As a North Indian, have you ever felt bad about your place after seeing developments in South India?

 So, I have been a Barodian since a decade.

Though, a city in western India, in this popular North-South divide which I am not a big fan of, they consider anything above Vindhyas as North.

I never felt Vadodara is underdeveloped city.

It is the third biggest city in Gujarat and 20th biggest city in the country.

• We have smooth roads where vehicles can race, just beware not to be caught by speed guns otherwise be ready to pay fine.

• Traffic though has increased over the past few years but it is still not bad as in some South Indian cities. We have a good network of city buses, along with auto rickshaws and cabs.
• CCTV cameras across the city takes care of you follow traffic rules or not otherwise you may get a challan at your home.
• Vadodara stands at one end of National expressway-1 and NH-48 also passes by, apart from state highways to nearby towns.

• We have one of the most beautiful bus stations in the country.

This image has been removed for violating Quora's policy.

• We have only the second green airport in the country.

PM Modi inaugurates country's second green airport in Vadodara

• And Vadodara Railway station is very clean has all modern facilities and has been the busiest junction in Gujarat. Not to forget, in a few years we will be having bullet trains too.

• Talk of safety, it has been counted among the safest cities with low crime rate, and women safety has never been an issue.

I could not get the latest data, but this one is from a few years back when Vadodara was declared the safest city.

• Talk about cleanliness, Vadodara has been clean even before the Clean India Campaign was launched, and has performed well in the Rankings of Clean cities with the best being 10th position in 2017.

cleanest city in India: Vadodara makes it in top 10 cleanest cities of India | Vadodara News - Times of India

• Industries, we have L&T, Apollo, Reliance, Siemens, GSFC, Bombardier and many more big and small industries.This image has been removed for violating Quora's policy.

• Malls, we have many Inorbit, 7 seas, Vadodara Central, Centre Square Mall, Taksh Galaxy Mall, Eva Mall, Bansal Mall, Reliance Malls, D-Marts and many more.

• Education, we have many reputed schools and universities here. MSU is a very reputed university. Parul University has also built some reputation recently. There are many foreigner students studying here.

• Medical, we have many reputed hospitals. Even the government hospital SSGH, is a very good hospital in terms of facilities.

• And Bonus, we have amazing food culture, grand celebrations of festivals especially Navratri, Ganpati and Uttrayan, many hangout, heritage and tourist places and warm people.

So, I have no reason to feel bad.

As a South Indian, what would be the one piece of advice you'd want to give to a North Indian?

 

Disclaimer: I have received some awesome comments which would have made great answers. This is a generalised answer and does not intend to offend anyone. North or South we have our differences and culture shocks but these are just a few statements South Indians come across. A shout out to all the wonderful Indians out there. Just read it as the problems that South Indians face and do not take it to heart :).Now ok please read on.

The misconception about South Indians which I find annoying.

• We are not Madarasi. Though I love Chennai and my best friend is from there, sorry I am not a Madarasi. We can hail from Andhra/ Telangana/ Karnataka/ Kerala/ Tamil Nadu. Please do not put us into one category. We do not want you guys to recognize by our state but don’t brand us a Madarasi, it is very derogatory. Some of the North Indians do not even know that Tamil is the language spoken in Tamil Nadu, they think it is Madarasi.

• We South Indians are not fat or as you describe dark and ugly. Our body constituency is different from yours and so we are generally not the same body frame as you guys. We differ in the genetic make up and skin tone. We gave Bollywood Rekha, Sridevi, Hemamalini, Aishwarya Rai,Deepika Padukone, Vidya Balan among many others.

• It is not horrible that we mix rice with our hands and eat so too, please eat it once to know about it.

• Sambar is not our staple diet, rather come down to the South and we will host you with a plethora of dishes.
• South Indian guys are not always clad in Lungi, nor is it the official costume. In fact this generation guys are not much fans of lungi. Chennai Express is to be blamed for this!!
• We are not book worms, it is just that we are conditioned to reading a lot, why do you think IIT coaching thrives in KOTA and the South, because here it is normal to read like that.
• We mostly know Hindi but if we don’t, then don’t look at is as if we have committed a sin. What is the need for Hindi in the South we have four different Dravidian languages and we communicate with each other in English, so the need for Hindi hardly exists.
• We watch Bollywood and Deepika Padukone , oh my God I am a die-hard fan of her. Do you guys know that we have Tollywood, Kollywood, Mollywood and Sandalwood. Have you even heard of Mohanlal, Mammootty, Ajith, Vijay, Upendra, Sudeep, Puneeth Rajkumar, Pawan Kalyan or Mahesh Babu( Prabhas tho you know because of Bahubali).
• Most of us can speak awesome English, try us and we will blow your mind. Chennai Express is not true, in fact it is ridiculous.
• We are as much Indian as you, do not doubt our integrity or nationalism, it hurts us.

This is what I love about North Indians. I have had the pleasure of meeting some awesome cool people who later became my friends. And hey they are North Indians.

• Not all Northies are biased, I met a friend and she was so chill, she stayed in Delhi and whenever she came from home she used to get us so much home made food, reason: you guys are far from home na. So sweet and caring.
• I had this one friend who fought with his Northie friends because they commented on South Indians, he said he could vouch for us with his life. Respect buddy :)
• This friend took us to her home and we stayed there I don’t know how many times and her family was so open and were great hosts.
• Hey how can I forget about Delhi University, you guys have an open mind when it comes to opting for arts and commerce. Colleges like Lady Shri Ram, Hans Raj, St Stephen’s, Hindu College, Miranda College are very popular, but here in South Arts colleges are dying a slow death. Great laureates have emerged from Delhi University like Amitav Ghosh, Kaushik Basu, Vinod Rai, Rama Chandra Guha among others. I wish we also had such an open mind.
• They love our food and love going to Andhra Bhavan and eating the meals there :)
• They are great friends and are the life of the party.

Edit 1: Many people have said that I was way too outright, though I still believe in what I write, I am going to tone it down.

Edit 2: On people’s suggestions am going to remove the mention of Aryan and Dravidian.

Image courtesy: Google Images