The most remarkable thing about India of course is that India is a major contributor, indeed a pivotal partner, in the emergence of this remarkable economic development of the 21st Century and that is a truly global middle class.
Randeep Ramesh, The Guardian, April 5:
Gandhi’s India, or at least his influence on economics, has all but disappeared in the past decade. From 1947 until 1991, the economy grew at 3.5% a year, the so-called Hindu rate of growth which championed equality and social stability over wealth. After 1991, that all changed. Notions of speed and efficiency were stamped on to a civilisation that traditionally took a slower, more relaxed view of life. Economic growth rose to 6% a year. In the past three years, it has zoomed to 8% a year – meaning that the economy will double in size in a decade. The message now is similar to that of China during the 90s, in the phrase attributed to Deng Xiaoping: “To get rich is glorious.”
Not that the wealth has reached all of the country. India is one land, but the rich and poor exist on apparently different planets. Virtually unreported are some awful daily realities: the rate of malnutrition in children under five is a shamefully high 45%. Less than a third of India’s homes have a toilet and most women have to wait until the dark of evening to venture out to answer the call of nature. The talk of making poverty history sounds hollow in India, a land which is home to a third of the world’s poor and where some 300 million people live on less than $1 a day.…