Looking back over India 2005 most of what was commented on remains relevant. Some updates are in order.

Hindustan is buoyant with a good monsoon in most parts, talk of paralleling China with 8-10% annual growth. Some havoc in Chennai, Tamil Nadu  and Mumbai but that is the way of the rain gods. Around these parts wide exposure to the disregard for basic ecology. Bangalore has been hard hit in this area. Natural drainage patterns neglected as well as technological solutions implemented with inadequate long term insights.

If Chennai can solve the water crisis, either through good ecology, desalination plants or what, there is a bright industrial and IT future. A big pool of trained, malleable man and woman power is available. In our day it was Madrasi accountants who supplemented Bengali babus in Calcutta but now a new India with Kerala and Bengal awake to potential even though they want to safeguard their communistic ideology orientated socialism. A hard sell as it comes into conflict with the opposing free market concepts to which they are being forced to give leeway. Russia long discredited; it is now the turn of Castro his Cuba and following Venezuela to find a new pathway through to the alternatives of western capitalism.

Industrialization, Globalization

The English medium, middle class media, is full of the opportunities of the new emerging India. Resources needed include oil and gas which India has little of; but abundant iron ore, bauxite, coal and a pool of low cost well educated labor, supplemented by a huge latent group for the underemployed agricultural sector.

The asset resources of iron ore, bauxite and coal are located in Eastern India. Areas that have been left out of the great IT boom which has been concentrated in South India – Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai with spill off into other metropolitan centres of Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and the megaplexes surrounding them. The Eastern areas are hilly and peopled by tribals in subsistence economies as hunters and gatherers, pastoralists and low level agriculturalists. Now the land that they have lived off in a type of historic common property is found to contain within its bosom these desirable riches for industrial exploitation. To the educated Middle Class it is ripe for take off but to the locals it is disaster with compensation they do not know how to use or invest as a whole way of life is destroyed and displaced. China is in similar tensions. In North America a  genocide was practiced against the Red Indians but this is no longer permissible even in Hindustan. The prevalence of bag pipes around the world testifies to the desperation of the Highlanders displaced to become the cannon fodder of the British Empire just as Dogras and Gurkhas are in India today. Something similar is impeding in India as the great and mighty move in to exploit the mineral riches of Orissa, Bihar and MP with scant real concern for the consequences on the of livelihood of these human but low productivity people. Cheap labor is now the order of the day but in time this too will be displaced by the robots as in Japan. Globalization only has profit and efficiency to guide it, Humanity has to find its own space to fit into.

The vulnerability is at once a negative on the social and economic side but spiritually a positive. These impending challenges have made people open to receiving the gospel and the ministry of the more altruistic Christians who seek to help them their predicament as well as bringing them needed inputs to engage with the emerging modern world. The Church is growing amongst these people. Those willing to put up with the deprivations of life in these parts and the hard work of teaching and up building these people are being rewarded with numbers and growing Churches. The task is a challenging one of empowering and taking people from this rural rustic existence to life in the modern world. But it is happening on a small scale. So much so that there is widespread opposition from the propertied classes and the religious establishments. Gujarat and Orissa have seen beatings, church burnings and even the terrible massacre of Graham Staines in 1999.

On the labor front questions about the present privileged sectors protected by labor laws and enjoying to some extent pension and medical schemes. Most of these systems brought in by socialistic governments is in the public sector; being government controlled, open to political inference so over stuffed with appointees who make up vote banks. To move ahead there needs to be radical reform, ease of letting labor go etc etc .  Although this sector is small on a percentage basis it will fight very hard to retain what advantages it has. Public sector employment has always been seen in India as the most desirable not because of salary but these protective institutions.

In agriculture there is a huge pool of unskilled labor. The pundits say that until better storage and processing facilities are built a lot of India’s harvest will continue to spoil and be lost to mould, and rodents. The govt goes not have the resources to build this infrastructure. Much of its money is given to maintaining people on subsistence. This could be improved as it is highly corrupt but even so it is not enough.  The answer say the pundits is in private sector involvement. However, this is only possible if there is a consolidation of land holdings into bigger units. Because land is identity, and for centuries subsistence; this is one of the most fiercely resisted tendencies of them all. In Canada there are similar dynamics but not on the vast scale occasioned by the huge population of this country and the limited resources to meet needs.

The urban proletariat are another challenge as globalization brings unheard prosperity to the middle educated class. Not only is there more money flowing but to generate and sustain it the consumer society is being heralded, with all its consequences we are so conscious of in Canada. The glamour and glitter of it all overcomes inhibitions and wise warnings!

The Church in India and Training Institutions Christian institutions beset with similar dynamics. There remain great anomalies generated by the clash of cultures. At the bottom end are training schemes for bare foot preachers who are housed in Spartan surroundings; which no matter how simple, still look affluent to those who come from the village. Even the Bible College is run on a shoe string. I am teaching in bare classrooms with nothing on the floor or walls, basic tables and chairs, at least a white board and marker rather than blackboard and chalk, common to some other locations. No overhead, no Power Point and very little DVD or video backup. Most are taught from text books more or less dictated to them.

But to sustain all this colossus a need for fund raising particularly in the US. I went with the media man to his rather shabby building on the outward. Fellows scraping off the old white wash with hand scrapers the pieces falling on the ground to be either left or swept up as best possible. The men sitting on very shaky ladders with no protective gear. They will then white wash out of hand buckets and with local made brushes, all very crude and not very satisfactory or durable.  But we go inside this rather inconspicuous building and there is an air conditioned audio studio sophisticated computers and the like. All to turn out publicity material for use in the US for fund raising.  There are two worlds and they bear little resemblance to one another but each has its own demands and in a kind of way they are being met.

To pump resources into the Bible College would make it a lot easier for me but then the students would be deculturized and out of their future environments possibly then providing a conduit for migration rather than training for evangelism in India.

The Church held on the compound is another between cultures dynamic. It is catering to the urban educated class who are the future donors and potential. The facility is air conditioned with up to date audio and a Power Point projector for presentations, even though many of the preachers as yet not really up to using it. The school has computer labs for the students but they are not quite there at this level.  The Bible School does not hold its chapels in this facility which is the Calvary Church but in a  rather gloomy room on the ground floor of the hostel block. Again probably more culturally appropriate to their future. There is a clash of cultures alright and it needs great wisdom to bridge them and in time gradually fuse them.

I was at the institution of a NZ woman who is famous in for having established a mercy mission for women, orphans and others. The steady inputs from institutions of this kind  has built up in history a Christian community which then struggles to get away from dependence but with a % making it. The place is an amazing ant hill of activity with every square inch in motion. At night it functions like a homeless shelter with bodies sleeping on the floor all around, 6 stories with two lifts, a full scale hospital with visiting consultant doctors. Orphanage, feeding centre, schools you name it! Just shows what can be done by one really dedicated, somewhat ruthless, honest woman with organizational ability. It all depends on Compassion, child sponsorship and the like together with Samaritan boxes etc. The future challenge is of course when Colleen Redit goes, a woman now in her 60s what then? I could not spring her free to come out to lunch as a container was being unloaded and required her presence. I was asked to speak at the chapel with the comment from Colleen  - ‘we have really deep bible study here can you speak?’ !! I performed ok and have been invited back by the Big Boss – all important but much more rewarding to me was the comments of the listening group, 75% women, that the message was helpful as I knew it was.

Then on Saturday to something more like the rural happening in a prayer and fasting group who want input on Prayer. I can probably learn more from them than they from me but the learning opportunity only comes from giving my 5 fishes and barley loaves!

I am not yet very clear about the Church scene. The Dalit absorption continues on a grand scale and provides the fuel for the people group movements. All of these places are pushing out people who reap the harvest in these areas. There are huge social challenges to meet with limited resources but over a period of something like the 100 years taken to transform the Tamils and the NE great changes will appear in the country and in the Church. Malayalee dominance will be greater contested and then diluted. Bigger questions emerge amongst the educated 2% - sounds small but into a billion is 50 million something like the UK and greater than Canada.  These highly mobile consumer orientated hedonists who are beginning to number up to 300 million, will shake up the church as well. Just what  is their spiritual future, difficult to know. If they follow the western model consequences like heavy loss of Church members etc. Is there a better Indian way which their culture will lead them into? What relevance does the existing church leadership have in this dynamic. Will Mega churches like those in the US emerge to absorb and disciple these multitudes? Where are the leaders who can handle this dynamic. I am aware from my two Canadian sons in law of some of this as they are at either ends of the spectrum.

My Contribution

This time an interesting development in the course taught Cultural Anthropology. I suggested an innovation of the students going in the afternoon down to the local fishing village where they could gather live information from the local people. They asked questions about their religion, customs and life style. The results were better than I had expected. With this background experience they are preparing their final project paper.

I am interested in furthering this type of case study based learning. An opportunity may come through a course Gospel and Culture where the students can go interview various groups and then reflect on this info and data as it bears on evangelism and Church planting.

Most have been brought up on a diet of heavily rote based learning. They are quite competent at regurgitating material presented to them in lectures and notes, or in going to a library or on the Internet and sourcing information which can be cut and pasted. But on more creative reflective learning they are much weaker but this is where they need to go.

Canada

On the longer term challenge of finding life in Canada not much real progress. I have been able to resurrect the Ph D and was today talking with a Tamil bro about further inputs. The flame is flickering some but maybe can make it to the finish line. At other levels I have made some feeble attempts to link up with students in Vancouver area to help with papers or what. I am not yet really ready to fill Brown Paper Bags on the welfare line,  help at soup kitchens for the homeless; teach ESL or other virtuous low tech efforts. The alternative not at all clear. The old fall back of Bible Study groups needs revisiting as they are often too inbred to be of much real use. More Christians need to get out into the market place and sharpen their theology and thinking through interaction rather than pouring over all the old books be they JND, Mackintosh or the more learned boys of the Anglican and Presby extractions not to mention Chuck Swindal, Saddleback, Willow Creek and others. Preaching opportunities are very few. I have not been able to cope with the PB circuit as the good places like University Chapel hire their own full time people and the balance who follow the Old Paths I can no longer navigate either to their or my satisfaction.

South East Asia

Another ball game and environment. Malaysia dominated by the Chinese churches which are vibrant and full of capable people. One dynamic is the understood retirement age of 55 for public servants and others.  Here is a pool of talented capable people who are willing to do new things having income and vigor. Many Churches have highly educated and sophisticated members. Ministry to this group an not be easily offered by the products of the existing theological institutions many of whom remain rooted in the past with strong theological emphases but without the introduction to the dynamics of modern life and communication which require other skills.

Stepping up into this vacuum are a number of emerging Colleges with courses on line rather than residential or lecture based. One is the Asia Pacific Seminary of Dr Stephen Tee which I made contact with in Kuala Lumpur.