I’m back in Seoul, with a lot to say, but I won’t say much.

First, let me address the ele­phant in the room. Hello third world visit epiphany cliche-aphant. How are you today? Yes, I’ve returned from India and I’ve seen a lot of dis­turb­ing things. I saw the Mus­lim slums of Mum­bai, naked chil­dren run­ning through the streets, tweens sell­ing day old news­pa­pers for a rupee and home­less moth­ers beg­ging for money with their sick and sleep­ing chil­dren dan­gling from their arms. Peo­ple were dirty, water wasn’t potable, wild dogs slept in the street, igno­rant and apa­thetic about the armada of auto-rickshaws swerv­ing around them.

But, I also wit­nessed human expe­ri­ence of every other kind. I watched Rolex-laden busi­ness­men step over old women lay­ing on the side­walk in the heat. I saw fam­i­lies of five cling­ing to a motor­cy­cle and to each other, smil­ing, laugh­ing, and close in a way I’ve never seen west­ern fam­i­lies. In all of the squalor and dirt and poverty, I saw the exact same kind of joy that those of us in post-industrialized coun­tries seem to strug­gle to find. I saw noth­ing about human expe­ri­ence in India that was sub­stan­tially dif­fer­ent from the rest of the world I’ve seen, other than the cloth­ing that peo­ple wore and range of their reach into the rest of the world.

Would those chil­dren in the slums be any bet­ter off with a pair of Nikes and a ster­ile heated two bed­room condo? Would they laugh any more than I saw them laugh, play any more than I saw them play? There cer­tainly are some absolute improve­ments that every­one deserves, food, health, shel­ter, but beyond these Maslows, its dif­fi­cult for me to think of a legit­i­mate rea­son why my US lifestyle would bring any more hap­pi­ness or joy.

Yet as much as I won’t judge the qual­ity of life and the reach of India’s peo­ple into the global com­mu­nity, I can’t be impar­tial. I just spent a week engag­ing with the aca­d­e­mic com­puter sci­ence com­mu­nity in India, form­ing rela­tion­ships and watch­ing unfold an incred­i­ble attempt at recre­at­ing a US style schol­arly com­mu­nity. I’m part of this dia­logue between India and the west­ern world, help­ing to prop­a­gate my schol­arly cul­ture. Whether I pass high-minded judge­ment on India’s qual­ity of life or not, I’ve now actively engaged in help­ing India’s aca­d­e­mic com­mu­nity mimic and mir­ror that of other nations, with con­fer­ences, posters, pan­els, and papers, and all their inher­ent lim­i­ta­tions and west­ern bias.

In some ways, I wish India would find its own way of being schol­arly. I wish it would estab­lish its own research com­mu­ni­ties, rather than focus­ing solely on engag­ing with those in the US and Europe. I want it to find some­thing com­pat­i­ble with its peo­ple and then com­mu­ni­cate these ways to the west­ern world. By try­ing to mimic the rest of the global community’s schol­arly prac­tices, it ghet­toizes its own efforts. If India invented its own prac­tices around schol­arly pur­suits, it would be about apples and oranges instead of Hon­ey­crisp and Fuji. For exam­ple, instead of try­ing to have poster ses­sions (and fail­ing because of the lack of high qual­ity poster print­ers), what if they drew their posters on white­boards, chalk­boards, or paper? They could find inno­v­a­tive ways of com­mu­ni­cat­ing their work, and even find bet­ter ways than the west­ern world. If I were India and its aca­d­e­mic lead­ers, I would look at this as an oppor­tu­nity to inno­vate and rein­vent aca­d­e­mic prac­tices, rather than mimic them.

Time to board.