Tourists can see it for themselves. Journalists, other than those from India, have reported it. But you rarely see reports of India’s terrible domestic situation directed at the outside world by Indian journalists and never by government officials.
It is very enlightening to see a citizen of India tell the world how things really are in his native land. I just hope that those who do not want the world to know the truth about India will not retaliate in some way or another against this brave author.
The Indian masses that are mired in poverty are ripe for Marxism. If India were part of Latin America, that nation would have had a bloody Marxist insurgency long ago.
The author is a personal friend of mine and because of the sensitive nature of his post, I will not identify him.
PRICE OF AFFLUENCE
By Geriatrix
Force 12
November 9, 2010
As a frequent visitor to China during the course of my voyages I often try to engage with locals and ask them whether China is now the #1 power in the world. The answer appears to be always the same. Not yet, we still have a long way to go.
What about India, then? We pat ourselves on the back for being a vibrant democracy and take great pride in shouting from the rooftops about our pre-eminent place on the world stage but is this the reality? PM Manmohan Singh even went a step ahead and was quoted as saying that the rampant food inflation and high commodity prices are a price India has to pay for its growing affuence!!
Affluence my ass. PM Singh must take all of us to be morons.
India has, perhaps, 5 million rich and over 1.1 billion poor. The former will continue to amass untold wealth while the latter, though they will reap benefits from the trickle effect, in real terms will languish in poverty and depravity for a long time to come. Our parameters for measuring social well-being are mostly fudged - the models are flawed - put forward by a government machinery that is hell-bent on maintaining the status-quo. As Mr Aziz Premji recently stated there is a total policy paralysis in India as far as governance is concerned.
We are not a democracy in the way that US and European nations are. A huge chunk of the educated middle class does not participate in the electoral process, so disillusioned they are with the process. I have cast my vote only twice in the last 35 years but am confident that my vote would have been "cast" each time an election was held. And, thus, we claim record voter turn-out each time and the media complements the voter for his "maturity"!!
We often hear these days that the greatest strength India has is its young population : over 600 million are under 25 years of age. The key question here : how many of those have gone through even primary school education? The state-run Primary School in my neighbourhood has a pathetic turn-out of students, disenchanted with the "education" it provides, its teachers equally demotivated due to lowly salaries and the fact that they belong to the poorer segment of society themselves.
Every effort is made by the government to stifle well-meaning voices of dissent like Anna Hazare's which enjoy tremendous mass support.
One can go on and on, the list is endless. We score abysmally low, and stand with the poorest of nations, when it comes to social index parameters like infant mortality, sanitation, healthcare,childcare and education.
India is only masquerading as a power. For now.
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