Recently I have returned in Dhaka after staying almost a month in Delhi, India. I am going to share my experience of staying a month on India. This is continuation of sharing my experience from my month long stay in Delhi, India. If you have not read earlier parts, you may read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
11. Management of historic sites
Imagine you are visiting a historic place anywhere in Bangladesh. What would your experience go? I am sure you would find some T-stalls around the gate, a large queue for buying entry ticket. Once you enter inside, you would see people sitting here and there, couples dating, hawkers selling tea and cigarettes. By the time you reach to main attraction, you would see it is not maintained properly. You would find peoples name marked in various places and a lot of plastic and other waste here and there.
However, your experience in India would go completely different in India. There are lots of historic places in India from Mughal and other empires and subsequently from British period. All these historic places are controlled by Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). ASI maintains those historic sites with utmost care. I have visited 4 historic places in India and every site was maintained by ASI. Every site was very clean, pleasing and amazing to watch.
ASI has digitalized the ticket purchasing system. Whichever site you plan to visit in entire India, you have to buy ticket from ASI website at https://asi.payumoney.com. You can pay by cards and mobile wallet. Tickets are limited to certain numbers based on the site condition. Ticket prices varies based on Citizenship of India, SAARC countries, BMSTEC countries and rest of the countries. Ticket are issued digitally with QR Code. No one can enter a site without a ticket which need to be scanned at the entry and exit point.
Digitalization of ticketing system has controlled the number of visitors and made sure only interested visitors are allowed to see the sites. Furthermore, it removed necessity to stay on the large queues. Also, the price of ticket is collected directly by the ASI which reduces the opportunity of corruption with ticket price.
Apart from ticketing system, all the sites are properly managed regardless of the size. There are no plastic waste and no couple sitting around making people uncomfortable. In case you need a photographer to capture your sweet memories, there are listed photographers with fixed rates for per image. ASI has made sure your visit to the historic places are pleasant and you have good memories. I wish our Department of Archaeology could replicate what ASI has done with historic sites in India.
12. Everybody wears sneakers.
During my visit in India, I have visited in different areas of New Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. I noticed everyone is wearing sneakers. All the people in the streets, street vendors, rickshaw pullers, auto drivers, security guards, sells persons at the malls was wearing sneakers. I was amazed when I noticed it. Most Indians walks in case of short distance where we trend to take rickshaw. Wearing sneakers make it comfortable to take the walks. Also, the snicker prices are very low. You can buy a pair of sneakers for as little as 200 Rupees. But I think most of the people was wearing sneakers because of the cold weather of Winter. At Delhi, temperature was as low as 7 degree Celsius in the morning which often dropped to 5 degree Celsius at night.
13. Numerous variants of vegetarian foods
Street foods and vegetarian foods are famous in India. Many peoples in India prefers to take vegetarian foods. However, non-vegetarians don’t need to worry as non-veg foods are also pretty common.
When I was trying to lose my weight, I was often told to eat vegetables leaving Carbohydrates and meats. My understanding of eating vegetables was eating salad, half boiled vegetables and may be some mixed vegetables. Earlier in India, I always preferred to take non-veg items. But this time I have decided to take vegetarian foods. Soon I discovered the vast world of vegetarian foods. There are many variations of vegetarian foods each having their own tastes and deliciousness. Everyday I have tried a new variation of vegetarian foods and I liked each of them. Although I have taken some non-veg foods, but I have not eaten any beef or mutton. Because of the variations and deliciousness of those non-veg foods, I have not missed non-veg foods. Now that everyone is becoming health conscious, I think we should introduce the vegetarian foods in our country as well.
14. Affordability of cars and apartments
If you are travelling one place to another in Dhaka, I am sure you will keep at least one hour for the traffic jam. I heard traffic in Delhi is also equivalently terrible. But I found Delhi Traffic is much bearable compared to traffic in Dhaka. It took me only 24 minutes to reach 15KM distance which would take nearly one and half hours in Dhaka. It doesn’t mean there are fewer cars in Delhi. Actually, there roads are much wider and well regulated. Roads are one-way in many places and linked with many flyovers. Rush hour traffic is still there but has been significantly reduced by the metro rails connecting almost all the areas of Delhi.
If you pick a random car from Delhi Streets, I am certain that it would be a Suzuki car. Suzuki is the most used car in India like we use Toyota cars in Dhaka. Almost 90% cars are Suzuki Cars. After Suzuki the mostly used cars are Hyundai. Toyota is very rare in India. There is higher chance of seeing a Audi or Mercedes Benz in the street then a Toyota car. Suzuki cars and Hyundai Cars are manufactured in India. As a result, Car price is very low. You can buy a brand-new sedan car at half a million rupees which would cost in Dhaka around 1.3 to 1.5 million Taka or even higher. Some cars in India cost as low as one third of the cost in Dhaka. So, car is very affordable to Indian citizen.
Like the cars, housing is also cost lower in India compared to Dhaka. Town areas in Delhi are expanding, and they have vast area of vacant land. Because of this, there are sufficient supply of housing in the market leading to low cost housing. You could buy a flat in Delhi mid-class area with three/ four million rupees which would cost around 10 million taka in Dhaka. Of course, there are posh areas which would cost much higher than 3 or 4 million but for middle class people there are housing options available at very low cost compared to the cost of similar housing Dhaka.