The final ride down from Kandy was normal, long and winding, dodging other vehicles on a two lane highway serving heavy lorries and many auto rickshaws, Colombo bound buses as well as pedestrians who have no real footpath at the side.

Indian Airlines to Chennai normal and uneventful to be met by Julie and Celeste at the airport. Monday spent in a visit to Maranatha Bible College set out in an industrial area.

in the newly developing suburbs of Chennai. Dr Daniel Katapalli my friend from Hindustan Bible Institute now the Principal. Maranatha is the vision of a group of German backed charismatic groups training leadership for Church planting in a wide spectrum of areas in South India. The property is once acre, the objective to build a more extensive facility and then enlarge the program from the present B Th, M Div to other graduate qualifications. It is all a laudable purpose but like most of them heavily dependent on foreign funding for its accomplishment as well as future maintenance. Mission learnt from the West now pursued with vigor by Indian leadership.

Infrastructure

If anything slows down the Indian boom it is here. Taxes have gone into supposedly helping the poor with multitudinous schemes, which proliferate government agencies and departments leading to all form of pork barreling. In the Indian context this means overstaffing with political appointees as well as siphoning of most of the money into various pockets leaving only a small trickle for the original recipients.

Unlike clean administrations like Hong Kong and Singapore not enough is done to build up needed infrastructure capacity. Outside the main arterial roads the quality of what is produced is abysmal. Budget airlines have multiplied but airports are often only old Air Force landing strips built for Defense not civil aviation. Huge investment is needed to upgrade them. The same can be said for shipping and export facilities to move goods out of the country. The roads are clogged with transport trucks which are more like inner city delivery than the needed behemoths to move India’s exports.

Politics The BJP (Bharatia Janta party) has been languishing since its defeat in the past election, beset with internal squabbling and recrimination its older leadership discredited. Its original success based on an appeal to Hindu religious nationalism. The successful mix epitomized in the call to overturn an action of the Mogul Emperor Aurangzeb who is said to have erected a mosque on the site of an old a temple at a place called Ayodya . The site which was claimed to be the birth place of a Hindu deity. This potent fiery mix has now burnt out but there is now a new hope on the horizon.

Plans have been underway to make a new shipping channel in the Strait between India and Sri Lanka which would reduce steaming time by two days between the major ports. Execution of the plan involves dredging a channel through sand bars between the two countries. An area variously claimed to have been linked with the famous Hindu epic the Ramayana. The Ramayana is the story of how Sita the wife of Rama is rescued from the demon king, Ravana, of Sri Lanka aided by Hanuman, the money headed god, who throws stones into the sea in order to make a bridge between the islands. The present controversy rages over whether the resultant sand bars have been produced by natural causes or are as the legend states a miracle.

Tampering with such sacred phenomena or insinuating that the legendary stories may have a secular meaning is a form of sacrilege and so ready cannon fodder for religious based political parties. The BJP hope to arouse enough passion to sweep them back into office.

Twinned with this issue is another with strong political overtones – the Nuclear Agreements between India and the US. The Left leaning parties as they are said to breach India’s sovereignty opposes these agreements. It is all making stuff for another election as the present government is a minority one led by Congress but held together with the support of the Communist and other similar parties. Not really strong enough to push through needed reform, particularly in Labor law, to bring about the realignments that would complete the transformation of India into a strong economic power. As in England in the19th Century there have been losers as well as gainers. Minimizing the pain is the big challenge.

Chennai
Exploding in all directions – not going up as in Hong Kong but out with low level factories taking over agricultural land. Legions of trucks or lorries, as the British call them, clogging the outer roads. They need the behemoths of US and Europe but to date the roads will not support them. Air conditioned malls are threatening the livelihood of the old traditional Mom and Pop store that has provided social and economic stability for millions of Indians. Change like the Industrial Revolution in England which closed the Commons, displaced the peasantry and crofters is sweeping the land bringing great prosperity to the few but travail to the many whose whole way of life has been uprooted and done away with. Little wonder that there Naxalites in the backward areas as these people face a very uncertain and not at all sure future.

Bangalore - BLR

Spicejet was our conveyor. The challenge not the aircraft, a respectable Boeing 737, but rather the airport infrastructure, which is woefully overcrowded and over utilized. The plane arrived at BLR to then circle for 20 minutes before landing. Baggage took a longtime; the toilets were overloaded as many other carriers had also arrived. The journey from Airport into town a slow crawl of congested traffic. A new airport is almost complete but the connecting infrastructure still waiting.

The train, a very pleasant 6 hour air conditioned chair car ride complete with breakfast served to the seat, is an attractive alternative. Connecting though to the train Station is the bottleneck at both ends. E booking and the like is becoming available but physically arriving embarking and disembarking deters. Like sea travel today, train travel is the more leisurely luxury alternative to this other modern fast but congested travel system by air. Likewise Vishakapatnam our next destination is about 2 hours direct or 4 hours connecting flight – by train a 24 hour journey as junctions have to be taken into account rather than the way the crow flies!

Bangalore, or newly minted Bengalur, as the Karnataka people assert their brand of nationalism, is much like Bangkok some years ago – hopelessly overgrown and crowded with terrible congestion and traffic. But in 5-10 years there will be an overhead railway, more overpasses a new airport and the like so postpone your visit until this new era dawns!

India Evangelical Mission – Outreach Training Institute
Bangalore may be roaring ahead but life remains here much as ever with little change from last year. The major one is the transfer of the Personnel Department from the Bangalore city office to take advantage of two empty houses in these parts. E Mail and cell phones make this possible. Not so easy though for candidates called for interviews. The statement from the management here being that they will then be aware of the real nature of this Mission as being a rural interaction. Not clear if this is a type of retraction or reversion of the group to the dynamics of the older leadership. Somehow they need to keep abreast of where India is today not just where they came from yesterday.

A interesting dynamic is the composition of the student body which last year was almost 100% IEM but this year has 50% from other groups along with smaller numbers. Of interest is the group who have come from Papua New Guinea to learn more about world mission. It will be interesting to see if the reports they take back lead on to others coming in future.

The other ‘industry’ here is renting out the facilities to other groups to hold their seminars. The low budget quiet rural location has it appeal. Presently an ‘expert’ on building House Churches is here from Singapore to instruct a group of Tamils. Prior to this a small group from Compassion learning from Child Evangelism about how to make their hostels and homes more evangelistic. The spin off for us was higher quality food with lots more protein in the diet for those days!

The new man in charge was somewhat preoccupied but warmed up at the end with an invitation to come again next year which we shall seriously consider. Taking two weeks rather than the somewhat rushed one of this time.

Vishakapatnam

Our last stop of this tour. We have been here before so all is familiar. Our accommodation is a somewhat Spartan but adequate; a room and attached toilet, eating meals with the managing family in their spacious bungalow across the road. Internet access is a challenge requiring a journey into the town taking 45 minutes in a rumbly old local bus. As well there is the wait for the bus to arrive which can take up to half an hour so the pace of life slows down until you reach the city once more.

Vishak is one of the second tier cities that are growing fast being alternatives to the budging megalopolis, of Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. Satyam a large IT group has two huge complexes already built. There is a big speculative real estate boom as developers buy up desirable land and speculators come to make a fast buck developing a bubble, which the lucky will jump out of before the inevitable crash.

On the Church on the Rock side of the town large educational complexes are emerging Engineering Schools, Medical school and other institutions thriving in the shadow of the existing Andhra University with its 30,000 enrolment. India is churning the out. Statistically there is said to be demand for 1 million nurses in India but like the Canadian medical system doubtful if there is paid employment for all but a fraction. Companies likewise sift through the graduates of the many institutions taking only 15% as being up to the standards and requirements they ask for. Agriculture needs huge upgrades but these can only come at the price of displacing unskilled and hence unemployable labor so few are bold enough to even suggest it. Land continues to have huge emotional and cultural value.

Church on the Rock Seminary

The Seminary is open to all but is in reality part of a Kerala based Pentecostal Church, the control remaining firmly in the hands of these people, even though the constituency is solidly Telegu language people from Andhra Pradesh. TheApostle Bro Titus came from back from Texas 25 years ago purchased this land on the then outskirts of Vishakapatnam and commenced this ministry. Bro Titus unexpectedly passed away in 2003 aged 68 but his widow Sister Mary an younger son Johnson have carried on the ministry with other brother Jimmy fulfilling the role of fund raiser in the USA. From what I understand they have been raising around $200,000 a year to operate the 160 student Bible College and Seminary, a Day School with around 600 pupils along with a small medical clinic. From the coming and going it is also evident that they finance Church building and Church planting over a wide area of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh which are the adjoining States.

The class is normal for a one year intake being 6 students at M.Th level. I am teaching Cultural Anthropology in 40 class hours over the two weeks so quite a heavy schedule as all the teaching falls in the morning. 3 of the students are in residence the others coming in motor cycles from locations up to an hour riding away. Most are experienced people in existing ministries so rewarding to interact with. The challenge for my subject is that their experience of a wider world beyond the Christian community is quite limited.

To help them understand the relevance of the material I have set a project which requires them to visit the local fishing village and do some research into the lives of the Hindu people living there. This has gone off well with the students encouraged in what thy learnt. The projects themselves will tell more!