Five photos that show India's transformation
In pictures: It's full steam ahead for India's development.
As many of you already know, India is a special place for me. Since my first trip in early 2012, to write my book From India With Love, I’ve now visited the country eight times with my most recent travels in 2019.
It is one of the few countries where I will go back to places I’ve already been and seen.
This trip was one of those. Next month I turn 40 but unfortunately, the day of my birthday falls on an overseas work trip. So in January my girlfriends and I decided to go travelling together in pre-celebration.
We chose India, the country of my birth - a midlife bookend if you will.
One of my travelling companions had been to India before and the other hadn’t so it was a good opportunity to go back to some of the big sights and more touristy cities that I ordinarily avoid.
But I was glad to relive some of my earlier trips because it allowed me to see how India has changed, not just since my first trip more than a decade ago, but even in the last five years since I was last here.
From roads to bridges to airports, I was blown away by the country’s long-overdue rapid development and for the first time, had the sense that the country was going to live up to the promise it had always shown.
Modernisation has made India a safer and easier place to travel and gave me more confidence to experience it differently. I never imagined a decade ago that I would travel Delhi solo, which I did to attend the Observer Research Foundation’s Raisina Dialogue, for example.
So here’s my purely anecdotal list of five ways India has changed.
1. Tuk-Tuks are on Uber
When I first travelled to India getting around meant using drivers usually recommended by hotels and travel agents.
Not being able to speak Hindi or the local language was a barrier and risky if you were going somewhere that was not an obvious tourist site.
This was especially true back in 2012 when I was going to the orphanages where I spent my first months as a baby both in Bihar and Delhi.
Making that five-hour journey through Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, was quite hairy. Some roads were non-existent and just dirt and our driver got frequently lost. We spoke not a word of the language and had no mobile phone data or coverage.
Happily, every time we were stopped, it was only to pay makeshift ‘tolls’ and nothing went wrong. But I did feel vulnerable.
What a difference a decade — and ride-hailing apps — make. Uber has had a chequered ride in India but is now firmly part of the economy.
It is astonishingly — criminally — dirt-cheap. My ride into town from Delhi Airport cost a whopping £5 for example and, a five-hour trip between Jaipur and Agra was £60.
I made the mistake of pre-booking a hotel transfer upon arrival in Mumbai. The 20-minute journey cost £30. The return using Uber cost about £5.
My favourite mode of travel to zip around Indian cities is by far tuk-tuk and what a delight it was to learn you could hail those on Uber too! A 30-minute tuk-tuk ride around Delhi costs about £1.
But the joy is not so much the cheap fares, which were way too low, (I ended up doubling fares through tips which you can give on the app after the ride has finished) but the relief from the haggle.
Now I don’t mind getting into a bargaining battle when I’m buying a cashmere scarf or a beautiful gem in Jaipur, but when you just need to get somewhere on time, the energy wasted trying to negotiate your fare with drivers who just see you as a cash cow can be exhausting and is one of India’s off-putting traits.
Uber in India forbids bargaining and requires an OTP which the driver has to submit before he gets going, ensuring you’re being picked up by the right person. I’m not sure why this extra safety layer isn’t happening in every jurisdiction.
Another factor I appreciated about the third-party involvement was knowing there’d be no detours to a ‘friend’s restaurant’ or ‘best shop in Delhi’ on the way.
One Uber driver tried this old trick in Agra when we wanted to check out a street food bazaar falsely telling us it was closed and that we should try his mate’s restaurant instead. Another in Jaipur tried to claim tourists couldn’t be taken to the fort on Uber and we had to pay him triple the fare.
Because we were in full control of the trip through Uber, we were able to insist on continuing as planned. Not surprisingly, we arrived to find the bazaar open and bustling and arrived at the fort just fine, despite being foreigners.
But these attempts to swindle us were total exceptions to the rule and it proved to be reliable. Uber was a total game-changer and gave me far more confidence to move around Delhi on my own.
2. You can pay for street food on your mobile
India has embraced the QR code in a much more practical way than simply replacing menus at restaurants.
While the economy is not as cashless as it is in the US, Australia and the UK, it is well on its way thanks to a boom in digital micro-payments.
Street food vendors accept digital payments via apps, meaning buying a fresh coconut or a samosa can now be done on your phone. Again, the overall shift to a cashless society added to my sense of safety.
It may have been a placebo effect but I felt safer in India than in London where a phone is stolen every six minutes, often straight out of a person’s hands.
More than a few Indians I met were eager to tell me of loved ones and relations who’d been mugged for the first time in their life — when they visited London.
This rang uncomfortably true. I wear my phone on a chain and slung over my body because theft is so rife in London but even walking the backstreets and through slums in Delhi, I never once felt unsafe or that someone would try and take my phone out of my hands.
3. Street sellers hawk middle-class books and totes
This one made me laugh out loud the first time it happened.
It used to be the case that the sellers who would snake in and out of traffic would hawk cheap tacky jewellery or the like.
But the inventory has had somewhat of an upgrade.
In Mumbai, the sellers targeting one particularly gridlocked section of traffic were flogging stacks of English-language books and eco-tote bags that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an overpriced English gift shop.
Nothing says development like a freshly printed middle-class self-help book being shoved through your car window!
While there were still beggars and children banging on windows or reaching into the back of tuk-tuks to grab you, these incidents were notably fewer. You were far more likely to be approached by a strawberry seller or book vendor and from what I could see, it seemed to be a lucrative trade.
4. Electric vehicles have green number plates
Pollution still chokes India, particularly Mumbai and Delhi although it is better compared to the last time I was in the capital, when the smog was so acrid I could feel it burn my lungs.
Unlike most of the developed world which has pledged carbon neutrality by 2050, India doesn’t plan to reach net zero until 2070.
The government has just announced plans to boost the rollout of EV charging infrastructure as well as its domestic EV manufacturing capacity. It has set itself the target of EVs making up at least 30 per cent of new vehicle sales by 2030. That’s ambitious given EV sales amounted to just 1.75 per cent in 2021.
But there is good news. Last year, EV sales as a proportion of total sales were up to 6.38 per cent.
It is easy to spot EVs on the road. Some etuk-tuks are blue, and all number plates are issued in green.
5. Modi’s face, the flag and the tricolour is everywhere
The new bridges, roads, airports, metro stations are often accompanied by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s face, usually plastered on billboards.
Some of it is leftover G20 signage which served as India’s coming-of-age moment on the world stage, as it competes with China to be the leader of the non-aligned countries.
But most of it is domestic and you cannot escape Modi’s face wherever you go. It is everywhere. It’s impossible to imagine Rishi Sunak or Anthony Albanese using government or even political party funds to plaster their mugs all over the country in such a way outside of an election.
Indian elections are due in April and May although the dates have not yet been called.
When Modi heads to the polls he is likely to be re-elected. My completely unscientific, first-hand sample confirmed that he and his Hindu nationalist BJP party are mega-popular.
Indian pride is also on the rise.
Streetlight posts are wrapped in lights illuminating the national flag’s tricolour and there has been an uptick in the flying of the flag.
Anytime I had a conversation with ordinary Indians they were quick to praise Modi for the rapid development and usually raised it themselves.
“Under Prime Minister Modi the development…” was how the sentences would start.
Whenever I asked about the Modi government’s crackdown on the press, its critics and NGOs, these were waved away.
‘There are pros and cons to everything,’ one young woman from Mumbai told me, before I’d even finished my question about Modi, as we bonded over Indian sweets at a street food stand in Agra.
Another man on my flight to Mumbai was more direct when I raised the perceived democratic backsliding. ‘I don’t care,’ he responded immediately.
‘This is just the West trying to keep India down, it’s all made up,’ he said. ‘After Congress, he has finally stirred this country and taken us to this from where we were and some people don’t like it.’
I could tell that my efforts to convince him otherwise, that to the contrary the West was thrilled to see India’s development, was unconvincing.
A textile seller in Jaipur told me with a gentle smile: ‘You only have a problem with Modi if you think he is a radicalised Hindu. But I am a radicalised Hindu.’
At the elite level, there is more scepticism.
One banker who spreads his time between Mumbai, the US and London voiced to me all the concerns you read in international media such as Modi’s unwillingness to subject himself to media interviews and the BJP’s hard-right stance.
But to the masses, there is no doubt that Modi is the messiah.
In summary: India is confident and on the move
This is more of a vibe, zeitgeist observation but my overall impression was that the Indian population is far more open and confident as a result of all the development.
But this was also because of the digital advances unleashed by the smartphone. It was rare to see an iPhone when I first started travelling to India but they are definitely on the rise. The digital openness has contributed to a more societal openness.
I’ve never found Indians so friendly, confidently curious and willing to strike up a chat. It used to be impolite and almost taboo to be photographing people, particularly women, who would turn away when you tried.
This time they happily posed and usually whipped out their phones to take reciprocal snaps. Selfies can be easily derided but their universality can be a great cultural ice-breaker.
India used to be a slumbering elephant. No more. This is a country on the rise, its government has a swagger on the global stage and is in a hurry.
PS. The best food I ate the entire trip was this samosa at a street food vendor outside India Gate in Mumbai that cost 20 rupees — around 2 pence.
PPS. Okay, I lied and there are more than five photos in this piece but I hope you enjoyed my postcard from India all the same.
PPPS. Some of you on my socials have asked me for travel tips and recommendations. I am happy to draw up lists and itineraries based on all my travels in India and your budget but because of time constraints, this service is only available to paid subscribers and founding members.