Maya Mirchandani, Foreign Affairs Ed/Anchor at NDTV, recounts her experience of purchasing a Nikon FM2 with limited foreign currency. She discusses avenues for further liberalization, which can be developed with Public Private Partnerships, and private philanthropy.
Read the transcript below:
So we studied on a Nikon FM 2 camera at Sophia’s and we didn’t have the money for video equipment. I mean, we had the eumatic for the ad film that we made but for our film project we ended up doing an audio visual, a slide and script, slide and audio thing because we just didn’t have film cameras, the film cameras that we could access. When I started working and I had a regular salary coming in. I took my first foreign holiday abroad in 1996 and I went to meet my dad’s sister and brother in the United States. And I knew that what I wanted more than anything else was a camera, of my own. So I had done my research, I knew I wanted my FM2, I knew what lenses I wanted. I had to figure out how to gather the money for it because your foreign exchange had to enter on your passport. You can only take out a certain amount of foreign exchange. There were limits, it was I think it was like some 250 dollars or 300. I don’t even remember what it was. And you were opening up insofar as you could start bringing back electronic equipment that was for personal use, but you had to declare it. And every time you took it out of the country you had to enter it in on your passports the next time you brought it back in, no customs official would actually sign, make you pay duty on it. And I have my old passport books that still have the entry of my FM2 on exit and re-entry. So you know things like that. Today we only do that for a really heavy video equipment. I can take out my laptop, my iPad, my still camera, my phone, my iPod; as many gadgets that I am using for my personal use, I don’t need to enter it on my passport. I walk in and walk out of international airports along with it. So yeah that was a very real change that initially you were sort of conscious of declaring everything that you had. Now even if I go up to a customs officer and I say, “Sir I have to declare this”, he will say “What is this?” It doesn’t even register. It’s only if it costs above a certain amount of money etc that you do those things. So yeah, in those ways things have changed. That’s just in terms of the equipment I use today. But life has changed in the smallest of ways. I work in a newsroom where the younger generation is born after 1991. They are completely at a loss when we talk about the 80s. They have no idea what we are talking about. Well I think one of the things of liberalisation is that it’s been a great equaliser. Again I will go back to my childhood as an example. I grew up in 80s, we had a colour TV after 1986 and a VHS tape player, recorder VCR. We didn’t have a VCP; we had a VCR which way we could record as well as playback. Late in the 80s we had Star TV. We had one air conditioner in the house so in the hot summer all of us slept in my parent’s bedroom. It was like a waiting room, railway station. Even if we had cousins visiting, everyone would troop into the same bedroom. Today at least amongst my world and my universe, my staff has cell phones; the help in the house, my full-time help, her room has an air conditioner, a cooler. She has her own bathroom with a geyser, a heater in the winter. Whatever have you.
Read the complete transcript on our website http://indiabefore91.in
Информация по комментариям в разработке