Prosperity In India: Where’s The Party?
Viewpoint by Fei Long, WCW Asia Bureau
There is a roaring party going on in India. Whether it is the swarming crowds of Janpath in Delhi or the circus of MG Road in Bangalore. Change over the last 15 years has been mesmerizing. Call Centres, Investment Banks, Hi-Tech and software development and you can cut your teeth on the new money and success. Take Bangalore and its environs.
Once a glorious garden city, Bangalore has now transformed into the new India of glamour and fashion. Gated communities for the wealthy surround the old city. Traffic is on a scale that even defies past traffic growth in the West. Cosmic change and mass consumption are rank. Brand names and luxury are the new Gods.
Yet only two hours away and you are confronted by the other India. The India left behind swallowed in grime, corruption, rickshaws and people struggling to earn their crust of chapattis or bowl of rice. This new age India is all tinsel, and worse the other 900 million have not been invited to the party.
Nobody is denying that the new growth and prosperity is a wholly negative outcome of the last 15 years. The problem arises out of the paradox of begging and hassling of those who clearly will never find their place in the new age prosperity. Handouts and other social crumbs cannot bring these people into the new golden age. Far away from the glitter and rail systems and SUV’s are districts where insurgencies are becoming commonplace. Nationalism is being stoked to get up the dander of the masses and catering to the worst in human behaviour.
One problem is that the elite is so self absorbed that they find it hard to believe that the “other half” exist. Off the record, business elites are concerned but they have no ready-made solutions to offer. Pick up a trendy fashion magazine in a street near Brigade Road and you will see an India, I have never seen. There is no garbage, poverty, environmental mismanagement, child labour, disease or hunger. There are only air brushed photographs of splendour, contentment and middle class and elite life. If I didn’t know any better, I would think these photos were taken of prosperous Indian families living in London or New York.
Westerners in general find India difficult to understand let alone visit. There are different perceptions on the order and nature of society or civic responsibilities. What do you make of a place with so much diversity? How do the people find commonality beyond clan, family, and a social system, which defies language?
Imagine you are in the government. How do you plan to leverage the principals of democracy, a foreign import of recent vintage and get people to look behind caste stigmas and inequality?
The challenges this country faces are simply daunting. How the new moneyed classes integrate the ones left behind will determine whether India moves forward or at some point implodes in chaos and violence.
