India's Great Paradox

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India's Great Paradox

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INDIA
TODAY

"The first day in India,
every foreigner is convinced he can write a book about it. After a year of living here, he realizes he can't write one meaningful sentence about it."

- Former president of Delhi's
Foreign Correspondents

INDIA'S GREAT PARADOX

After 28 years of traveling, thinking and writing about India,
a BBC correspondent stated, "for any generalization that can be made about
India, the
opposite is equally true."

From the lush tropics in the south to the jagged Himalayan peaks in the
north, diversity is exemplified with India's billion plus citizens speaking 225
different languages and dialects amongst an array of ethnicities, regions and
religions. As one of the most diverse countries in the world, the contrasts
within contemporary India
has also grown to be one of the most paradoxical. With many Indians phasing out
the ancient ways of the caste system and embracing the e-age of the 21st
century, India
is rising fast among global ranks, but at the cost of a new form of societal hierarchy.

The leading Indian business newspaper, The Economic Times recently titled an
article, "The Global Indian Takeover: For India,
it's a harbinger of things to come --- economic superstardom". With a 6
percent annual growth rate, India
is accelerating at full throttle into the 21st century, poised to overtake Japan
as the world's third largest economy. At the same time, farmers are committing
suicide in record numbers because they can't compete in India's
globalized market. "India
doesn't live in its villages," says author and activist Arundhati Roy,
"it dies." In the countryside, home to 70 percent of India's
population, over 100,000 farmers had committed suicide between 1993 and 2003.

Even as India
launches its own satellites and plans to send a spacecraft to the moon, less
than half of its 500,000 villages are connected to an electricity grid. In Mumbai,
India's most cosmopolitan
city, disparities are still vastly evident with half of its 16.4 million
residents living in urban slums. A list of India's paradoxes can go on with the
growing middle class watching the hit Indian version of "Who Wants to be a
Millionaire" while 35 percent of Indians live in extreme poverty, on less
than $1 a day.

How can India
even out the gap between the rich and poor? While critics and experts endlessly
debate the solution, a commonly accepted metaphor goes, "to fix the pipes,
you must first fix the institutions that fix the pipes." In other words, India
must do away with its widespread corruption through radical reforms at the
highest levels --- one that ensures transparency, accountability and trade
justice on both regional and national levels. Although anti-corruption measures
in India still
remain at its infancy, progress has been palpable at the grassroots level. Investments
in basic infrastructure, such as water, sanitation, education, electricity and
health have already enabled millions to get a foothold on the ladder of
development. However, with 380 million still shackled in the cycle of extreme
poverty, a massive scale up of infrastructure in India's rural and most
impoverished communities must be the amongst the first of many steps to begin
drawing a close to India's rich and poor divide.

ECONOMIC
SNAPSHOT
GNI per
capita: 620 USD
Percent living on less than $1 a day: 35

*Percent of central government expenditure for education: 2

*Percent of central government expenditure for health: 2

*Percent of central government expenditure defense: 12

*Data refers to the years 1993-2004

Wen-Yan King for MedAPT International

June 18th, 2007

See medapt's PHOTOS for FUTURES exhibition of India >

Origional article with more photos and links can be found here.