I have been in Delhi for one month now. It’s been a whirlwind of experiences and sights, an exercise in compare and contrast, and perhaps one of the most transformative months of my life.

I’ll give you a list of quirks, observations, and discussions from this month:

Education around the world:

• Education systems differ around the world. Sitting down with Daniel (a German), Pasi and Bjorn (Swedes), Alex (Canadian), and Cyrille (French) after dinner, we discussed the differences and debated the merits of our respective education models.
• The German system splits secondary education into Gymnasium, Realschule, and Hauptschule. Gymnasium prepares students for university and goes up to grade 12 or 13; Realschule is for intermediate pupils and finishes at grade 10; and Hauptschule prepares students for vocational education. The split occurs at age 10 in most places, 12 in Berlin and Brandenburg.
• The French system is much the same. The baccalauréat is a diploma students complete in order to enter university. This is split into 3 streams: scientific, literature, and social sciences. This split occurs at age 18. Literature stream students lack the scientific knowledge to succeed in scientific university courses.
• The Swedish system comprises of a split as well, mainly between social science and natural science “programs”. The programs are split into 2 different categories: preparatory (for university) or vocational.
• The Ontarian system splits into two streams: a normal stream for university and an applied stream for a more immediate professional focus.
• We talked about how best to split up the classes, whether this was necessary at all, and what the ultimate goal of all of this was. In the end, each system produced the people sitting at this table in the lobby of Kumaon Hostel, in Delhi, and we concluded that we wanted engaged students who were curious about the world and the point of splitting up students was to best gauge their ability to have success in their future pursuits. Whether these gauges were accurate or not is the major question for which we lacked data.

Education in India:

• There are primary (ages up to 14) and secondary (ages 14-18) schools. There is a big problem with attendance due to socioeconomic factors, and the literacy rate is low compared to developed countries. In order to enter a IIT, a student must sit the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and place in the top 10000 of 520 000 entrants. The computer science department here boasts the best of the best; a friend of mine there reports they had to be top 100 in the JEE to enter.
• This breeds an intense competition every year for the JEE. Students work hard (anecdotally, 12-14 hours every day for 2 years) to study for this, while neglecting regular school and seemingly most of the other parts of life. This creates an interesting situation when students do make it to an IIT. Some kids continue to work hard; others consider their hard work done and simply motor at a minimum rate. It’s easy to see this contrast at Kumaon, the largest hostel at IIT Delhi.
• IIT Delhi does provide a good atmosphere for a diverse range of interests. There are teams for just about every sport you can think of (I was asked if I wanted to play water polo!), and the students do take these sports seriously (I was told that the weightlifting team met 6 days of the week for 3 hours a day). I do find myself branching out to do different things and enjoy my time here more than I do at UBC.

India’s Development

• I had another interesting roundtable with Alex (UBC ENPH), Jon (UBC Poly Sci, I believe), and a German business student over yogurt. It was a compare/contrast exercise about the approaches to development that India, the “largest democracy in the world” (more on that later….), and China have taken. In India, everyone has a voice, but there is an incredible amount of visible poverty and inefficiency within the governmental system that renders that freedom harder to use. In China, the system is more efficient with a central plan for development from the one-party state. From what I’ve seen of mainland China and the National Capital Region of India, China is definitely leading the development charge. I feel everything is more organized and less chaotic, people seem to be learning civility faster, and things are much more modern in the cities in China. India is taking great strides, but it still has a ways to go before the people can enjoy their freedoms.

That brings us to my own experiences with the stark contrast between the poor and the rich. I live in Kumaon Hostel. It’s not the best place in the world – it’s hot (there’s no AC), the room is nothing more than a closet, a table, and a bed, the urinals clog every once in a while, there’s no toilet paper in the washrooms, and mosquitoes run rampant. I get some snacks from Gupta’s, some drinks from Lipton’s, and I generally eat from the mess, which prepares food for 900 residents daily. Not the best in the world, but hey, it’s all free under Go Global. It’s not too hard to get used to, either, since I’m here to study.

When I venture outside campus, however, the world changes. I live in South Delhi, close to Vasant Kunj and Vasant Vihar, two swanky neighbourhoods with malls back home transplanted beside the highway and stores nigh unaffordable. We go for drinks at bars with prices like home. We sometimes eat at restaurants with prices slightly lower than home. It’s essentially a little island of AC’d home. Close by, there are slums with satellites on the roofs of ramshackle huts, tarps strung between trees with families huddled under them with gas lamps to avoid the rain, and clothes and garbage strewn everywhere.

It really struck home at Big Bazaar, a department store in Ambience Mall. I needed some plastic containers for my Nutella, also known as the heaven-sent chocolate-flavoured spread of boundless joy, after insects ravaged my last jar. I stepped inside this store and it was like walking into a weird mix of Sears and Save-On Foods. I nearly cried in homesickness, sickness, and confusion. How is this possible with the poverty visible 2 minutes away in an auto?

It’s one thing to know about the problems facing this world; it’s another to see them up close.