Slashdot Mirror
The Myth of the New India
theodp writes "An NYT op-ed on The Myth of the New India reports that only 1.3M Indians are participating in the so-called new economy of BPO, leaving 400M have-nots without a piece of the pie. Despite recent gains, nearly 380M Indians still live on less $1 a day, setting the stage for rural and urban conflict." From the article: "No labor-intensive manufacturing boom of the kind that powered the economic growth of almost every developed and developing country in the world has yet occurred in India. Unlike China, India still imports more than it exports. This means that as 70 million more people enter the work force in the next five years, most of them without the skills required for the new economy, unemployment and inequality could provoke even more social instability than they have already."
Maybe not New Texas but it sure looks a lot like Iran under the Shah. Small pockets of good economic growth while the rest of the country lived in abject poverty. It brought on a revolution which put the Islamic theocracy back into power.
Seems like scaremongering to me. It is true that a large poor population will probably result in increased social problems, such a crime. However this doesn't mean necessarily that there will be a revolt. Generally the poor are too busy trying to just get by to take up arms. Secondly the cost of living in India is much lower than in America, so while the Indians are poorer than Americans, imagining someone here living on $1 a day doesn't tell you how an Indian living on $1 a day is doing.
Philosophy.
I guess we'll just have to outsource some more jobs.
The problems go beyong economic to cultural. The problems stem from thousand years old caste systems, people being born into a status and being unable to leave, thereby restricting upward mobility in the most powerful sense. For any nation to really rise to what it can potentially be (The US included) we need to abandon our primitive thought processes (and we all have them, every country on this flying rock)
Note: This isn't racist, or culturist, or any thing else -ist. And if you think it is, I no longer care.
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
I suppose BPO is probably more likely Business Process Outsourcing.
(Thanks, wikipedia. No thanks, editors: the term isn't even used in the linked article.)
1.3M may not be much, but it is more than before, and these people spend money and so that money reaches more people than just them.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos
USA
Exports:
$927.5 billion f.o.b. (2005 est.)
Imports:
$1.727 trillion f.o.b. (2005 est.)
From:
I agree with the article that while India and China have been twin rising stars in the tales of ideological globalists like NYT's Thomas Friedman, there is a huge difference between the two : while China will be a superpower by the end of this century, at that time India will still be a third world country by far. With its caste structure, its irremediable lack of infrastructure and ressources to support its population, its relative submissiveness to western political pressure, the tendency of its educated elite to go live and work abroad the second they have a chance to, the best that can happen to India in the mid term is to nurture a developped sub-economy that will give it the global importance of, say, Italy, the UK or France.
And that's to make more pie.
USSR was a "superpower" for decades. Life in it sucked big time. Living in Italy, the UK, France, or even India, would've been much better — if only for the possibility to leave, if you wanted.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Being an Indian American and having been to the region often I agree with this article. The many wealthy which reside mostly in the cities are extremely snobby and will go to great lengths to show off their wealth all alongside with children who beg in the streets struggling to find clothes and food to simply stay alive (oh but then i'd be getting into the whole thing about the rich not caring about the poor yada yada yada...its still sickening). The Chinese have dealt with the issue of painful hunger and the Indian government must tackle this issue as well. I do believe that it will be a rough route to go even if the government goes through with such a plan simply because of the diversity that exists in India. Despite the general pride that the country shows, at some level it is undeniable that there is fragmentation with the many cultures that India encapsulates. Some parts of the country, as stated in the article, have also elected communist governments which undoubtedly impede progress as they threated to break a very delicate coalition every time their demands are not met. I believe progress will be slow, but there will be progress as a new highway system that is sweeping the nation will bring economic opportunities to the regions which are not so "software proficient." At least there will be a shiny new road, one that is not made of cheap construction substitutes, to economic opportunity.
This is a terrible analogy. There are so many differnces between India today and the Iran of the Shah. Firstly, there's no massive Islamist movement. There was a hugely successful Hindu nationalist movement but again, most of the truly extreme "hopes" that might have led to a "theocracy" have been rightly tempered by moderates. Secondly, India is a pretty vibrant democracy, which many Indians bemoan as "too successful" with a huge number of political parties, and high voter turnout - leading more often than not to a coalition government. Finally, India has such a myriad of different cultures, peoples, languages and religions that such pan-Indian movements are not often successful. Cricket is probably the biggest unifier the country has got. :) Anyway, I just had to say something as the parent is an idiot.
You can't take hundreds of millions of people from a state of impoverishment to the land of overflowing McDonalds (and bellies) overnight.
The more you know, the less you understand.
I have been to India recently. A dollar a day is really more than you would think; it's about 43 Rupees. With this many Rupees, you can easily buy a day's worth of meals. You have to understand the culture before you can start throwing out your ideas about how to fix their economy. In the minds of many in India, change is just not important. Money is not important even, like in our part of the world, but rather things family, friends, and morality. I'm not saying there isn't problems; but before you go working on the masterplan to save India, you might want to talk to them.
Just my $.02.
American century was made not by the people of USA imitating any other country but defining their own principles and working on it. Every other nation wants to become what USA is today - rich, powerful and dictating to the world.
If that is the way New India is going to emerge, it is not going to be. We have a saying, a cat should not brand itself to become a leoperd. India can not mindlessly follow the American success story and carry all the Indians along. We need a unique Indian way which is not capitalist, not communist, not socialist but Indian.
We have a rich tradition and had tall leaders leading us. We try to substitute everything with western values as in China. There is a better way. India can show to the world how to solve the problems of consumption driven economies of the west. We can evolve systems, practices to build a new type of economic development and social order. That would be the contribution of India to the world, not trying to be another China or USA.
yAthum UrE yAvarum kELir All the places are our place, everybody is our kin. (A Tamil Poet - 2000 years ago)
With the various world trade agreements, I care less and less about other countries. If it's not outsourcing, it's them coming to us. We should begin to care about our own economy and fix it than other's one. We have our own problems, our own jobless, underpaid, overworked, etc.
Small children not counted as workers, perhaps?
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
You are forgetting something.
The executives making the decisions are making
lots on inflated stock prices.
See? It is OK. And those executives will need
lots of servants around the house, and those cant
be outsourced.
Never mind in 10 or 20 years, the companies in the
countries being outsourced to will have all the
expertise they need, and the American partners will
be told to pound sand. And the weakened American
middle class will not have what it take to float
things along.
emt 377 emt 4
The author , though his name sounds to be Indian, is a person from MARS, b'cos he knows nothing about India and its people. No place on earth has such an amazing amount of diversity and yet the country grows at a impressive rate of 8% per year , check this latest article "The dragon faces Indian FDI threat" by Yasheng Huang, a stickler for time and associate professor at the Sloan School of Management at http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/17 06117.cms
Mr author fyivisit http://www.goodnewsindia.com/ to read 100% authentic and unbiased news about how indian poor and rich serve their country and their fellow citizens with amazing success. This site is not biased by any media or any politician or any author like you !
As rolfwind (another blogger) rightly pointed out ... before writing again on things such as numbers on exports, imports and poverty 'n blah blah ... please first check the facts verified ... http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ india.html [cia.gov].
Poverty in india is 25% from cia.gov while in US it is 12% ! so what is big difference if you consider the 1.1 billion population with that of 350million !!
Can the author pls point out from he got the magical figure "less than $1 a day" figure ....i think author from MARS !!!
It was not so long ago that India appeared in the American press as a poor, backward and often violent nation, saddled with an inefficient bureaucracy and, though officially nonaligned, friendly to the Soviet Union. Suddenly the country seems to be not only a "roaring capitalist success story" but also, according to Foreign Affairs, an "emerging strategic partner of the United States."
Has the NY Times been asleep for the last 15 years? Because it's been 15 years since India began reforming its economy. The present Prime Minister was the finance minister at that time and was responsible for opening up India's economy, which, till then, had been a disgusting molasses of socialism (and crawled along at around the same pace). The USSR died many years ago. Since then, India has been realigning itself according to its self interests. The idea of a strategic partnership with the US seems natural to many of us in India because the other option is a totalitarian China right at our doorstep.
But trade and cooperation between India and China is growing; and, though grateful for American generosity on the nuclear issue, India is too dependent on Iran for oil (it is also exploring developing a gas pipeline to Iran) to wholeheartedly support the United States in its efforts to prevent the Islamic Republic from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
WRONG! India has voted against Iran at the IAEA twice and has supported further action against Iran. The Gas pipeline was in the conception stage and has pretty much been put in the background, not only because Iran's developing nukes, but also because they aren't honouring their own commitments.
Nor is India rising very fast on the report's Human Development index, where it ranks 127, just two rungs above Myanmar and more than 70 below Cuba and Mexico. Despite a recent reduction in poverty levels, nearly 380 million Indians still live on less than a dollar a day.
This is true. And we're ashamed of it. But that doesn't imply that nothing's been done to improve their lot. Recent steps include the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme etc.
Only 1.3 million out of a working population of 400 million are employed in the information technology and business processing industries that make up the so-called new economy.
The author has a fetish for these so-called new economy companies. We don't. We have Pharma cos that are setting up plants left right and centre, we have steel companies fighting each other to be allowed to set up plants, we have automobile giants like Scania and Maan coming along, we have huge infrastructure projects being developed, and so on and so forth. The author would do well to remember that while only 1.3 million people may be employed by the sunshine industry (as other cliches go), more than 300 million people form the middle class. Think about that number. That is the population of the US. I come from the middle class myself. And life isn't a daily struggle for survival as most will put it. Life is comfortable. Life is good. You might want to consider why so many young graduates are preferring to stay back in India for work instead of going abroad.
No labor-intensive manufacturing boom of the kind that powered the economic growth of almost every developed and developing country in the world has yet occurred in India. Unlike China, India still imports more than it exports.
We import more than we export because we're an economy fuelled by domestic demand, unlike China which has become the world's supermarket. The middle class is consuming products which are being manufactured here or are being imported. I'm not an economics major, but from whatever I've read, I can tell that this is definitely a good thing.
This means that as 70 million more people enter the work force in the next five years, most of them without the skills required for the new economy, unemployment and inequality could provoke even more social instability than they have already.
-Shaunak
I don't think you understand the depths of poverty people living on $1 a day reach. Think of the same lifestyle as a homeless person here, except with no social services, no soup kitchens, no shelters. Not even the shopping cart full of junk. Doesn't seem too exciting to me, but maybe because I've lived next to such people for most of my life.
For 12 years I lived on $10 a day. That's living a low-end grad student lifestyle - i.e. just enough for dialup, a mid-range computer, tiny apartment, the bare essentials. $20 a day would probably get you the same lifestyle as a lower middle-class US worker.
$50 a day would probably better fit your definition of "comfortable" - still quite doable, especially if you sink some money into a local business.
Also note, as more and more money flows back into the country's economy, cost of living goes up (as there are lots of these young call-center workers who can afford more stuff), so in a few more years, plan on moving somewhere else. Africa?
We saved you in World War II, so go to hell! If it weren't for us, you'd all be speaking German now!
But I *am* speaking german?!?
The facts that the author of the article presents are absolutely true. There can be no question that life in India is miserable for a vast number of people, in cities, towns, and villages. Communal and caste-based tensions do exist in many places.
There is also no easy way out. Every $ or Rs. that is spent in India helps. Every cent of Investment or export by India helps. Much of it trickles down to the poorest in the cities and villages.
What's needed is an increase in literacy and increase in jobs. Neither of these are short-term, easily achievable goals.
Manufacturing must increase - providing opportunities to semi-skilled workers. Efficiency must increase, allowing for cheaper goods and trickling down to more profits for the millions of small businesses. Farm efficiencies must increase - through better processes or crops. Farmers must get a bigger share of the final price.
While all these are very important issues, the sheer size of India prevents easy action on any of them. We will get out of this mess, it will take time and money.
The author seems to know a lot of Indians who have settled abroad. I know a lot of Indians who've come back or are planning to do so very soon. They're bringing investment with them, they're bringing the contacts and business knowledge that will help them serve customers in the US or Europe. And they will each bring jobs for a few more people.
If the only way we can earn the money is through taking the high-tech jobs of Western countries we're not going to say no. If we can earn money by designing and launching satellites for small developing countries, we're going to do that too. If we can earn money by taking every service job in the US or Europe that's up for grabs, well, we're going to do that too.
India may become the back-office for the rest of the world, we'll still have people left to do other things. India may end up doing most of the unwanted service jobs for the rest of the world. India may do very high-technology services for other countries. That's fine too, because a billion people need a billion different things to do.
The West has drained an incredible amount of wealth from India/China/Africa/America and used it to kick-start their own economies. Two hundred years of plundering cannot be undone in a few dozen years. We're on our way back up, and we'll get there.
All of us have not fallen to the myth of Western superiority in economics due to any inherent advantages. We know what the Western economies owe the rest of world. We don't have the option of plundering other countries' natural resources or enslaving millions of Africans, Indians or Chinese people. We have to get out of this hole with only our own resources. And if it's going to take a century, then we're going to take a century. You can either help us, or hinder us.
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
Sight set in motion. I've bought property in central america - house in the mountains, view of the Pacific ocean, less than 5 miles from the coast. $35K, $300 year property taxes, $500 year caretaker. Cost of living is dirt fucking cheap compared to the metropolis where I currently live. Sure, it'll get more expensive there. But it will never outpace where I live now. I can work until I'm 65 to live out my years where I live now or I can work until I'm 45 and sit on a beach there.
I'm from India. I know the truth of what's happening here by virtue of the fact that I live here. And the truth is, my country will never become a developed nation. The population has gone to a point where even if you try to curb it, it'll have a steady growth. It's standing at 1.2billion now and even a sharp decrease in the birth rate will still mean that the population cannot be curbed. 'cause 1.2 billion, friends, is a _lot_. The only ones who think India will become a developed nation[some even people a super power, heh] are loyally blind Indians and foreigners fooled by statistics of India's IT growth. We lack basic amenities lack drinking water in almost every region of even the posh areas. The air is polluted, the condition of the roads is pathetic in many place. We can't even meet our basic needs. 25% of the population lives below the poverty line; 25% of the population is unemployed. That's 250 million. More than the population of 90% of the countries in the world. It'll only increase. The percentage might go down eventually, but the number will still increase. We Indians are mostly deluded. We do have brain power, the educational system here is rigorous, but it's more about just memorizing things and learning them rather than understand the concept thereof. We will never become a super power.
I'm sorry, but that was a pretty stupid comment. Of course jobs help the Indians a lot. They help the people with the jobs and they help some more Indians that those people buy goods and services from. The gist of the article was just that there are lots MORE people to be helped than seem likely to be reached in the near future by merely the growth engines that are already going strong.
If you look at not just those 1.3 million workers and their families, but the top 100 or 200 million people in India, you have a relatively healthy country. The problem is the other billion or so who desperately need to be dragged along. Or so I understand; I've never actually been to India myself.
To err is human. To forgive is good system design.
there are too many factual errors and at other places the emphasis is completely wrong. i can go and show these line by line, but let us look at some of the obvious errors: "stock market, ...fell nearly 20 percent in two weeks, wiping out some $2.4 billion ... in just four days"
The above calculations implies India's stock market worth of $9.6 billion. Companies like TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Reliance, ONGC etc. EACH have more market capital than this.
"As if on cue, special reports and covers hailing the rise of India in Time, Foreign Affairs and The Economist have appeared in the last month."
Looks like author believes that TIME and Economist are ill-informed.
"India is too dependent on Iran for oil "
India buys Iranian oil at market rate. What is wrong with that?
"country's $728 per capita gross domestic product is just slightly higher than that of sub-Saharan Africa"
How many economists are needed to tell the author to look for PPP instead of GDP? Besides, in 1980s, India's GDP was below that of GDP of almost all the sub-sahara African nations. So this is not a bad achievement.
"India will not catch up with high-income countries until 2106."
Ten years ago, the same was said about China by magazines like Economist.
"accounting for one out of every five child deaths worldwide;"
1 out of 5 children are in India. So this is just an average.
"100,000 farmers committed suicide between 1993 and 2003."
Per person, suicide ratio in India and USA is similar. Also there were more than a million suicide in India in the same period. So 10% of them happened to be farmers is not odd given the fact that farmer population in India is atleast that much.
"The potential for conflict -- among castes as well as classes -- also grows in urban areas, where India's cruel social and economic disparities are as evident as its new prosperity."
First the author has clubbed the two things: classes and castes. Here are my questions:
1. Can you show me any example of caste conflict in urban areas?
2. Can you show me any example of class conflict in urban areas?
"The main reason for this is that India's economic growth has been largely jobless. Only 1.3 million out of a working population of 400 million are employed in the information technology and business processing industries that make up the so-called new economy."
Ever heard of trickle down effect? Let me explain. The 1.3 million job in IT sector are high paying jobs. These people employ large number of people in secondary jobs from school teachers to bank officers. Suppose instead of 1.3 million IT jobs, India had 5 million in small sector jobs (Indian govt favorite darling). In this case, most employees would be dependent on govt for welfare in areas of school, medicine etc. Besides these people would contribute more toward all the ills that the author has talked about from infant deaths to malnutrition to suicide.
"But the anti-India insurgency in Kashmir, which has claimed some 80,000 lives in the last decade and a half, and the strength of violent communist militants across India, hint that regular elections may not be enough to contain the frustration and rage of millions of have-nots, or to shield them from the temptations of religious and ideological extremism."
Again author has clubbed two totally unrelated things. The Kashmir problem is India-Pakistan conflict left over from the partition of India in 40's. The communists on the other hand are supported by the same like minded people as the author of the article (look at other similar articles and you would find that most of them are communists. E.g. Praful Bidwai).
"Many serious problems confront India. They are unlikely to be solved as long as the wealthy, both inside and outside the country, choose to believe their own complacent myths."
Who says people are complacent? Absolutely not. Most wealthy people in India and abroad recognize all the problems that India faces and they are working hard toward solving them. Some of them in the process get rich and communist people author of the article feel jealous of their achievement and write such venomous articles.
Official National Language: Hindi Other National Languages: 25 Religions: Everything religion ever practised on Earth because even a minority here is in millions. Ofcourse Hinduism is the dominant religion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_lang uages_of_India
English is a language used only in cities and in some parts of the government. To my European colleagues I explain it thus: Think of the EU as a single country with all your languages, cultures, religions(though they are all based on Christianity), etc. Now mulptiply that problem by 100 and the population by 9 or 10 and that is India.
And its almost funny when you say that a nation with over 5000 years of _written_ history would be eager as a puppy to 'absorb' a 300 year old country's culture and stored-up 'ideas'. Sure, the US media has managed to reach global audiences and create a homogeneous MTV generation. And some of that can be seen in Indian cities. But that is probably India has assimilated foreign influences over the millenia, not just by copying them, but by choosing what they like in them. That is the only way to survive as a people if you don't want revolution every few hundred years. But the western world may disagree...
There is no patch for stupidity
Visit my blog
The Indian nobel laurelate Amartya Sen made the point that the literacy rate in India is much lower than the literacy in the east asian countries such as China, and therefore the chinese factory workers has ended up being more valuable than the Indian factory workers. On the contrary India has a lot of well-weducated people. As a result of this difference the cheap plastic industry has ended up in China whereas the Indian economic growth is centered around a comparatively small middle class. In other words the lack of investment in education of the poor has lead to inequality. I warmly recommend Sen's book
1 52349068
o nView.asp?PID=1069&EID=328
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199257493/qid=1
On the contrary I recently heard a talk of Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who was one of the arcitects behind the Indian move towards market economy in the 1980's. He said that according to some of the standard measures of inequeality the inequality is India has not been rising. Here is a summary of a similar speach
http://info.worldbank.org/etools/BSPAN/Presentati
Personally, I don't know what to believe. Perhaps some Indian slashdot readers can enlighten me.
In China the ruling Communist Party (CCP; with policies closer to a capitalist fasist party) does exactly what it wants in order for China to become the greatest power on earth under their rule. Sacrificing their people and even swallowing up neighbouring nations to reach that aim doesn't bother the CCP dictatorship one bit.
Case in point: The CCP recently finished the building of the massive Three Gorges Dam. Millions of locals had to be relocated with much if not most of the meager compensation stolen by opportunistic party officials. People attempting to report facts about it face arrest, suspicious muggings or worse.
In India far smaller dam projects face long delays or even cancellation because the locals have various means of defending their rights.
In China, business people with the right guanxi (political connections) can take over anyone's land and if the locals riot as their last recourse, the Party's paramilitary police will quickly take care of it.
If democracy and basic human rights meant anything to Western business people and Western politicians who are responsible for the "rules of engagement", the West would choose to invest in and trade with democratic developing nations (like India) instead of expansionist totalitarian regimes (like China).
As long as democracy and basic human rights are only paid superficial lip-service by the West, free countries will lag behind the dictatorships. Beside the West losing (selling out) its fundamental moral foundations, such policies will also encourage developing countries to adopt the more dictatorial forms of government since they are proving to be more beneficial in terms of foreign investment. In fact China is increasingly channeling its own foreign investments into Central Asia, Africa and South America, further undermining the West's half-assed efforts at encouraging democracy and human rights in those countries.
Democracy and human rights certainly incur some financial costs but are we surrendering it all up just to help global corporations rake in short-term profits? It wasn't the corporations who suffered when the Stalins, Hitlers, Maos and Hirohitos went on a rampage; no, it was people who took the bullets in the name of their continued freedom.
If today's people still value those ideals, then global trade could easily be harnessed as a force for good. If countries like India were to be given preferential trade treatment over expansionist dictatorships like China, it would force the Chinese people to rethink their system and policies instead of giving them an edge over free societies.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
India is really a sad country, most of us are immune to this, we'd rather not face it. When I first came here as a naive 16 year old 10 years ago the poverty even in a city like Bombay shocked me, there is too much suffering here.
In villages the caste system is alive and well with lower castes living on the periphery and not sharing even the same resources like water. In cities you don't see it untill its time to get married, then even the most educated Indian becomes caste conscious. We are very religious as a people but not moral, for us sex and public posturing is more about morality, as individuals we have no integrity which reflects in the massive amount of corruption, how other Indians less fortunate than us are treated. For instance you could be praying all day and yet have little qualm in mistreating the people who work for you. The state and its various arms have no respect for the people, unless you are someone important even the most basic decencies are not extended.
This is everday life, there is a VIP culture, a culture of servitude which means that no rules are followed, no system adhered to, anything goes if you have the right connections. Thats why the environment is a mess, and administration ineffective. Whatever little resources is available is wasted.
And you can't run away from a population of 1.3 billion ever increasing. Even the most talented and commited administration can't solve this over the next 100 years. We can't have a welfare state and provide even bassic amenities. We will always judge ourselves by standards that are significantly lower than any western country. I think Europe at the moment is the good example of how to get things right. But indians will point to morality, as if they have a monolopoly on things like family values and caring for kids, what about trying to give people a decent chance at having a life, that's not important in the face of pretension and posturing. So every small success is magnified. We are insecure so any response to this article can only be defensive. But if we don't recognize the problem we can't solve it. We are inadequate, the systems and laws are there but we can't implement anything because of a overwhleming lack of integrity.
On the business side, the IT revolution has definitely made life better and its another small step. Companies are profesionally managed nowdays, no bosses wife intefering in your work. People are better paid. More people earning means more spending and this has a roll on effect. But we are not innovating, india has not innovated. BPO and IT services is the most boring work in the world, there is money but no challenge at work. We don't have a culture of R&D, taking a risk, making a product, and taking it to market, we don't have the appetite for that sort of invstment with no guarantee of returns, so much easier to to mop up service contracts, hire people here and refine a process and take the money. No risks. So don't compare this to Silicon Valley, thats a bit of a joke. The pharma industry have a similar business model, and here things could get dangerous especially with no effective regulation and human testing.
The entire world is living on science and technology that really picked up with the renassiance. We should not be shy to acknowledge this. Western civilization is the moden world, its a massive achievement for as as humans and as cultures we should learn form this human achievement and not try to posture about our failures so far.
karma
I read quite a few posts talking about what a dollar can buy in India, with most examples talking about a meal at a restaurant or a road side shack. That seems to be from the perspective of a "college student/single guy" outlook.
Another way of looking at what a dollar can buy is by looking at what the corresponding monthly expenses would be like. Eating out is sort of a luxury/uncommon in many places in India (let alone, gasp, everyday!). People cook at home -- and that gets the costs down significantly. In fact, I remember reading somewhere on how one can have a healthy meal for dollar a day per person in the US (something about buying things that are in season, etc.)
A dollar a day is very low for one person even in India. The picture may appear more depressing if we look at that money from the perspective of western eating habits.
S
The article misinterprets facts in many ways. There are some facts. Overall the picture looks good, not that bad as mentioned in the article and there is hope. But I rather call them as challenges than bad. They are not to be ignored. But there is no silver bullet either. If you discuss with people from India, while they are proud of the growth, they are don't hyped about it as the media reports. World media is worried since they had to drastically change the way they portrayed India for a long time.
Here are some views on India's growth gathered from various sources.
Media Image
Why is every one so surprised by India's growth? It has to do with the image of India portrayed by world media. The image portrayed was that of a poor country with a huge population aligned to the communist Russia. Few years back we never saw a an Indian multi-lane paved-road in the media, even when they existed in may places. Today media is forced to change that image as more and more people are visiting India. World media is worried since they had to drastically change the way they portrayed India for a long time.
$1 perception
As many pointed out in the replies, $1 is much more than most of us know. A loaf of bread is $1.5 (Rs67) in US is about $0.2 (Rs10) in India. While gas price is higher than in US, the MPG of most of the vehicles are much higher than in US. And many ride motorbikes that have 120MPG. So comparison is not apple-apple when you say Oh my God, people live in India for $1 a day.
I saw comments mentioning that the meal for less than $1 is in roadside shack. That is not true. Go to the wealthy part of the city and try to eat for a $, if we get one, that may be in a shack. If we go to the villages where poor people live, you are surely not going to see a star rated restaurant. But believe me, I have had and, most places we can eat food without upsetting stomach. But as the same person rightly pointed out most of the people cook food at home. And don't forget they grow vegetables at home and may be one cow or goat for their milk.
World has changed
No one is saying India will have an easy walk. World is different than it was during the industrial revolution. This could be a new form of economic revolution. And the background of the countries are not the same.
Wealth ratio
- Ratio of income earned by a country's richest 10% and the poorest 10% is 7.3.
That is, the richest 10% of the population is a little over seven times as rich as the poorest 10%.
- China which has a ratio of 18.4.
- United States 15.7.
This numbers show that the gap of wealthiest and poor are much better than many wealthy countries.
Middle class growth
When we say the percentage of middle class is growing, what does that mean? It means people from lower economic class is joining middle class. Isn't that good? There is no silver bullet, it cannot happen in a day or few years. It is improving at a good rate, given the population.
Per capita income
- In 1996, India had a per capita income of $380.
- In 2004 India's per capita income has risen to $620.
- While many other Asian countries have not got that seen that growth.
Growth Rate - a different view
- From 2000 to 04 with annual growth rate of 6.2%.
India was not second but the 17th fastest-growing nation in the world.
- From 1990 to 2004, India moves up to being the fourth fastest-growing economy, behind China.
- From 1980 to now, India does indeed come secondbehind China.
- It is this that gives the big hope to India - Consistent and steady growth - at least till now.
Challenges are not just in India.(from BBC article)
- Rising inequality is largely a concomitant of globalization and, hence, for a single country to take action against this is to take the ri
Hey fatman, unlike the Pahlavi dynasts, India's democratic polity has mastered the art of populism, which is unfortunately why India has been poor for 60 years. Because while populism may get you votes, it doesn't necessarily produce economic growth -- quite often the contrary, actually.
India needs industrialization, because the fact is that most people can't become programmers or even call-center workers overnight. No country can skip the necessary step of creating a blue-collar working class.