharavi. Rural workers are attracted to leave their poor villages in hopes of finding better jobs in Mumbai.

POLITICS IN INDIA

Our month in Mumbai has given us a respite from the constant news I follow when I’m at home. My friends in India don’t follow Trump’s constant disruptions. They have their own leader, Narendra Moti, to criticize. Moti and Trump have similar oversized egos. Both support specific religions (militant Hinduism and Christian nationalism). Both leaders persecute and prosecute their political foes and their critics in the press. Trump received lavish obsequious praise from Pakistan following its recent conflict with India. Trump wanted to take credit for “ending the war,” but Moti refused to credit Trump. Instead, he said that Pakistan had ceased its military activities due to India’s clear military superiority.

Although Trump had been honored with a huge stadium event during his visit with Moti in India, Trump decided to punish Moti and India with 50% tariffs, ostensibly because India buys oil from Russia. However, Trump has not sanctioned Russia with high tariffs, rather only 10% tariffs. Trump continues to aspire to be Putin’s buddy, inviting him to Alaska and other international summits, while equivocating about US military aid to Ukraine. Trump appears to envy the unbridled power of the world’s dictators, such as Putin (Russia), Erdovan (Turkey), and Orban (Hungary).

MANUFACTURING IN CHINA VERSUS INDIA

We have a dear friend, Vijay, who has visited China several times on business. Though India likes to consider itself China’s main competitor in the world, Vijay says that China is one hundred years ahead of India. One example he cites is a factory manufacturing doors. In India, a door factory employs 200 workers and produces 600 doors per day. In China, a door factory employs ten workers and produces 2000 doors a day. The Chinese factory accomplishes this efficiency through automation and computer-assisted manufacturing techniques. In addition, the Chinese-manufactured doors are much less expensive than the Indian ones, though they are of comparable quality.

On the subject of doors, I participated in a conversation with one of my German friends regarding a handmade door that he had ordered for his house in Germany. The door contained a custom multi-pane window, which was very attractive. The door’s cost was over $2500. My friend was disappointed upon receiving the door, because he thought that the proportion of the windows did not match the computer-generated image that the door-maker had provided in advance for my friend to approve prior to manufacturing the door.

INDIA’S DEVELOPING INDUSTRIES

India still excels in handmade items, since many workers have traditional handicraft skills that are rare in the US and Europe. India has many people producing handicrafts, such as paintings, sculptures, stonework, carpets, and embroidered silk clothing.

India also manufactures attractive automobiles, including electric cars. Hyundai, Toyota, Nissan, BMW, Honda, Skoda, and Renault are foreign companies who have factories in India. The main Indian car manufacturers are Tata, Mahindra, and Maruti Suzuki. Nonetheless, Chinese-made electric cars are being sold for as low as $12,000, and are thus being marketed successfully internationally at a lower cost than their competitors.

RISE OF THE INDIAN MIDDLE CLASS

As I mentioned in my last blog, this is my seventeenth visit to India. Over the years, I’ve witnessed the tremendous development and growth of the Indian middle class. There are a huge number of high-rise buildings under construction in Mumbai. There are also many new elevated roads under construction. They are elevated because it is impossible to expand the existing roads or to relocate the thickly populated residential areas which expanded ground-level roads would require.

Technology has played a big role in elevating the economy of India. India skipped the development stage of installing telephone systems consisting of telephone poles and wires. Instead, India went from a relatively small number of telephones to widely used inexpensive mobile phones manufactured in India. Illiterate Indians can use their phones to make purchases and conduct banking actions. The widely used cell phone system has particularly helped small rural farmers sell their crops by eliminating many of the previous “middlemen” who managed food distribution boosting prices before cell phones became prevalent.

INDIA’S LINGERING POVERTY

India still has many poor, illiterate residents. Overall literacy has increased from 40% in 1981 to 76% in 2022. However, poverty remains a significant barrier to education and literacy. Females face systemic disadvantages in accessing education. Particularly among Muslims, females are not as highly educated as males. Also, many elderly Indians in rural areas remain illiterate.  Literacy rates vary significantly across states and regions. The Kerala state in southern India has the highest literacy rate of any Indian state, 96% general literacy, and 100% digital literacy.

The brutal truth is that an illiterate Indian can only earn money through manual labor. Many jobs are done manually that would be done with machines in the US and other countries. I see older men working hard at jobs that they wouldn’t be forced to do if they had basic literacy skills. India’s huge population of manual laborers has worked against automation in many instances.

I remember reading that when the Calcutta subway was being constructed, a long line of women were employed as a “bucket brigade,” passing buckets of water up the line to remove it from the tunnels. That job could have easily been done cheaper and more efficiently by a pump and a pipeline. But this practical solution was vehemently opposed since using a pump would have left the bucket brigade women unemployed.