mehnatLet us talk about two cities with which I am familiar, and which almost always appear in the top 10 in such lists. One of these is Auckland, where I lived for more than one year; and another is Melbourne, where my niece lives with my sister and my sister's husband.
Auckland is the most important city of a country named New Zealand. Almost twenty percent of the population of this country is living abroad for employment purposes. A larger number has changed its citizenships to countries with better employment prospects.
There is no railway worth the name in Auckland. There is no metro rail. There is no tramway. There is no trolleybus. The bus service is skeletal in reach as well as frequency. Cars are the only common means of transport but there is practically no free parking in the whole city outside residential districts. Taxi rides can cost as much as 250 dollars within the city. The climate is quite cold for many years of the month but you would be lucky to find a house which has a built-in heating system. If you want to rent any sort of residential unit with 3 rooms you can expect to pay not less than 30,000 roubles per month for an unfurnished house or apartment, and not less than 100,000 roubles per month for an apartment or house in a good neighbourhood, and with good quality furniture and electrical equipment. The population density is frighteningly low. You can walk for two kilometres in a residential area during daytime and quite possibly meet nobody on the streets.
The locals are usually polite but retain hidden hostility towards foreigners. Immigrants find it almost impossible to get jobs in Auckland. I personally sent out 97 CVs to various organisations in this city within the span of one year and could not get even one interview. I knew a Russian Tuberculosis specialist who was cleaning houses for a living. I knew a Bulgarian anaestheologist who was doing the same. I knew an Indian engineer with more than twenty years of experience who was selling bread, eggs, and coca cola for a living; but then what options did he have in India? There was no shortage of qualified foreigners who had to re-start their education from zero, and still had no guarantee of getting a job at the end of the degree. The situation today is worse. Even local citizens are escaping the economic nightmare of Auckland. How this city manages to find a place in any list of the 10 best cities in the world is incomprehensible to me.
Whenever my sister comes to Delhi from Melbourne she tells us that she envies our lifestyle. Her family's income is about five times the income of my family. They don't have the quality of furniture that we have. They do not have household helpers. They do not have a totally air-conditioned house. We have all these facilities in our home. My niece studies in a school where her fee is equal to the entire income of my family (me and my parents). Cheap healthcare for all is not available either in Melbourne or in Delhi, but in Delhi people are willing to put pressure on the government to do so, and there is no doubt in my mind that this will be available within the next fifteen years. Even today if you have patience or 'genuine' (i.e. according to government rules) financial need you can meet the finest doctors in India for free in this city. I myself got treatment from Professor Maheshwari, the Dean of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (there is only one dean there) for free during my younger days. House rents in Delhi are the cheapest of all cities mentioned in this article and are about half of the house rents in Novosibirsk and an even smaller fraction of the rents in Melbourne, Auckland, and Singapore.
I have talked above about Delhi, where I have lived almost all my life, in addition to the two earler mentioned cities. Now let us talk about two more cities which never appear in the top 10 in such lists. One of these cities is Singapore, where I lived for almost one year; and another city is Novosibirsk, where I have lived for only 32 days, but at a point in my life when I have almost twenty years of experience, and after I have spent at least 350 days of my life in each one of four different countries, namely India, Singapore, New Zealand, and Kyrgyzstan. Russia is the fifth country where I plan to live, and I am quite experienced at judging countries, (or at least I know which questions to ask when talking about countries).
Singapore appears in such lists of Asian cities but not in global lists. Why is it so? The city state of 652 square kilometres has provided housing and 100 percent employment to a population which is larger than the population of New Zealand, a country which is as large as Germany in area. There is no minimum wage in Singapore, but there is nobody in the whole country who does not have food in his stomach, a roof over his head, access to excellent public transport, access to almost free education for his or her children, and access to a toilet which is connected to the city's sewerage system.
There has been no prime minister outside of two Chinese families, but many Indians and Malays have become ministers, deputy prime ministers, and even presidents. Let me tell you an interesting fact about Singapore. It is true that there is racism in Singapore; but a Singapore citizen of Indian origin who complained to me about racism in Singapore told me very clearly that there is no racism in the selection process for government jobs. Further, anybody can complain directly to the prime minister's office about corruption in any Singaporean organisation and a reply is guaranteed, not from the local police but directly from an organisation which works under the PM.
Prices for homes in Singapore are not realistic, and there is a definite housing bubble which is backed by foreign money. It is a tax haven which is sucking wealth out of many countries and feeding it to the real estate mafia. They guarantee one cheap apartment per family to their own citizens, but foreigners pay through their nose for housing. A great Singapore Haze occurs regularly due to forest fires in Indonesia, and although this is not the fault of Singapore's government, it still makes it impossible for some people (those with respiratory problems) to live there. There is a part of Singapore which is called Little India, and it used to be horrible when I was there. There are many small irritants but overall it is my humble opinion that this city deserves to be placed much higher than Auckland or Melbourne on any list of great cities.
Now let us come to Novosibirsk. To be more specific let us land at number 77 Tolstogo Street, sitting on a helicopter which has brought us here from Delhi. We go for a walk to the bank to get some cash, and are glad that there is a small town square with fountains and other facilities for children and youth. The planners have confidently made a carriageway which occupies only one-eight of the right-of-way width of the road in front of our hotel, but there is never any traffic jam. We feel like seeing the river Ob, and we are told that Voskhod Street is the shortest route to the river. The street is delightful, and has a long pedestrianised walkway-cum-plaza in its middle. The sidewalks are very wide, and there is never any scope for a crowd to clog the flow of pedestrians. There is a railway station near the river. There are buses. There are trolleybuses. There is a metro station. If so much transport was concentrated in one place in Delhi then the urban planners would propose a daytime population density of at least 100,000 persons per square kilometre, right after they turn the whole area into a commercial district.
We take the metro back to Oktyabrskiy district, and we are happy to see that the metro exit is so near the hotel. Now we walk from the hotel to Sibstrin (Novosibirsk State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering / Construction). There is a trolleybus service on the nearest street. This is a good city! There is a tramway on the next street!! The driver of the tram stops for pedestrians!!! This is becoming ridiculous now. The university is in a pedestrianised zone. Tolstogo Street has vanished. It reappears beyond the pedestrianised zone! We walk from the university along Leningradskaya Street. Let us not try to describe the walk and just tell our reader about the point on this street where there are three buildings, all parallel to each other, all aligned with the original Leningradskaya Street, all of them 30 metres away from each other, all of them on roads which are called Leningradskaya Street. We walk down Turgeneva Street. It turns into a green area at one point. People tell you that you are still on Turgeneva. This is too much!! The urban planners are playing with our minds!! They are artists not planners.
If we complain about the uniformity in the housing blocks then we are simply not very observant. Another thing which might help in such a situation would be to remember that one should start thinking about becoming a master of colour only after one has exhausted at least ten thousand possibilities in black-and-white.
If we try to describe the cross-section of every segment of every street in this town, we will have a book of at least ten thousand pages in our hands at the end of the effort. It is quite simply astounding.
On top of all this, emergency doctors reach your place of residence at any time of day or night and do not charge a single penny for this service. They even carry an ECG (EKG) machine and provide a printout of your heartbeat in the comfort of your hotel room for zero payment! There is a chain of municipal pharmacies which provide cheap medicines in all parts of the city. There is a good sized polyclinic in every residential area.
This is a city in the former Soviet Union. If you see an unfamiliar policeman in former Soviet Central Asia you feel a cold chill down your spine. They are kidnappers, extortionists, bribe-takers and even murderers. I can happily say that the police in Novosibirsk does not bother Indian citizens. In fact they carry smartphones and can tell you the way to the nearest metro station or university or hospital.
Sidewalks throughout all the central city areas are at least 10 metres wide. They are usually adjacent to buildings which are not very high. But a even a 15 metre wide sidewalk starts to lose value if it is adjacent to a series of 15 storeyed buildings. If you look at the city from the 9th floor of the hostel on Turgeneva Street you see a growing jungle of tall buildings. Tall disorganised buildings. The real estate mafia exists in Novosibirsk also, bribing the bureaucracy to make laws according to the mafia's perceived needs. A teacher in the university tells me that property values have skyrocketed. Who will benefit from this? We had a prime minister in India, who ruled for 10 years and who only knew 5 sentences—
1) This year the gross domestic product of the country grew by 8 percent.
2) This year the gross domestic product of the country grew by 5 percent.
3) This year the gross domestic product of the country grew by 9 percent.
4) This year the gross domestic product of the country grew by 7 percent.
5) History will be my judge.
People started calling him an idiot and a thief but he never managed to learn any other sentence. At the end of his ten years more people were unemployed than at the beginning of his two terms. The number of billionaires increased five to seven times I think. Novosibirsk should watch out for such 'growth' maniacs. They are usually working for billionaires and not for our boys and girls.
Cars are proliferating in Novosib and there are regular traffic jams in central areas of the city. By Indian standards these are not real jams, but they will grow if the real estate crazies keep on having their way. As a matter of fact there does not appear to be any real need to own a car in this city except the unpredictable weather, but then Russia is a free country.
If we are talking about bribery, let us try to find out why Novosibirsk is not in any top 10. There is a lot of crime here. Not violent crime, but cheating and bribery.
Prostitution is illegal. Why? It is quite widespread, extremely organised and is quite obviously feeding thousands of families here. It should not be illegal in order to ensure health and safety for the women who work in it. But no. Some bureaucrats somewhere are receiving weekly payments from the organised rings. Such payments will stop the day they make it legal. So it remains illegal.
Real estate agents try to cheat simple people by promising information which does not exist or by making other false promises. There is definitely a general depression amongst the local population. This can be judged by looking at the number of shops which sell alcohol. Alcohol is sold at almost every shop. Why is it so? This is because so many people are depressed and therefore willing to buy it. They are depressed mentally. The police here does not harass drunk men but that does not a mitigating factor for depression.
There is a housing shortage in Novosibirsk so one goes to Berdsk to look for an apartment. It is well connected by rail. There is a seat for every passenger even at rush hour. But the town is a dissapointment. Grass grows in the courtyards untrimmed for months. Alcoholism amongst teenagers is rampant. Crime is spiralling out of control. It is a mess.
My mind goes back to New Zealand and the Russians who were trying to assimmilate successfully in that country. Why did they even want to move to that corner of the planet? To India and the Uzbek women who allegedly pay bribes to stay there for extended periods. To Central Asia and the policemen who kidnap foreigners for ransom by locking them up in their police stations. To the stupefying suicide rate in Russia. To the neglect of Berdsk. Who is responsible for all this? There is only one answer. It is the Soviet bureaucracy. It is still alive They make rules which encourage bribery and lead to depression and even suicide.
Why does Novosibirsk not help Berdsk to succeed? It is very feasible, and by doing so Novosibirsk will help itself too.
If you do some google searches you can learn a few interesting things about Novosibirsk. It is located in the region which has the greatest amount of fresh water on the whole planet, amongst populated regions. It is the political centre of this region, Siberia. It is located very near the centre of gravity of the global economy according to at least one source, and that centre is predicted to shift to a point very near Novosibirsk at the end of 25 years. It has a population of only about two million people. It is practically equidistant from Moscow, Delhi, Beijing and Seoul. It is practically equidistant from St. Peterburg, Mumbai, and Tokyo. It has a tiny airport and very few consulates. It has a number of excellent universities including a university of architecture and construction with buildings which are world-class in quality and size. These universities offers the simplest and least bureaucratic route (with no cheating and perhaps hundred percent accountability) for any foreigner to experience Russia for a long period and possibly even to establish a residence here for the grand sum of 2300 dollars per year.
I know Moscow is very rich but the employees of Sibstrin are not getting very good money from Moscow. Why cannot the employees of Sibstrin Prof-Soyuz (Union of Professionals) unite and offer hand-holding services to foreigners for a period of one year during the time when they are learning Russian as a foreign language? Today thanks to mobile phone technology, one interpreter (who works for the Prof-Soyuz) can help seven or eight people to avoid the cheats and confidence tricksters from morning till evening. People from countries like India can easily afford to pay 12000 dollars in their first year here, and 2300 dollars every year for the next three years. People from developed countries can easily pay twice this amount. They cannot trust hotels or tourism companies or private individuals but they can trust a university Prof-Soyuz to hold their hands for one year. Russian employees (interpreters) cannot trust private employers or foreigners to provide long-term employment but they can trust a university Prof-Soyuz. Whatever income is earned from the increased fee for the first year can be paid to all the members of the Prof-Soyuz.
Accommodation can be organised in Berdsk. If 1000 highly educated and English speaking women and 1000 highly educated English speaking men live in Berdsk for four years can you imagine the benefit it will bring to the young alcoholics? The gender ratio of incoming students should be maintained because we need to appreciate the fact that to have real international relations the whole society of every country should interact with the whole society of its partner countries. If 5000 Indian women come to Novosibirsk and stay here for one year they can revolutionise India by destroying the war between the genders in India. They will see how it is possible for women to enjoy a privileged place in society without any need for laws and jurisprudence which are designed to exterminate the male population. Interaction with Anglo Saxon or Chinese or Arab countries cannot enable us to hope to achieve the open minded attitude of Europe which is in every Russian, every Kyrgyz, and every Ukrainian.
Manish Udar
