A Tale of Two Indias With One United Goal

By: Raymond Tham   Date: 16 June 2011

About The Author

Raymond Tham

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Raymond Tham, Writer

 

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 “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” – Charles Dickens from A Tale of Two Cities 

A Tale of Two Indias With One United Goal

Be The Change You Want to See in the World. Mahatma Gandhi
Credit: mckaysavage

It has become rather cliché to describe India as a land of contrasts. After all, in a land of more than 1.2 billion people, with hundreds of languages, and a history that dates to over five thousand years, there are bound to be contrasts that have emerged along the way.

See the Slide Show >>> Indian States Vs. World Countries

Still, India is often characterised by the degree of contrasts that exist within the country. In fact, the government and the people of India have come to accept, and even embrace this profile. As one Indian netizen puts it, India is a “country with unity in diversity…all are undoubtedly united by one sole feeling of ‘being an Indian’.”

Here at EconomyWatch.com, we’ve also gotten a sense of how diverse and passionate our Indian readers can be when it comes to issues related to their homeland. From the comments left on our India-related articles to our social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter (Follow us on Facebook and Twitter) our Indian readers have always shown a willingness to share and express their opinions – often displaying a keen interest to learn as well as to educate our non-Indian readers about Indian topics.

Another thing that we’ve noticed about our audience from India is, regardless how diverse or different individual opinions may be, there is one common factor that binds these opinions and represents “unity in diversity”: a desire to enact positive change.

Few countries in the world exemplify this spirit as much as India. Unfortunately, very few countries in the world can also claim to exhibit the level of financial and economic disparity that India has.

In major population centres across India, the rich and poor live in such close proximity to each other that it almost feels as if they were deliberately promulgating the disparity that exist between the social classes.

India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, for example was recently criticised for building the world’s most expensive house in Mumbai named Antilia. Antilia is a private 27-storey building – valued at more than US$1 billion to construct – that towers over some of the city’s poorest slums.

Related: Reliance "Family Tower" Highlights Mumbai Wealth Gap

According to Dean Nelson of the Telegraph, the number of multi-millionaires in India is also expected to triple in the next five years together with a “fivefold increase in net worth” for this elite group of Indians.

At the same time, India has one of the highest levels of poverty in the world. According to the CIA World Fact Book and EconomyWatch.com's Econstats Database, 25 percent of India’s population live below the poverty line. However, there has not been a uniform measure of poverty in India and other studies seem to indicate a far higher level of poverty. The Arjun Sengputa Report for example states that 77 percent of Indians live on less than US$0.50 cents per day. The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative also estimated that there were over 645 million poor people living in India.

Palgummi Sainath, the rural affairs editor of The Hindu, describes the situation as being one that highlighted two completely different stratospheres. “The urban poor are rural poor who have migrated. We are pushing people to cities but not designing cities to accommodate them. Those who come from the villages are neither farmers nor workers. They are the in-betweens, domestic servants and the like. It is no longer a two-nation divide, it’s two planets. Vastly different lifestyles, vastly different living standards, and vastly different levels of stress and distress.”

Indian States Vs. World Countries
View the Slide Show

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