The following article was featured in the June 2015 edition of Cutting Edge. Former IOC President, William Avery writes about his visit to India.
My wife and I spent the first three weeks of March in India (the excuse being a significant birthday) and had an amazing time that will live in our minds for the rest of our lives, so I hope you will allow me to share some of our experiences.
We started in Mumbai, which I can only describe as a shock. We experienced very closely the extremes of wealth—abject poverty cheek by jowl with enormous wealth and everything in between. The locals either seem to accept their lot or are oblivious to the deprivations of their fellow human beings, depending on their position in the sliding scale. We marveled at the tranquil elegance of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, which was just 100 yards from our more modest hotel, and soaked up the strong community spirit and support that exists in the slums that we toured with a guide. All the while, we experienced smiles from friendly people, many of whom were keen to talk to us to practice their generally very understandable English.
My wife and I spent several hours during our holiday discussing what should or could be done about the poverty and came to no great conclusions. For instance, if you act on the moral view that the city should not rely on people to deal with its rubbish and set up the sort of civic refuse collection service that we all benefit from, you can count in the hundreds of thousands the number of people who would lose the means to earn enough to survive and bring up their families because they sort the rubbish into food and other items, which they sell on to recyclers. On the plus side, in the end, very little in proportion goes to waste.
And we all know that you can’t solve the problem of the slums just by bulldozing them and relocating the communities. Many of you will be old enough to know of the effect that such action had in the UK on long-established communities forced out by well-meaning local authorities.
For someone with my background in construction, it was a real eye-opener. The photos say it all. Much of the scaffolding is still bamboo tied with hemp, and there is no concept of protection from falling from heights or other injury. Of course, the spin-off is much cheaper construction, as we were told by a man inspecting the construction of his large new house. Regrettably, while we do not use bamboo for scaffolding in the UK, I am still saddened when I see unsafe working practices by established businesses, with the result that, for instance, in the news recently, a young apprentice followed the bag of rubbish that he had been told to throw off a scaffold that was missing a vital guard rail to his death. In that case, the company owner was prosecuted.
At the top end of our industry, the safety record is world-class, but as always, there is room for improvement. Of course, improved safety has a cost, which has to be passed on to our customers, so I entirely understand the competitive pressures, hence the changes to the CDM regulations, which have now come into force for all new projects, both large and small.
Reverting to our Indian experience, the remaining time was spent in Kerala State, which is in the southwest corner of the continent. It is a beautiful part of the world and generally a much better-off part of India. We stayed in homestays and moved to a different one every two days. As a result, we spent a lot of time with the families that own them and experienced very different aspects of local life.
One of the items we brought home is the English edition of a newspaper called The Hindi because of one article. There is a picture of the façade of a building that is an exam center being scaled by parents and friends of pupils who are in the building taking exams, so they can pass chits to the children inside to help them pass their exams! Not a good example to the next generation in a nation that is trying to turn away from endemic corruption at all levels of society.
We spoke to many families, both parents and children, about the school system and education, and the clear message is that education (including learning English) is the only way to succeed. Add to this the supply of labor, and no wonder India is increasingly becoming a world economic powerhouse.
It will not surprise you if I tell you that we will be spending the remainder of 2015 in the UK!
William Avery | IOC President
This article first appeared in the June 2015 issue of Cutting Edge. As part of the IOC membership, IOC members receive quarterly editions of Cutting Edge magazine and access to all back issues online.
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