Book Review on Imagining India Essay Example for Free

Book Review on Imagining India Essay Monday morning, it is chaos. Despite its pristine new metro and expanding highways, the city can barely contain the morning hubbub, the swarm of people all trying to get somewhere. By the time I reach Kaushik Basus home—set a little apart from the highway, on a quiet street that is empty except for a single, lazy cow who stops in front of the car, in no hurry to move—I am very late, a little grimy, but exhilarated. Kaushik and I chat about how the crowds in the city look completely different compared to, say, two decades ago. Then, you would see people lounging near tea shops, reading the morning paper late into the afternoon, puffing languorously at their beedis and generally shooting the breeze. But as India has changed— bursting forth as one of the worlds fastest-growing countries—so has the scene on the street. And as Kaushik points out, it is this new restlessness, the hum and thrum of its people, that is the sound of Indias economic engine today. Kaushik is the author of a number of books on India and teaches economics at Cornell, and his take on Indias growth—of a country driven by human capital—is now well accepted. Indias position as the worlds go-to destination for talent is hardly surprising; we may have been short on various things at various times, but we have always had plenty of people. The crowded tumult of our cities is something I experience every day as I navigate my way to our Bangalore office through a dense crowd that overflows from the footpaths and on to the road—of software engineers waiting at bus stops, groups of women in colourful saris, on their way to their jobs 38 at the garment factories that line the road, men in construction hats heading towards the semi-completed highway. And then there are the people milling around the cars, hawking magaz ines and pirated versions of the latest best-sellers. * Looking around, I think that if people are the engine of Indias growth, our economy has only just begun to rev up. But to the demographic experts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Indias population made the country quite simply a disaster of epic proportions. Paul Ehlrichs visit to Delhi in 1966 forms the opening of his book The Population Bomb, and his shock as he describes Indias crowds is palpable: People eating, people washing, people sleeping . . . people visiting, arguing and screaming . . . people clinging to buses . . . people, people, people. But in the last two decades, this depressing vision of Indias population as an overwhelming burden has been turned on its head. With growth, our human capital has emerged as a vibrant source of workers and consumers not just for India, but also for the global economy. But this change in our attitudes has not come easily. Since independence, India struggled for decades with policies that tried to put the lid on its surging population. It is only recently that the country has been able to look its billion in the eye and consider its advantages. MILLIONS ON AN ANTHILL For most of the twentieth century, people both within and outside India viewed us through a lens that was distinctly Malthusian. As a poor and extremely crowded part of the world, we seemed to vindicate Thomas Malthuss uniquely despondent vision—that great population growth inevitably led to great famine and despair. The time that Thomas Malthus, writer, amateur economist and clergyman (the enduring term history gave him would be the gloomy parson), lived in may have greatly influenced his theory on population. Nineteenth-century England was seeing very high birth rates, with families having children by the bakers dozen. Malthus— who, as the second of eight children, was himself part of the population explosion he bemoaned—predicted in his An Essay on *Tbe Alchemist, Liars Poker and (Tom Friedman would be delighted) The World Is Flat have been perennial favourites for Indian pirates. the Principle of Population that the unprecedented increases in population would lead to a cycle of famines, of epidemics, and sickly seasons. India in particular seemed to be speedily bearing down the path that Malthus predicted. On our shores, famine was a regular visitor. We endured thirty hunger famines* between 1770 and 1950— plagues during which entire provinces saw a third of their population disappear, and the countryside was covered with the bleached bones of the millions dead.1 By the mid twentieth century, neo-Malthusian prophets were sounding the alarm on the disastrous population growth in India and China, and predicted that the impact of such growth would be felt around the world. Their apocalyptic scenarios helped justify draconian approaches to birth control. Policies recommending sterilization of the unfit and the disabled, and the killing of defective babies gained the air of respectable theory. 2 Indias increasing dependence on food aid from the developed world due to domestic shortages also fuelled the panic around its population growth—in 1960 India had consumed one-eighth of the United States total wheat production, and by 1966 this had grown to onefourth. Consequently, if you were an adult in the 1950s and 1960s and followed the news, it was entirely plausible to believe that the endgame for humanity was just round the corner; you may also have believed that this catastrophe was the making of some overly fecund Indians. Nehru, observing the hand-wringing, remarked that the Western world was getting frightened at the prospect of the masses of Asia becoming vaster and vaster, and swarming all over the place. And it is true that Indians of this generation had a cultural affinity for big families, even among the middle class—every long holiday during my childhood was spent at my grandparents house with my cousins, and a family photo from that time has a hundred people crammed into the frame. Indian families were big enough to be your *Amartya Sen and others have pointed out, however, that while these famines may have seemed to be the consequence of a country that was both poor and overpopulated, they were in fact triggered partly by trade policies and the lack of infrastructure. Lord Lytton exported wheat from India at the height of the 1876-78 famine, and the lack of connectivity across the country affected transportation of grain to affected areas. Main social circle—most people did not mingle extensively outside family weddings, celebrations and visits to each others homes. The growing global worries around our population growth created immense pressure on India to impose some sort of control on our birth rates, and we became the first developing country to initiate a family planning programme. But our early family planning policies had an unusual emphasis on self-control.3 In part this was influenced by leaders such as Gandhi, who preached abstinence; in an interesting departure from his usual policy of non-violence, he had said, Wives should fight off their husbands with force, if necessary. This focus on abstinence and self-restraint continued with independent Indias first health minister, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, who was in the odd position of being at the helm of a family planning programme while opposing family planning in principle.4 As a result Indian policy during this decade emphasized the rhythm method. Rural India was targeted for raising awareness of the method, and one villager remarked of its success, They talked of the rhythm method to people who didnt know the calendar. Then they gave us rosaries of coloured beads . . . at night, people couldnt tell the red bead for dont from the green for go ahead. 5 Not surprisingly, Indias population continued to grow through the 1950s and 1960s, as fertility remained stubbornly high even while infant mortality and death rates fell rapidly. This was despite the massive awareness-building efforts around family planning that the government undertook. I still remember the small family songs on the radio and the walls of our cities, the sides of buses and trucks were papered with posters that featured happy (and small) cartoon families, and slogans like Us Two, Ours Two. And yet, each census release made it clear that our population numbers continued to relentlessly soar, and we despaired over a graph that was climbing too high, too fast. SNIP, SNIP As the global panic around population growth surged, the Indian and Chinese governments began executing white-knuckle measures of family planning in the 1960s. Our house is on fire, Dr S. Chandrasekhar, minister of health and family planning, said in 1968. If we focused more on sterilization, he added, We can get the blaze under control. By the 1970s, programmes and targets for sterilization of citizens were set up for Indian states. There was even a vasectomy clinic set up at the Victoria Terminus rail station in Bombay, to cater to the passenger traffic flowing through. 7 But no matter how Indian governments tried to promote sterilization with incentives and sops, the number of people willing to undergo the procedure did not go up. Indias poor wanted children—and especially sons—as economic security. State efforts to persuade citizens into sterilization backfired in unexpected ways—as when many people across rural India refused to have the anti-tuberculosis BCG, Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, injections because of a rumour that BCG stood for birth control government.8 In 1975, however, Indira Gandhi announced the Emergency, which suspended democratic rights and elections and endowed her with new powers of persuasion, so to speak. The Indian government morphed into a frighteningly sycophantic group, there to do the bidding of the prime minister and her son Sanjay—the same hotheaded young man who had described the Cabinet ministers as ignorant buffoons, thought his mother a ditherer and regarded the Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos his role model.9 In the winter of 1976, I, along with some of my fellow IIT Bombay students, had arrived on the festival circuit in Delhi to participate in the student debates and quizzes (yes, I was an inveterate nerd). It meant going from college to college for competitions, from Hindu to St Stephens to Miranda House to IIT Delhi. Most of us from the sylvan, secluded campus of IIT Bombay were not as politically aware as the Delhi students—the only elections we followed were those for the ITT hostels and student body. But in the Delhi of the Emergency years, sitting around campfires, one heard the whispered tales of Emergency-era atrocities, and of one particular outrage—nasbandi. Sanjay, who had discovered a taste and talent for authoritarianism with the Emergency, had made sterilization—specifically male sterilization or nasbandi— his pet project. The sterilization measures that were introduced came to be known as the Sanjay Effect—a combination, as the demographer Ashish Bose put it to me, of coercion, cruelty, corruption and cooked figures. Ashish notes that incentives to undergo the sterilization procedure included laws that required a sterilization certificate before government permits and rural credit could be granted. Children of parents with more than three children found that schools refused them admission, and prisoners did not get parole until they went under the knife. And some government departments persuaded their more reluctant employees to undergo the procedure by threatening them with charges of embezzlement.* The steep sterilization targets for state governments meant that people were often rounded up like sheep and take n to family planning clinics. For instance, one journalist witnessed municipal police in the small town of Barsi, Maharashtra, dragging several hundred peasants visiting Barsi on market day off the streets. They drove these men in two garbage trucks to the local family planning clinic, where beefy orderlies held them down while they were given vasectomies.10 This scene repeated itself time and again, across the country. It was difficult to trust the sterlization figures the government released since there was so much pressure on the states for results. Nevertheless, the Emergency-era sterilization programme, Ashish notes, may have achieved nearly two-thirds of its target—eight million sterilizations. But democracy soon hit back with a stunning blow. When Indira Gandhi called for elections in 1977—ignoring Sanjays protests, much to his ire11—the Congress was immediately tossed out of power. The nasbandi programme was the last gasp of coercive family planning in India on a large scale, and it became political suicide to implement similar policies. The Janata Party government that followed Indira even changed the label of the programme to avoid the stigma it carried, and family planning became family welfare. While sterilization programmes have occasionally reappeared across states, they have been mostly voluntary, with the focus on incentives to undergo the procedure, f *Asoka Bandarage describes the target fever in Indias sterilization programmes, which gave rise to speed doctors who competed against each other to perform the most number of operations every day, often under ghastly, unhygienic conditions. One celebrated figure was the Indian gynaecologist P.V. Mehta, who entered the Guinness Book of World Records for sterilizing more than 350,000 people in a decade—he claimed that he could perform forty sterilizations in an hour. tThese sweeteners for the procedure have at times been very strange and a little suspect, such as Uttar Pradeshs guns for sterilisation policy in 2004, under which scheme Indians purchasing firearms or seeking gun licences were told they would be fast-tracked if they could round up volunteers for sterilization. A district in Madhya Pradesh also made a similar guns for vasectomies offer to its residents in 2008.

Dylan Thomas Essay -- Dylan Thomas Poetry Poets Biography Essays

Dylan Thomas Dylan Thomas was born on October 27, 1914 in Swansea, Wales. His father was a teacher and his mother was a housewife. Thomas was a sickly child who had a slightly introverted personality and shied away from school. He didn’t do well in math or science, but excelled in Reading and English. He left school at age 17 to become a journalist. In November of 1934, at age 20, he moved to London to continue to pursue a career in writing. His first collection of poems called 18 Poems was released in 1934. Many people loved his work, and he gained instant recognition. His second collection released in 1936, 25 Poems, was also popular. The year he released his second collaboration of poems was also the year that he met his future wife, Caitlin MacNamera. They decided to get married in July of 1937, and moved to Laugharne, Wales in 1938. One year later, they had their first child, Llewelyn. He was followed by Aeronwyn in 1943 and Colm in 1949. Thomas’ poetry reflected much about his life style and outlandish way of thinking. He was particularly interested in writing about death, and most of his poems have hidden messages relating to death and his fascination with it. Thomas went back and forth with religion, the meaning of life, and what happens in the after life. His fickle beliefs went from joyous faith in God to extreme religious doubt. Thomas’ vacillating religious beliefs had a lot to do with his reckless lifestyle and love for the drink. He would often go out to the bars and be gone for hours at a time, leaving his worried wife and children oblivious to what he was doing. His wife soon found out about his problem, and became concerned. His drinking began to get out of control when he would get ... ...ink Dylan Thomas set out to convey a message about not giving up on anything but especially not on and he certainly gets this point over meaning his poem is very successful. Christina Rossetti tries to get a very different message across and she's trying to help people accept the death of people they loved. Her poem is also effective as it calms and tries to soothe the reader into accepting dying is a part of life and yes we may be sad but we have to learn to live with it, to accept it and to cope with it as life goes on Dylan Thomas' poem made more of an impact on me because it is so much more powerful and I can feel the atmosphere he creates. Also I agree with how he feels and what his poem says which always helps when trying to create an impact. I like the narrator's perspective in Thomas' poem, which is effective in enabling me to empathize with him. Dylan Thomas Essay -- Dylan Thomas Poetry Poets Biography Essays Dylan Thomas Dylan Thomas was born on October 27, 1914 in Swansea, Wales. His father was a teacher and his mother was a housewife. Thomas was a sickly child who had a slightly introverted personality and shied away from school. He didn’t do well in math or science, but excelled in Reading and English. He left school at age 17 to become a journalist. In November of 1934, at age 20, he moved to London to continue to pursue a career in writing. His first collection of poems called 18 Poems was released in 1934. Many people loved his work, and he gained instant recognition. His second collection released in 1936, 25 Poems, was also popular. The year he released his second collaboration of poems was also the year that he met his future wife, Caitlin MacNamera. They decided to get married in July of 1937, and moved to Laugharne, Wales in 1938. One year later, they had their first child, Llewelyn. He was followed by Aeronwyn in 1943 and Colm in 1949. Thomas’ poetry reflected much about his life style and outlandish way of thinking. He was particularly interested in writing about death, and most of his poems have hidden messages relating to death and his fascination with it. Thomas went back and forth with religion, the meaning of life, and what happens in the after life. His fickle beliefs went from joyous faith in God to extreme religious doubt. Thomas’ vacillating religious beliefs had a lot to do with his reckless lifestyle and love for the drink. He would often go out to the bars and be gone for hours at a time, leaving his worried wife and children oblivious to what he was doing. His wife soon found out about his problem, and became concerned. His drinking began to get out of control when he would get ... ...ink Dylan Thomas set out to convey a message about not giving up on anything but especially not on and he certainly gets this point over meaning his poem is very successful. Christina Rossetti tries to get a very different message across and she's trying to help people accept the death of people they loved. Her poem is also effective as it calms and tries to soothe the reader into accepting dying is a part of life and yes we may be sad but we have to learn to live with it, to accept it and to cope with it as life goes on Dylan Thomas' poem made more of an impact on me because it is so much more powerful and I can feel the atmosphere he creates. Also I agree with how he feels and what his poem says which always helps when trying to create an impact. I like the narrator's perspective in Thomas' poem, which is effective in enabling me to empathize with him.

The Worst Hard Time

In this work of non-fiction Timothy Egan expresses his wish for sounder government policy to avoid natural disasters. Egan’s The Worst Hard Time is a harrowing tale about farmers who decided to stay on the plains stretching across Texas’ panhandle, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Colorado during the major drought in the 1930’s. The disaster, known as the Dust Bowl, is largely regarded as a human caused problem. Egan, who is a national correspondent on environmental issues for the New York Times, expertly incorporates historical facts from the time with real accounts from those who stayed.Although Egan sees farming as the direct cause of the drought, winds, and dust, he portrays his characters as hardy entrepreneurs who were duped onto unsustainable farm-land. These individuals, who were known as â€Å"Sod-busters†, started moving into the area during the 1800s when federal government was selling land for next to nothing. They quickly tore up huge regions of rece ntly settled grass-land to plant wheat. This quick change in topography caused high winds to blow off top soil that had been accumulating over millennia.High temperatures and dust storms ravaged the area killing animals and humans in its wake for most of the ‘30s. On April 14, 1935 the region saw its worst dust storm which rained more than 300,000 tons of dirt and dust. This day became known as Black Sunday because those who witnessed it said it blotted out the sun. The dry grass became fuel for praire fires that were sparked by lightning. Swarms of grasshoppers and rabbits plagued the region. In one story Egan describes a story in which the bunnies are brutally beaten while they’re assailants are still dressed in the Sunday best.The worst effect was the endless wind and dust. One young mother, Hazel Shaw, lost her baby daughter and grandmother within hours of each other to dust pneumonia. Using personal stories such as this, Egan tries to point out that this disaster c ould have been prevented with more cautious government policy. Egan portrays his characters as innocent victims of railroad companies and the government. However, as the situation got worse no one told them that their promises where founded on speculation.Egan describes how Germans, who had been lured to Russia by Catherine the Great to serve as a human buffer from the Turks, headed for the American plains when her promise of free land and no taxes was found to be false. One such man was George Ehrilich. He didn’t â€Å"flee the czar's army, survive a hurricane at sea and live through homegrown hatred caused by the Great War just to abandon 160 acres of Oklahoma that belonged to him and his 10 American-born children†. In stories like this Egan portrays his characters as resilient and even stubborn. To survive they did what they had to do but did not give up on their dreams.Egan follows the stories of families that move into new lands in the region that rarely turned ou t worthwhile. In one story a family moves to an inhospitable area after grueling journey. Upon arrival their horses fell over dead and their owners were forced to drink the blood from a sows ear to stay alive. Egan expertly incorporates facts and vivid stories to gain sympathy for hard working Americans and reveal the root cause of the Dust Bowl. Hopefully Egan can reach enough people that control government policy to prevent another catastrophe like the Dust Bowl. The worst hard time What lessons, If any, have we learned from the dust bowl catastrophe-?about how human actions, well-intentioned or not, can lead to environmental damage? Is there anything comparable on the horizon today? 225). What lessons, If any, have we learned from the dust bowl catastrophe-?about how human actions, well-intentioned or not, can lead to environmental damage? Is there anything comparable on the horizon today? Drawing on more contemporary examples of environmental disasters or concerns, write a paper that explores how this debate continues to be timely or hat takes a stand on this debate. . According to the Houston Chronicle, â€Å"The Worst Hard Time documents how government and business with the best of Intentions can facilitate the destruction of an entire region. † Explain how this Is true with regard to the Dust Bowl, and then extend your analysis to include the relevance of this statement to more recent events. What parallels to current events do you see? What are the implications for our society today? 3. Watch the 2012 documentary film by Ken Burns called â€Å"The Dust Bowl† (PBS. Erg/sunburns/dustbins), and then write a imperative analysis of the documentary film and Jean's book. Note any conflicting accounts of the dust bowl or the presentation of events or any additions of details In one account that aren't present in the other, and then reflect on the significance of these differences. Do the accounts share the same purpose and audience? How do the messages vary? Analyze how the different medium and genre-?a historical book vs.. A documentary film-?employ similar or differing strategies to appeal to the audience and carry out their message. 4.As noted at the end of the book, in the section on â€Å"Notes and Sources,† Egan conducted the research for the book using multiple methods and by compiling various types of data. Besides consulting public documents (like U. S. Census reports), local public library collections, local ne wspapers, and other historical societies and historical sources, Egan also did primary research by visiting the High Plains and interviewing people who lived through the Dust Bowl. What is the effect of weaving personal stories and stories of individuals and families Into his historical account?What is the effect on you, as a deader, and your understanding of this historical event? Carry out your own project In which you 1) consult a secondary source on a local historical event (environmental, political, or cultural) and then 2) interview an older relative or acquaintance or community member who has a recollection of the event. Write a report on the event, followed by a reflection on how your understanding of the event and presentation of the report were affected by these deferent types of evidence. 5.Conduct further research on the political and social events coinciding with Jean's Dust Bowl portrayal Ђ?such as the Stock Market Crash of 1 929, the Homestead Act, the Hoover admi nistration policies, the election of FED, the New Deal programs implemented by FED, etc. Then write an analysis of how an understanding of the larger cultural, historical, and economic context can deepen our understanding of the Dust Bowl. As an alternative, you might research and write a project that examines the local context in Kansas, drawing on Kansas History resources (see the links at assassinations. Us/ dustbins. HTML).Or, explore, In particular, the political effects of the Dust Bowl. How multimedia project-?a website or video-?that integrates print, audio, video, and images to capture the multi-layered experiences of various families and regions portrayed in Jean's book, along with the multi-sensory experiences of the Dust Bowl. You might create a timeline or use maps, oral histories, photos, etc. To help convey the experience via a multimedia format. Or you might focus on a key event or issue, such as Black Sunday, dust pneumonia, static electricity, soil 8 | Face u I t y G u I d e erosion and conservation, etc. ND organize your multimedia presentation around en of these topics in order to deepen and enrich understanding of these issues. 7. Write a response to the question: â€Å"How is this book relevant to 21st century readers? † You might consider the most serious ecological or environmental issues that we currently face, and the responses and actions of individuals, communities, activists, and governments. Or, as a group collaborative project, define an ecological or environmental problem, and outline a proposal or solution that might address the problem. Present this as a multi-part paper or website. . During the Dust bowl, a umber of people left their homes-?a migration about which Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath is written. But most residents chose to stay. Write a response in which you evaluate why the residents stayed. Would it have been better to have left? Which choice would you have made? Use illustrations and examples from the book to support your analysis. 9. Create a class environmental blob in which you include discussion threads of historical accounts of environmental disasters-?such as the Dust Bowl-?along with accounts of current environmental events or concerns.With he purpose of creating collective action, include concrete steps that individuals and communities might take to address environmental concerns, and include links to relevant national and local organizations and community groups. 10. Imagine that the sequences of diary entries from Don Harebell in Nebraska (pages 244-48; 274-78; 294-302) were presented in the current day as a wobble or blob. Harebell, like many floggers, has chosen to leave the entries open to comments from readers. Write a comment in response to one of the sequences of diary entries. Harebell's last entry name in the form of a poem (page 302).Analyze the significance of that poem, or write a response to that in the form off blob entry. 11. Jean's historical account incorporates multiple disciplinary perspectives ranging across the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. While the environmental perspective is crucial to Jean's account of the Dust Bowl, he is also interested in effects on human psychology, family behavior, marriage, labor conditions, agriculture, the food industry, the liquor laws and trade, political systems, religious systems, economic systems, music, the arts, etc.Drawing on your own academic (or personal) interests or the subject area or field in which you are planning to major, look for appearances of this interest/area of interest in the book. What role does your disciplinary interest (or related interest) play in Jean's historical account? Or, if you don't see your area of interest or study represented in Cantor's account, explain what role it might have played had it been factored in. Links to further questions for discussion or short writing prompts.

U-Shaped Kitchen Layout Overview

The U-shaped kitchen layout was developed based on decades of ergonomic research. Its useful and versatile, and while it can be adapted to any size kitchen, its most effective in larger spaces.   The configuration of U-shaped kitchens can vary according to the house size and the homeowners personal preference, but generally, youll find the cleaning zone (sink, dishwasher) on the external-facing wall, which sits in the lower curve or bottom of the U. The stove and oven typically will be located on one leg of the U, along with cabinets, drawers and other storage units. And usually,   youll find more cabinets, the refrigerator and other food storage areas like a pantry on the opposite wall.   Benefits of U-Shaped Kitchens A U-shaped kitchen typically has separate work zones for food prep, cooking, cleaning and in eat-in kitchens, a dining area.   Most U-shaped kitchens are configured with three adjacent walls, as opposed to other kitchen designs such as L-shaped or galley, which only use two walls. While both of these other designs have their pluses, ultimately a U-shaped kitchen provides the most counter space for work areas and storage of countertop appliances. A significant benefit of the U-shaped kitchen is the safety factor. The design doesnt allow for through traffic that might disrupt the work zones. Not only does this make the food prep and cooking process less chaotic, but it also helps prevent safety mishaps like spills. U-Shaped Kitchen Drawbacks While it has its advantages, the U-shaped kitchen does have its share of minuses, too. For the most part, its not efficient unless theres room in the center of the kitchen for an island. Without this feature, the two legs of the U may be too far apart to be practical.   And while its possible to have a U shape in a smaller kitchen, for it to be most efficient, the U-shaped kitchen needs to be at least 10 feet wide. Often in a U-shaped kitchen, the bottom corner cabinets can be difficult to access (although this may be remedied by using them to store items that are not frequently needed). U-Shaped Kitchen and Work Triangle Even when planning a U-shaped kitchen, however, most contractors or designers will recommend incorporating a kitchen work triangle. This design principle is based on the theory that placing the sink, refrigerator and cooktop or stove  in proximity to each other makes a kitchen most efficient. If the work areas are too far away from each other, the cook wastes steps while preparing a meal. If the  workspaces  are too close together, the kitchen winds up being too cramped.   While many designs still use the kitchen triangle, its become a bit outdated in the modern era. It was based on a model from the 1940s which presumed only one person prepared and cooked all the meals solo, but in modern  families,  this may not be the case. The  standard kitchen work triangle  is best placed along the base of the U unless a kitchen island is present. Then the island should house one of the three elements. If you place them too far away from each other, the theory goes, you waste a lot of steps while preparing a meal. If they are too close together, you end up with a cramped kitchen without adequate space to prepare and cook meals.