- I get to travel internationally with a safety-net of peers and faculty members
- I get to finish my degree in less time
- I get to do both of these things for less money than it would cost to do both separately
But it's also important to consider the less-practical reasons, and specifically why I would choose to go to India. On first mention of the idea of travelling to India my mother, step-father, father, and boyfriend were floored. Why in the world would I want to go somewhere like India? I think their reactions are related to a number of things, but mostly I think there are a lot of misconceptions that people have of the subcontinent and that would be the source of much of their concern.
My father's a military man, and has been deployed on many occasions to places like Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Iraq. He's fairly knowledgeable about international travel and has been my source of information on vaccines, travel insurance, and safe travel practices. His concerns don't go unfounded; the Canadian government website voyages.gc.ca posts travel advisories for Canadian citizens and warns against unnecessary travel in Northern India due to the ongoing conflict along the Pakistan border. I won't be in northern India for this trip, we're sticking to the southern state of Karnataka, and mostly in Mysore - the same website says to "excercise a high degree of caution" when travelling in southern India - but I would argue that's no different than travelling to any other country halfway across the world.
My mother, step-father, and boyfriend are all from small towns, and don't have much contact with Indian culture as a whole so it's their concerns that worry me because they're largely based on misconceptions or mistaking Indian culture for something entirely different. They aren't alone. I've had people ask me if I have to wear a burka or hijab while I'm there, or how I'm going to get along because I don't speak 'Indian.' I try to be polite in correcting those errors, because it really is just about educating people. Some don't know enough world history to know that many Indians are fluent in English because of the history of British colonial rule. Others confuse India for other middle eastern states and states that are currently experiencing violent conflicts. Someone asked me if the conflict in Libya will affect my time in India, again that's about education - Libya is in North Africa, and India is in the Asian subcontinent - the two are separated by the Arabian peninsula. If you look at the map above you can see that Libya borders Egypt to the West.
But socially there have been some misconceptions related to the status of women in India - some thinking that Indian women are oppressed and not respected, when in reality it's a lot more complex. I'm taking a course on gender and change while I'm there so I'll be more able to explain the whole picture, but the status of women in India can't be entirely negative; 11% of the seats in national parliament are held by women and India has had a female Prime Minister. Indira Ghandi held office from 1980 to 1984 - that's better than Canada's only female Prime Minister Kim Campbell who held office in Canada for a mere four and a half months in 1993.
Just for fun here are some World Databank numbers on India:
- Population (2009): 1,155,347,678
- GDP per capita ($US): 1134
- GDP growth (Annual): 8%
- Trade: 46% GDP
- Life Expectancy, at birth: 64
- International Tourism, number of arrivals (2008): 5,367,000
And to compare with Canada:
- Population (2009): 33,739,900
- GDP per capital($US): 39,599
- GDP growth (Annual): -2%
- Trade: 59% GDP
- Life Expectancy, at birth: 81
- International Tourism, number of arrivals (2008): 17,142,000
But the numbers don't tell the whole story. There's a vast disparity of wealth in India where dhobi wallahs struggle to make ends meet by washing laundry and tech gurus carry smart phones for business. The streets are shared by cows, auto-rickshaws, taxis, and luxury cars and the country is growing rapidly in some sectors while struggling to pull the others along with them. I think that will be the most interesting part of studying India - seeing the social stratification and all the old mixed with new. It all connects with my history studies at Mt. A, right now I'm working on papers for two classes discussing Indian history in terms of European and British history - it'll be great to learn it from the Indian perspective and contrast it with modern development in India. Wish me luck!
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