Poverty in India

India is a poor country. India is a rich country where poor people live. Out of these two assertions, which one truly describes India?

India is, of course, a poor country. But it is rich in human capital, as far the sheer number goes; but it is poor in almost all human development indices.

India has started from such a low base that all the data showing production and consumption and their percentage of growth, year on year are misleading. The fact is that this country is still trying to come out from the pit of adversity. Its growth figure of 8 - 9 percent per year looks so formidable to the developed countries; actually it spreads so thinly that it is hardly noticed among 120 million of us.

It is said that whatever growth and development happens in China, it is because of the government (support). In India, everything, including development and growth, happens in spite of the government!

Here, everything is stacked against the common man. People are up against the unresponsive bureaucracy and somnolent administration. Justice is available but expensive. Infrastructure is crumbling. Electricity and water supply is erratic. Wherever the common man comes into the touch with the state, he has to cough up some of his money just to keep off the state. There are no labour laws as far as the majority of unorganised labour is concerned. Their working hours stretch for twelve hours or more and the salary of unskilled, illiterate labourers is pittance. Teeming millions of them work as bonded labourers under coercion getting starvation diet and abysmally low wages enough to keep the body and soul together.

This is the other India, the unsung India; sacrificing its youth and life to serve the rich as maidservant, gardener, sweeper, labourer, and other menial professions with almost no access to even nominal healthcare, sanitation, clean drinking water, a roof over the head; with many drinking the hooch and taking intoxicants, as if the life was not already toxic enough.

It is this underclass that is trying to shake off its hard luck through hard work and the cheap technology and gadgets like cellphone, are helping this class to challenge the status quo, quite unbeknown even to them. These people are trying to shake off their economic inertia as they try to inch up the value chain and their combined effort is translating in the growth that has become such a darling of the media. These people are becoming worse, while earlier they were worst. Now they are trying to become bad. In short they are trying to become worst to bad, a sort of reverse engineering of poverty. They are out of the pale; they are the other, the other India: the India that is now truly waking up to new possibilities.

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