Difference between the East and West

We all know about the technological advancements of the west, how their cities are far cleaner, far less populated than ours, how well organized their traffic system is. But let's talk about the things which are better or quite different in India, but before we do that, let's take a glance at a few of their good systems as well. If you are not a European person, health insurance is mandatory all the time, you also need to have travel insurance before you make any travel plans. Healthcare is really good in Europe but people do pay their taxes properly and in some countries, it is as high as 60% of their income. You are not supposed to make any noise after 10 PM, because you will be disturbing people's sleep. Your employer can't ask you to sit after your office hours, a student can't work for more than 20 hours a week in a part time job. No one can break the minimum wage rule, it's around 1600 euros/month in Belgium, the class divide is not that huge. There are separate traffic rules for bicycles and you need to have a headlamp, reflectors all the time on your bicycle. Internet privacy is also a big deal, there is a fine of up to 1000 euros for illegal streaming or downloading.

No one crosses the road until the sign says walk, even if there is no vehicle on the road. Zebra crossing actually means something here, you can't cross the roads in between.

Now, coming to the not so good things of the west, let's talk about communities, the farther you travel north, the lesser will be the sense of community. In Scandinavian countries, individualism is way too much, they don't even have a community in bars and pubs which is prevalent in southern European countries. To give you a sense of how strong their communities are, it's around 1/10th of what we had in our hostel. Few may say that individualism is a good thing and I don't deny it, but too much of it is a bit scary. Let me explain this point, a lady of age 85 is supposed to live all alone and do all her chores, she has to manage everything by herself, old people are really neglected here. This tendency where a person leaves their home and never return backs after a certain age is straight out of the animals, humans have not evolved that way. Since the time of early men, humans have lived in communities, human beings as a species survived only because they lived in communities. Humans are psychologically evolved to follow a hierarchy, so you need to have a community. There were few experiments in the past that shows that a human baby will die without any human contact even if he is fed properly. Old people have a real struggle in the west whereas in India every old person has at least a neighbor to help them with daily chores even in the worst situation. Old people need to be taken care of, just like babies and that was one of the reasons the concept of marriage evolved. People have too many resources in these countries that's why they think that they can survive all alone but after a certain age you need your family to support you. The only reason they are able to survive well is because their government actually serves people.

Let's talk about specific things now, I don't need to explain this to an Indian, but still if you want to get into specific's https://www.quora.com/Why-do-we-use-toilet-paper-instead-of-water-showers-especially-in-the-West. Believe me, it's unsettling to use the toilet paper and few may say, bro, use a bucket. Do you see something strange in the second image, there is no opening for the water to flow, so yes, you can't use a bucket full of water to clean yourself up, because if some shit falls on the floor it'll remain there only as there is no drainage hole on the floor and you definitely don't want to mess up your shower space. Another thing, there is no rack or slab at least in my bathroom to keep the soaps and shampoos.

Switches operate in opposite direction as of in India, this is not really a problem but not having switches with plugs, is. You always need to unplug the power cable, it always gives you a small electric spark whenever you connect a device, there is a higher chance of short-circuiting your devices. 

Water taps, you end up wasting a huge amount of water because there are only three levels of flow in these taps, this type of tap is the most common tap here. This tap rotates left-right to regulate the temperature of the water, once again there is no finer control to regulate water temperature, I have burnt my skin many times.

No matter how good their traffic rules are, but for a person coming here the first time it's really messy. At our place, as soon as you move out of any station there are a ton of autos and taxis and you just need to say ok and they'll drop you wherever you want, but finding taxis here is not that easy, even buying a bus ticket for the first time traveler is not easy. We had to sign up in an app to buy the bus ticket and it required a Belgian number for us to even create an account. There was no counter where you could ask, from where to buy the bus ticket, they have passes, no tickets, you can board any bus with that passes in a given duration of time. It was really tough for me to navigate here on the first day because public wifi is shitty at least in Belgium and international data packs cost too much, 4000 INR for 10 days. And don't get me started on mobile data, in entire Europe, it is way costlier than it should be. My wifi plan is 300 Mbps unlimited for 25 Euros and for mobile data it's 7GB/month for 20 euros. In Germany also, it's something like 2 GB/month for 10 euros. 

Things are not in proportion here at all, for instance, our combined electricity, water, and heating bills are around 45 euros/month and on the other hand, a haircut costs you 25 euros. Can you imagine, paying your monthly electricity bill in the price of two haircuts. Indian food also costs too much, Biryani for 12.50 Euros, and I was thinking 'Tu mujhe 500 de, mein tujhe tere se achhi biryani bana ke dungaa'.

The distance between the platform and train is huge, more than 1 feet whereas we have a space of a few inches (see the marking with red in the below images). If Mumbai's local train population comes in these trains, these trains will stop working, their entire rail network will shut down. For instance, the overhead baggage space is minuscule, you can't put any meaningful things in there, and there are not enough bars to hold while the train is moving. See the 4th image of the train below to see the baggage space marked by a red arrow and handlebars marked in the red circle. Because there is no crowd in these train they can operate, but just imagine what will happen to the people's business in India if we run these train domestically, dabbawalas won't be able to provide dabbas, milkmen won't be able to carry their milk containers, poor people won't be able to move from their village's to the cities with the entire house that they carry in few bags while traveling via the train.

There is no doubt that people are well off in Europe but still, the number of homeless people is on the rise here as well because of the rapidly increasing property prices. And here comes the biggest problem of theirs, their system isn't designed to cater to the poor. For instance, we have general coaches, sleeper coaches, 3rd AC, 2nd AC, and 1st AC in our trains, they only have two divisions, so many homeless people can't actually afford to travel. In India, even if you are caught without a ticket (we all know that getting caught is highly unlikely in general coach), there is a high chance that you'll be just asked to board off the train but here you'll be fined heavily. You can't get cheap food here, but at our place food is available as low as 10 rs/plate, and if you don't even have that you can go to any gurudwara or temple for food. We have all the services available for everyone the only difference is that you would just get the different quality of service, you can get diagnosed at government hospitals for 1 rupee, its a hustle to get yourself checked at those places, but nonetheless, a system is there to cater to the poorest, there is no such system like this in these countries.

At last, I just wanna say that please understand that the dynamic of India is way different from the west and we can't survive as a nation if we blindly start copying everything from them. For instance, we can't use their train system in India, otherwise millions will sleep hungry every night, we can't put fines for everything otherwise there will be millions of cases to deal with and it is impossible to deal with the current cases think of what will happen if traffic rules broken cases also starts going to the court. We can't stop the building of temples and gurudwaras as it feeds and gives shelter to millions. All the luxury of the west is available in India but only a few can afford them but we also have a system to cater to the poorest as well, which is missing in many western countries. Fact: USA has slightly more homeless people on average than India.

Once again a few more shots of this eerie and beautiful city.