India "Shining"

India's GDP growth rate is 9.4% for the fiscal year 2006-07 making it the second fastest growing economy in the world or the fastest growing free market democracy !!

Sensex is almost reaching 18k and has even zoomed ahead of Nikkei of Japan for the first time in September 2007

Team India's win in the recent T20 World Cup made analysts and pundits to declare ascendance of young and confident new generation, rising from far-flung small towns of India ,free of pedigree and customs

After Wills India Fashion Week in Pragati Maidan,Delhi within few weeks we have Lakme India Fashion Week in Mumbai

Movie Industry is upbeat with movie Sivaji , starring Rajnikanth made with an estimated budget of 96 crores.

Mukesh Ambani the richest resident Indian building a house as big as regular 60-storied residential block

No wonder even foreign newspapers and channels are covering this Great Indian Resurgence.Pundits and analysts have hailed India as an example for all developing countries to emulate.India with free market and largest democracy has destroyed the long held belief that Democracy doesn't work in poor,diverse countries.Now everything mentioned above is true but the question is what percentage of India does this growth story portray??

It seems we Indians not just love Bollywood movies but live in Bollywoodland too.Media with its explicit capacity to educate and implicit capacity to form political opinions has stooped to the level of tabloid journalism.Write or Show that which sells has been the motto of these newspapers or channels.In the recent Wills India Fashion Week journalists and TV crew were "fighting" for space alongside Politicians,Babus,Foreign Buyers.Same media were not so keen in reporting 3 million people displaced in eastern India due to floods in August.In a country where less than 0.2 percent of people sport designer clothes and per capita consumption of textile is less than world average media should get its priorities correct.Sensex maybe booming and investors are thrilled but its happening in a country where 70% people don't have bank accounts and thousands of farmers die every year unable to pay debt.Recently Wheat imported from Australia meant to be distributed under various welfare schemes meant for the poor and tribal is said to be used as animal fodder in Australia.

The fastest growing sector in India is nor IT,BT,Automobiles it is inequality.In the last decade the gap is just widening.Poor man's plight is seen as solely their own making. Walter Bagehot an editor with Economist wrote "Poverty is an anomaly to rich people.It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell".It is in these past few years India has slipped from rank 124 to 127 in the Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Programme. The Human Development Index (HDI) is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, and standards of living for countries worldwide.It shows that you are better off being poor in Botswana, El Salvador, Guatemala or the Occupied Territories of the Palestine - than in India.

The orgy of celebration over elite consumption in recent years is dangerous.In this age of Mall Culture,McDonald's,Theme Restaurants its surprising to learn India accounts for half of the malnourished children in the world.While rest of the world is battling obesity among their teens we are yet to highlight malnourishment prevalent among our children.While its difficult for people in villages to access basic health care we can see "weight-loss" clinics,"skin shine" clinics,spa and fitness centres on every road in urban India.A cappuccino at CCD,Bangalore-Mysore highway may cost 30 rupees but a peasant family working on the land behind may toil whole day to earn the same in a day.In villages while people are finding it difficult to afford ceremony for marriage in urban India teeming with Industrialists,Businessmen,IT honchos theme marriages with Tajmahal,Flower garden as backdrop are becoming norm.All the while salaries have been shining.Dhirubhai Ambani's last salary was 9 crores which is 30,000 times that of what a poor cotton farmer in Vidarbha can earn.While most rural folk walk miles to get few buckets of water in the Shining India there are 24 amusement and water parks in and around Mumbai alone using 50 billion litres of water for entertainment. In a bid to present rosy picture to foreign clients and probably help relax the hardworking minds of Businessmen,IT people lush green lawns,Golf courses are built and maintained which consume enough water which would suffice annual requirement of a dozen villages.Blindly imitating west by having lush green lawns in a tropical and semi-arid areas defies logic.In a bid to boost image of India we plan to bring F1 to Delhi where as most rural folk in outskirts still use bullocks to till their lands.

This is where India Shining meets India Burning.The absolute amount of per capita food availability for the year 2002-03 was lower than during the time of the Bengal famine.What sort of society can endure such inequality?Even President of India K.R Narayanan said in a Republic Day speech "It seems, in the social realm, some kind of a counter revolution is taking place... As a society, we are becoming increasingly insensitive and callous...The unabashed vulgar indulgence in conspicuous consumption by the noveau riche has left the underclass seething".This inequality has lead to revolutions in the form of Naxalism.If we look at the map showing districts affected by Naxalite movement it tells the story.They are active in 160 of the 604 administrative districts.Although their violent means to achieve their revolutionary goals needs to be condemned we must also evaluate the reasons behind birth of such groups.Continuous social and economic inequality breeds dissent and this dissent may turn into armed uprising.Even Manmohan Singh had stressed the need to address the basic causes for alienation of the people and the lack of development.In the inaugural CII meeting reformist PM made a socialist call for inclusive growth.He spoke about industry dedicating to workers’ welfare,extended affirmative action, warned against cartelisation, said employment growth is necessary to spread the benefits of high GDP growth rates, depreciate high profits, reduce excessive management remunerations and vulgar display of wealth and ostentatious expenditures, called for people investment and higher R&D and innovation investments, and slammed corruption. He ended up with plea for industry to promote socially responsible media and finance socially responsible advertising.However the Industry slammed him saying it was not practical and more importantly not their job !!

We need a socio-economic system in which there is fair distribution of wealth across all sections of society.We need to negate economic disparity and make development inclusive before reality bites.

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" - Karl Marx