Category Archives: demographics
Disparity and its Disturbing Depths
The Yin and Yang of Life in India…an apt title, even if I do say so myself.
In this country, disparity is everywhere you look! But there are some areas where the disparity is not only acute, it’s an incongruity that becomes distressing to observe.
Over the past few decades this country has gone from being considered a third-world developing country to an emerging economic power in the new world. Thanks to progressive economic reforms a couple of decades ago, a transformation has occurred. This has meant significant, visible progress and wealth generation. In some quarters.
While wealth is being generated at an incredible pace, the poor seem to be left behind at just as amazing a rate. The dichotomy and gap between the poor and the wealthy is ever-expanding.
Just talk with any visitors to this country. They are startled and completely taken aback by this extreme disparity, as they go back and forth between the chilled luxury of their sumptuous five-star hotel to the somber city scenes right outside that fort.
Not that I am wealthy by any means, but I am certainly better off than so many not as fortunate in India. With the incredible numbers and statistics here, how can I not be! In most other country, perhaps I would be considered moderately better off, but here? It’s off the scales!
Where else would I feel that the evening outing that I just paid for (for argument’s sake, let’s say that was $100) was equal to or more than the monthly income of about fifty percent or more of the population of the country where I am a temporary resident? Wow!
Is that why I feel an unusually high level of discomfort when stopped at a traffic light in Mumbai in my comfortable air-conditioned car and poor kids flock to the windows looking for handouts? All the while, willing myself not to make eye contact. Oh no, but that would never do! 😦
I think what it is new for me in this new India is the absolutely new shocking contrast between the poor and the rich. Don’t get me wrong. The contrasts were always there. Yet, today, ironically with the increase in prosperity in many sectors, the differences are more obvious and the extremes more extreme.
Wise Confucius has a saying that goes like this:
“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.”
I read it recently and it got me thinking long enough to prompt this post.
Now, whether a country is well-governed or not is never an absolute. In fact, it’s highly relative. Let’s just agree that India is on the low end of the spectrum. I can’t imagine anyone saying that this is a “well-governed” nation!
Yet, here’s the dilemma. People who have become wealthy by working hard or working smartly as the country progressed economically – should they or anyone really be ashamed of that wealth? Absolutely not. [Unless, of course, you are one of the many politicians who steals from the country to create your own wealth bubble].
The real question is whether the government of this complex democracy is doing enough, fast enough to help make the poor better off, at the same time that they are helping to make the wealthy even better off? The answer to this is obvious. Absolutely not.
And, until that begins to happen, yes, in this badly governed country, wealth in all its forms but especially the loud and ostentatious Indian kind, will always be something painful for me to watch.
It’s the more piercing side of the yin and yang of living in India – one that I am yet to get completely sensitized to (and am completely sure that I don’t want to).
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Photo Credits:
Touchdown in Mumbai: By Sankarshansen (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Beggars: By Jorge Royan (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Incredible India! Facts, Stats and the Effects of Corruption
Anna Hazare‘s anti-corruption movement has touched a chord with more people in India than any other movement in recent years. Ordinary citizens are tired of the country being looted by the very people voted into power to serve them.
India Gate, New Delhi - The National Monument of India
I wanted to understand more specifically just how wide-spread corruption was in the country.
Aside from recent huge scandals including CWG, 2G licenses and the Adarsh Housing scam that have brought to light the ugly disease plaguing this country and stunting its economic growth and credibility, I have discovered some incredible metrics.
Even a cursory look (which is all this is) reveals so much!
National Emblem of India; The motto Satyameva Jayate means "Truth Alone Triumphs" - does anyone remember?
See if any of these numbers astound you as much as they did me (btw, it’s a pretty safe assumption that these numbers underestimate the ground reality) –
1. More than 50% of people have first-hand experience of paying bribes to public officials in order to get their work done.
2. Inter-state transport: Truckers in India alone pay $5 billion (yes, US Dollars) in bribes annually.
3. The monetary value of petty corruption in 11 basic services in government (education, healthcare, judiciary, police) amounts to about $5 billion annually.
4. India’s telecom ministry apparently siphoned $30 billion from various projects over the past few years.
5. According to ex-IPS officer Kiran Bedi, about $16 billion is lost to corruption every year in India. Of Rs.100 meant to be spent on infrastructure, only about Rs.16 is used and Rs 84 is lost. Is it in any wonder the state of the infrastructure?
6. A recent report by World Bank showed that only 40% of grain handed out to the poor reaches its target. This report says that aid programs in India are beset by corruption, bad administration and under-payments. Yet another embarrassment for the ruling party.
7. The Bangalore-based website ipaidabribe.com, which encourages citizens to report bribes anonymously they have paid, has so far compiled 11300 reports with a total bribe value of about Rs. 295,000,000. While this is just a fraction of all bribes, the fact that people are taking the trouble to report them tells me how tired and angry they are with the situation. What is the tipping point?
8. Independent reports published through 1991 to 2011 calculated the financial net worth of India’s most powerful and traditionally ruling family to be anywhere between $9.41 billion to $18.66 billion, most of it in the form of illegal monies.
9. India tops the list for black money in the entire world with almost US$1456 billion in Swiss Banks – that is about $1.5 trillion. Staggering!
10. According to the data provided by the Swiss Banking Association Report (2006), India has more black money than the rest of the world combined. To put things in perspective, Indian-owned Swiss bank account assets are worth 13 times the country’s national debt.
Sickened yet?
No doubt about it, this is a debilitating cancer on the nation; it is an affliction of such epic proportion that it impacts everything and everyone. A recent report by KPMG states that “high-level corruption and scams are now threatening to derail the country’s credibility and [its] economic boom”.
Found on the web: Anna coin created as a tribute to Anna Hazare for leading the Anti-corruption campaign forcing the Government to bring the Lokpal Bill.
That’s minor compared to what this scourge is doing to, and cheating from, the citizens of this country.
Are you a citizen of India (past or present) or a descendant of one?
If you do nothing else after reading these sad facts, do check out the website of Anna Hazare, read about his anti-corruption movement and find a way – however small* – to support it.
This is the closest we have come to the tipping point.
There is a rage and fury that has built up against the cheating powers that be. It’s way past time for this country to fix itself.
Why not use the current high emotions and wide-spread wrath to start fixing these serious issues? Perhaps then India’s future really will be as bright as everyone says it can be.
The alternative – to let this built-up citizen outcry and ire just slip away into non-action – is much too unfortunate to contemplate. What a pity that would be and what a great missed opportunity!
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*Something really small that you can do to help: Get engaged – read what he’s about. And spread the word.
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Anna Coin: By Muditmittal (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
India Gate Photo: By just clicked [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The Yin and Yang of Life Anywhere 