Vacation Travel India

The rich and poor

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was trounced in the 2004 general election, as the majority of people could see no truth in its “India Shining” slogan; giving some hope for a change in direction from the new Congress-led, and Left Front-supported, United Progressive Alliance. “India Shining”, however, was firmly aimed at India’s middle and upper classes, for whom a huge increase in consumer debt has fuelled an equally large orgy of spending, on anything from mobile phones to the latest foreign car.

However, such riches, apparent on any trip to one of the large “metros” (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai), are available to only the 10 percent of the population that comprises the Indian urban middle class. What, then, about the other 90 percent? Life for them, it seems, might not be so rosy. Since 1991, the country has undergone huge economic change, and the adoption of neo-liberal policies, and while this has given a huge boost to the 300 million who count themselves as the Indian middle class, conditions for the vast majority have not improved, and in many cases have become much worse.

Economic reform got off to a shaky start. It was supposed to bring much-needed jobs to India but unemployment has risen, from 9.2 percent in 2000 to 10.1 percent in 2004. The loss of jobs has also affected the non-agricultural sector, which includes the area celebrated by many as India’s savior: the IT and service industries. The service industry accounts for around 51 percent of jobs, much of it extremely badly paid. The country has attracted much business process outsourcing (BPO) by Western companies, which has benefited the middle class, though the work itself is not highly skilled, and most of its operators are vastly overqualified. India exports $25 billion a year of these services, though there have already been reports of companies relocating from India to places such as Ghana where the workforce is even cheaper. In any case, it has been argued that such work merely diverts the best-educated workers into servicing US and European bank and utility accounts rather than into more productive employment - in essence, an internal brain drain.

At the same time, the employment figures mask the true scale of the problem. Only 61 percent of the adult population (between 15 and 65 years old) are seeking employment, and of those who do actually find work, most will be underemployed. Just to satisfy the middle class alone it is estimated that at least 10 million well paid jobs a year need to be created.

Technorati Tags: Contemporary India

Electoral fightback

In the past India has shown a great capacity for reinvention. The 2004 election showed that politics are alive and kicking, particularly at a grass roots level. Believing their own propaganda, the NDA aimed their campaign squarely at the middle class, imagining that the dreams of the affluent minority would prove sufficiently alluring to the poor majority to carry the election. This was not to be the case. The BJP saw its vote plummet, losing 44 seats, while Congress (the largest party) went up from 114 to 145. Perhaps even more telling were the gains for the left-wing, with the two communist parties (CPI and CPI(M)) winning in 53 seats (up from 37 in 1999), and the overwhelming defeat of the arch-liberaliser Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP (Tclugu Desam Party) in Andhra Pradesh, which went down from 29 to five seats.

Social attitudes

As with so much else in contemporary India, people’s attitudes towards everything from religion, to clothes, to sex are multifarious and complex. To take one example, it is generally true that the position of women in society has improved over the past 50 years. After all, India had a female prime minister years before the UK, and it is not uncommon to see women in the workplace. On the streets of central New Delhi you can now see young women wearing miniskirts, unthinkable 10 years ago; though it is true that this is still an exception, the norm being either jeans and a T-shirt or salwar kamiz.

However, these advances are not universal. In many areas women are still restricted to the domestic sphere or, if they are poor, undertake gruelling physical work for little reward. Female infanticide (now gone illicitly hi-tech through foetal screening) is still a huge problem, and astonishing levels of rape and abuse are under-reported.

As with many things, middle-class women, with their access to education and health care, have seen their prospects and freedoms open up, while their poorer sisters concern themselves with the struggle for survival.

In moving away from traditional roles and becoming a target in the marketplace, women find themselves facing new challenges. Body image has become a major concern. Women are now bombarded with advertisements for creams, shampoos and beauty treatments, promoted by sylph-like creatures with fair skins. “Fair and Lovely”, a skin-lightening cream, is the best-selling beauty product in the country, highlighting the implicit racism in the widely promoted ideal image. Anorexia, unheard of in India a few years ago (going without food was not fashionable in a country where so many people are malnourished), has now reared its ugly head as movie stars and models parade their skinny bodies across the television and cinema screens.

Indians are caught between competing discourses: liberalization or the Nehru-Gandhi legacy; frugality and saving or consumption and spending; religious orthodoxy or newly acquired social freedoms. In the past they have proved themselves humane and inventive, giving us hope for the future.

Technorati Tags: Contemporary India