In defining the term 'quality of life' one can often dissolve it into a meaningless abstraction. But there is no better way to give it a concrete shape than trekking in the woods of an alien land, traversing the streets and bylanes of its cities and staying with people whom you would otherwise never meet in your life.
For close to a month I crisscrossed Denmark, Germany and Czech Republic, gleaning from ordinary folks, people like you and me, what it means to lead a fulfilling life in a city, town or a small rural hamlet. This column is as much a sociological insight about modern life and living with obvious takeaway lessons for a rapidly urbanising India, as it is a deeply personal story of four groups of people, three families and one boisterous group of friends who were busy stocking up exotic drinks for a Halloween party. On the face of it there was nothing common between the groups, except maybe a transient European-ness emerging out of being a part of European Union (EU).
The first story is of Danish police officer Soren and his Serbian wife Andjela Rajovic, who is a naturalised Dane having been born and brought up in Copenhagen. Their daily routine is illustrative of how the ease of doing things - say eating quality and affordable street food or travelling the length and breadth of the city in buses and trains - can mean the difference between stress-induced outbursts and a calm, calculated and serene response to situations and life. Soren and Rajovic, both in their mid-20s and expecting their first child, live in Friedriksberg, the heart of Copenhagen that can not only rival tony parts of any Indian city in the density of civic and people amenities, but actually beat them by some margin. Soren, who was till recently part of a police squad car team and now manages its communications hub, an automatic transfer that has happened because the State wants his impending fatherhood to be less risky, travels every day to his workplace using either his bicycle or the bus.
I stayed at their house for six days, cooking meals and sharing conversations with them, several of them revolving around how they perceive their daily lives. There were three distinct takeaways for India. The first is that they don't at all miss having a car. In fact, travelling by four wheels is implicitly looked down upon and there is an almost a visible nudge to take the public transportation system, and justifiably so as the buses and trains don't let you down even at 2 am. A good, integrated and well networked transportation system, with a clear pathways and directions for walking and cycling, can practically eliminate the need for private vehicles.
The second is the notion and valuation of property and the consequent demarcation of central and suburban areas. There are suburbs, but they are not in any way less provided for in terms of civic or people amenities. In fact, the so-called suburbs, like for instance the Oster Farimagsgade area where the University of Copenhagen is located, has more bus stops, cycling tracks, parks, bigger houses and trekking trails than the central areas. It's very difficult to imagine a police sub-inspector in India owning a house in central part of Mumbai or Delhi, at least through legal means, and travelling to office every day by bicycle or bus. Affordable access to housing is a critical contributor to a sense of security that leads to a better quality of life.
The third is the social safety net that the state provides for every single citizen. Ever since Andjela has gotten pregnant her entire out of home medical treatment, and the subsequent hospitalisation, is being borne by the Danish state. What's more, the CEO of her company, who has a three-year-old child, used the same public hospital that Andjela is using. In short, accessible and quality public healthcare system goes a long way in reducing inequalities and removing frictions and conflicts arising out of differential money power.
The second story is of three German friends - Friedrich, Thomas and Daniel - who are staying together in a large flat in the suburban area of Hamburg called Langenfelde. Friedrich works out of home and is trying to set up a public communications outfit, while Thomas is a marketing lead for North Germany for the shoe brand New Balance, and Daniel works in the financial consultancy sector. Unlike Soren and Andjela's place, this is an unadulterated bachelor's pad - from the risque posters, overcrowded kitchen to the stocks of exotic drinks. I was there for three days, and in understanding their daily lives took away two lessons that can be of use to a rapidly urbanising India.
The first is the incredibly balanced food and food products ecosystem comprising of supermarkets, small delis, mom-and-pop stores and high-end boutiques. Such a diverse system allows not only for different kinds of price points to co-exist, but also brings about a certain set of standard and quality control across the board. So, for instance, there is the option of picking up a 400 gram packet of spaghetti to cook at home for as little at 40 cents (approximately Rs 40), as also go out for a spaghetti meal that will set you back by as much 40 Euros (Rs 3,200). In fact, I found Hamburg (the supermarket chain of Rewe is a great place to shop and it has a range of in-house products under the brand name Ja!) to be decidedly cheaper than Delhi and Mumbai in terms of the price of vegetables, ingredients like olives and olive oil and basic spices like Basil and Oregano. But in providing an extremely affordable price point, the quality is not compromised either in terms of ingredients used or the exact nutritional information provided. Easy availability of affordable and high quality food at various price points is also a critical contributor to the overall quality of life.
The second is the amazing network of roads, or as Thomas told me: "All I need to do is take my shoes, get into the car, keep visiting dealers and my target is met." The sheer quality of roads, and the absolute adherence to lanes, the clear separation of heavy vehicles and personal vehicles, traffic rules and regulations, make the drive across most of Germany predictable and pleasurable. The train network is pretty well known, (for instance, I took the ICE train from Copenhagen to Hamburg: a train that drives into a massive ferry which then transports it across the Baltic sea into the German coast) but it is the road network that integrates cities, towns and rural areas into one big socio-economic zone (again, for instance, I travelled the 300 kilometres from Hamburg to Berlin in a wifi-enabled bus with a chemical toilet and airline kind of business class seats for 8 Euros, which is less Rs 650).
A high-calibre and predictably monitored and modulated road framework is another contributor to the quality of life of an average citizen. It's not like everything is picture perfect in Germany. As an aside, in several conferences and workshops India, I have heard European policy makers, industrialists and chief executives talk about the decline of Western Europe, especially Germany. I could never relate to it completely, that is, till I saw it with my own eyes (please see the picture taken at Berlin's S-Metro's Warschauer Strasse. It might remind Mumbaikars of the filth that they see in Mahim) and witnessed several people, including families with children, sitting on the streets and openly asking for money with placards that said, "For weed and beer."
The third story is of a young Czech couple, David Biroczi and Jarka, both in their early 30s, and their two young children Daniel and Anita. David is a geography teacher at a school in Děčen, a city just 15 km or so from the German city of Dresden, while Jarka is a private English teacher. Both live in a small village (population: less than 150 people) called Arnoltice, around 10 km from Decin, which is part of the Swiss Bohemian National Park in Hřensko in the usti nad Labem region. The forests, located at an altitude of about 2,000 feet, are filled with sandstone arches and features. They are extremely interesting from a geological point of view as they are strong evidence of the theory that deep plate tectonic movements shaped the earth decisively. Geologists there routinely unearth marine fossils at in the forest; David showed me a sandstone rock that had a seashell embedded in that he found in his garden. One part of the forest is in Germany and other in Czech Republic, and I had gone there for a four-day trek through the forests. David and Jarka have both worked in Prague and Decin and decided to shift to Arnoltice around seven years back when they decided to start a family, or as they said, "to give their children the openness of a forest and the proximity of a city."
In staying with them, I - first Indian in Arnoltice as per David and Jarka - discovered the 'real Czech Goulash', which surprisingly is not served within crusted salt bread as several restaurants do, and also how well marked the trails were. All the hiking routes were marked as green, red and yellow, and while you were in absolute wilderness there was never a feeling of being lost. Clear mapping, directions, routes and giving specific and well spaced out markers is a "deeply embedded mindset", as Jarka explained it. The first big takeaway for India is that it doesn't matter whether it's a city, town, a rural area or a forest: predictable and clearly charted out navigation tools that are understandable by common people are critical for a better quality of life. Forget Indian forests and trails (Bandipur national park is a good example of how even roads passing through forests are not clearly marked out), even cities are an absolute maze.
The final story is of 70-year-old Sabina Rehnicer who stays in a historical building in the culturally active Zitna area of Prague. It's an area - and those surrounding it too - that's equally comfortable with jazz bars as it is with sex and cabaret bars and adult film companies. Sabina is a Croat Muslim who married a Jew, Raymond Rehnicer, a well known intellectual and urbanist, and moved to Prague 24 years back. Or as she put it, they "literally ran for our lives" after being hunted by Serbian soldiers for her and husband's views. Raymond died a few years back. Her son, who is settled in Los Angeles, incidentally is the one of prime movers behind open-source software platform Ubuntu (I had a personal high as Sabina gave me her son's treasured possession, one of the original Sinclair laptops, to play around with). Sabina now considers herself as a permanent resident of Prague, a city which she said kept her free spirit "fresh and active" and lets her be "who I am". It's a powerful statement in itself, an implicit endorsement from a foreign migrant who lost it all and rebuilt everything from scratch.
Jarka and David also did not have to think hard before shifting to Arnoltice because the village, like all the other villages in the region that I visited like Rů?ov�, has open spaces, playgrounds, tennis courts, football fields and, yes, qualified coaches (for those of you wondering how Czech Republic manages to produce world champion tennis players and football stars, here's the answer). For a family with children choosing an extended space to live and work is not as much a decision of adequate access to civic, social and people infrastructure - it's a given - but more about collective choices about what a family would want to do with their lives. What also helped them immensely in their decision are the Czech policies and laws that mandate protection for women and mothers. Jarka is still contractually on board of the management college that she was earlier teaching in. Czech laws allow mothers to be on a sabbatical for three years to take care of their children, and till that period the institution cannot replace them. It's a strong social safety and security net that allows families to take decisions that would normally be considered unacceptable risk in the Indian context. The second takeaway for India is that a strong network of child friendly open spaces and facilities, combined with policies and laws to protect the economic independence of mothers is an important contributor to decisions that can improve a family's quality of life.
There is one big takeaway from Sabina's life. Our urban spaces need to be far more culturally diverse and accommodative, having the ability to make migrants from all corners of the country and the globe not only feel welcome, but actually feel like making it their home. A melting pot of people, cultures and opinions is critical to develop organic spaces of socio-cultural interaction, which can range from street art to high end ceramics and pottery work showcased in art galleries. What Sabina is implicitly saying is that culture is not just a tool to soften attitudes and mindsets, but is also a powerful, and often benign, economic driver that can qualitatively define the kind of life a city offers. Vibrant cultural spaces are important enclaves that allow people to get in touch with and feel what in Indian context is often referred to as finer aspects of life. The point is that culture shouldn't be 'finer' or 'coarser'. It should be an integral constituent of daily life.
So what's the one big overarching lesson that we can take out of the daily lives of three diverse European families, and one bohemian group of friends? Greater clarity and simplicity in our thought processes about living spaces: whether urban, semi-urban, rural or even forests. At some levels, we have begun that process by reorienting our planning structures to move away from institutions to people. But the real challenge is move to an approach focusing not just on people, but on their day-to-day lives.
(The writer is a Visiting Fellow at Observer Research Foundation and a Fellow of National Internet Exchange of India)
Courtesy: Governance Now
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