poor india

During the election campaigning in Bihar in October this year Rahul Gandhi, the heir
apparent of the Indian National Congress proudly claimed, "Aapki Congress party
gareebon ki party hai, aapki party hai." ["Your Congress party is the party of the poor,
your party."]

After 63 years of an independence that was hard fought, such a statement made with a
sense of pride seemed pathetic to me.

we seem to have perfected the art of remaining poor! it mirrors the reality we live in. It talks of the thick skin all of us have developed…our leaders,administrators, planners, implementers and benefactors. Otherwise, someone in thecrowd should have stood up and hurled a chappal in utter disgust.

India has perfected the art of remaining poor. POVERTY is the lifeline of our  country. It helps the rich and ruling class get richer!!

The World Bank defines the poverty line at an income below Rs.21.60 per day in the
urban areas [a 500 ml. bottle of Pepsi] and at Rs.14.30 per day in the rural areas.
Around 421 million people in the eight states of UP, MP, Rajasthan, West Bengal,
Bihar, Orissa, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand are below the poverty line. We proudly are
the largest democracy with a third of the world's poorest population!

We have created large public enterprises and then deliberately made them inefficient
to meet specific needs.
We had built a 'license raj' to favour a few rich at the cost of encouraging enterprise
and equitable development across the country.
We have ensured little pockets of industrialisation to ensure concentration of wealth
and power. Thereby corruption, greed and moral decay.
We spend less than 0.5% of our GDP on agriculture and less than 5% on education.
We allow more than 200,000 farmers in debt due to failed cash crops to commit
suicide but will not create enablers to sustainable rural living. In fact in 2010 alone
close to 900 suicides have taken place in Baramati while the government spends
Rs.25 crores after a terrorist called Ajmal Kasab.
We talk of adding close to 40 million every year to the "grand Indian middle class",
but do not talk about the fact that a family's food intake reduced by 100 kgs per year
in one decade in 2007.
We talk of overtaking this economy and that economy and having some of the highest
number of billionaires, but our Human Development Index is one of the worst ever,
we have world's highest number of malnourished people and around 40% of our
children below 5 years of age are underweight.
If you just sit back and take an unemotional, detached look at the economics of
poverty in our country, you will realise that it is not the cause but the outcome.
The poverty indices are not a cause of embarrassment but are actually desired. They
are part of a greater plan. The poor are needed — for the middle class, the ruling class,
the earning class and the world-class. They are the means to an end. They are a
'necessary and sufficient condition', as an economist would say, for India to progress.
Otherwise, nobody can justify the condition more than 400 million of us are in after
63 years of self-determination. Mr. Gandhi would have felt ashamed thinking of those
words, leave alone gallantly using them, not once but 16 times while doing the rounds
of Bihar!
We are truly unique in many ways.
The art of remaining poor is one such way.