Each of my blog entry is going to have the same concept I will start out with a summary about what I read since the last entry. That is Part 1. The next Part, Part 2, will be a creative writing about an interesting part of the book or a topic that comes up more than usually. Following to the text is a link (Part 3) which refers to Part 2.
Part1
The first 9 pages of the book ‘the White Tiger’ written by Aravind Adiga are about the premier minister Wen Jiaboo and his trip to Bangalore.
The Chinese premier minister announces a visit in Bangalore. The minute Balram knows he starts writing a letter. The great man, the premier, comes to Bangalore on a mission to know the truth. Balram considers himself as a great man and a man of action and change. He thinks he is the right person for the premier to talk to. Balram admires China, Afghanistan and Abyssinia because those are the only countries that were never ruled by foreigners.
India has a lot of entrepreneurs who build the outsourcing companies that virtually run America. Balram is one of those. He believes that the premier is visiting to learn how to make Chinese entrepreneurs. Balram wants to tell the truth by telling his life story and not with those American money wasting books.
He really starts thinking about his education as his ex-employer Mr. Ashok asks him questions and he obviously answers wrong. Balram never finished schooling just as a thousand other Indians either. He talks about himself as a self-taught entrepreneur. He reads the books that count and remembers parts of the schooling e.g. sentences of history or mathematics, sentences about politics read in a newspaper or just a little hearing from the All India Radio news bulletins. He remembers differently than a man that finished school. But all these little parts come together in his head and get mixed up. The results are half-formed ideas. That’s the beginning of “The Autobiography of a Half-Baked Indian”.
Part2
What do you think about the Indian school system? How does it infect the population/ economy or society with the background information you know about the religions e.g. the Hinduism?
Reading about so many Indians not having a school-leaving diploma is a shock. I did not think that so many children aren’t able to finish school. For me it is one of the most important steps into the working life. Without a school-leaving diploma you have really bad perspectives on the job market. I think it is normally not that easy to get a good job and become an entrepreneur like Balram. I believe that most of the thousand of Indians, Balram mentions in the book, don’t have a good job and have to live really poorly. That would mean the population is mostly poor and as far as I know that’s how it is in India. But with the respect to the Hinduism and the cast system it is not too bad. (I don’t mean that in a mean way.) In the cast system are 4 casts and the untouchable ‘Cast’. It’s not meant to be a cast because the Untouchable (Dalits) do all the dirty work, like street sweeper, field workers and latrine cleaners. More than half of the Indian population falls under the global poverty line and more than 1/3 of those are Dalits.
Part3
http://eighttwosix.blogspot.com/ religious background information
http://www.globalgateway.org.uk/default.aspx?page=1732 good picture overview
http://countrystudies.us/india/37.htm text explanation
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