By Simon Lazenbatt 

The crowd of young men and women on the dance-floor of the noisy restro-bar, one of many currently opening around the city, were enjoying a mix of local dance numbers and dated western hits. The scene can be observed in any liberal society in the world, except for one detail which typifies Mumbai. Among the bobbing Trendies, in the middle of the floor on hands and knees a slender, dark figure was mopping up spilled drinks with a cloth. The fashionably dressed middle class youngsters, seemingly oblivious to this ‘peon’, danced around and over him, aware perhaps instinctively that he would flinch out of their way, for he belongs to the great masses, and is almost invisible. The scene is revealing because in this society of entrenched inequality there is little sign that the emerging generation of decision makers is any more idealistic about creating an inclusive future for their fellow citizens than their predecessors were. For most young educated Indians challenging the status quo is restricted to deciding to change their brand of denim hipsters or hair gel.

The separation of the factions of Indian society is reinforced in popular culture. A television advert selling kitchen units uses cartoon characters to portray the typical Indian family happily singing about their labour saving convenient kitchen. The fair-skinned representative family members, stand at their modern counters, chopping, juggling food, eating and drinking while their dark-skinned house servant kneels on the floor polishing the gleaming units. The stereotypes may be interpreted as being tongue-in-cheek, even refreshingly politically incorrect, compared to the phony homogenous society represented in European and American advertising, but there is no irony here; they actually express utter complacency. Post-modernism has not caught on in India.

A friend recently attended a party given by a property developer where many of the attendees gossiped politely, and approvingly, of the developer’s recent outlay of 40 crores of rupees ($9m) for his daughter’s wedding celebration. The discussion centred on cost comparisons with other high profile weddings. No one even thought to challenge such profligacy in a city filled with human misery. Certainly, in Mumbai, there will be few who question the tastelessness of such conspicuous consumption.

Even seasoned travellers, familiar with grinding poverty from other parts of the globe on first visiting India will be disconcerted by the juxtaposition of wealth next to extreme privation. It is not just the existence of so many who are clearly living in squalor, as the fact that there is a shared perception amongst the middle class that this situation is somehow acceptable, or at best unavoidable. An adroit and wily local entrepreneur forcefully suggested that it is a patronising liberal misconception to assume that slum dwellers are any less happy than the middle classes; a neat example of eliminating the criticism by redefining the terms of reference. The sophistry of this argument is revealed by a cursory examination of the specifics of basic facilities available in the slums and the human toll measured in suicides, malnutrition and domestic violence.

Nevertheless in a less extreme form many of the middle class seem to believe that the situation is tolerable and one hears numerous explanations for the scenes of human wreckage subsisting by the roadside, ranging from the ravages of alcoholism to the ruse of renting out their apartments in order to take to a life of begging. Most, however, don’t even rationalise in this way – they just don’t notice any more.

India’s current growth is taken as a harbinger of a future as a superpower. Some even see India as providing a model for how democracy can work in a developing country and thus provide a lesson for the world. It is widely assumed that an increase in general prosperity will be achieved due to the economic growth that India currently enjoys. Surely if money is being made at the top of the economic pyramid a significant part will trickle down and alleviate the poverty at the bottom, goes the argument. But does India have the infrastructure to facilitate this assumed wealth dispersal? A comparison with China may be instructive here. According to Forbes magazine India currently can count 36 dollar billionaires compared to just 20 such individuals in China, despite the fact that the Indian economy is a third the size of China’s. Yet, at the other end of the spectrum, the Word Bank estimates 80% of Indians live on less than $2 per day, compared to 46% of Chinese.

Much of the hinterland of India’s cities is in dire straits. There are environmental issues amongst the worst in the world, not only associated with global warming, although that is certainly a factor, but also wholly locally produced (including pollution, water exhaustion and land degradation due to erosion). There is an agrarian crisis (manifested in a spate of suicides by farmers locked into intractable debt) currently leading to real food shortages. There is a health crisis not addressed by an under-funded healthcare system (notably the much overlooked Aids epidemic but also evidenced by a sharp increase in TB and malaria cases and the surge in the number of leprosy cases – India can now boast that it is home to 60% of the world’s lepers). There is widespread illiteracy.

Against this backdrop it is no surprise that there is an unending stream of migrant cheap labour available to the cities. Life in the urban slums may be grim but for many it is a step up from the deprivation of life in the rural areas. A glance at any construction site in Mumbai reveals how little plant and machinery is involved in construction of the new high-rise developments. Often it is more economical for the contractors to use human muscle-power to move all the construction materials rather than cranes and lifts. Child labour, despite regulations, is common.

The migrants also serve the domestic needs of the middle class. The bitter truth is that it suits many to keep the poor in their place. The average urban householder uses cheap labour for almost all day-to-day chores - I know a clean-shaven, middle-aged company driver who has never in his life shaved himself. He has somebody come to his house every morning to perform this basic task. In a myriad of ways the Indian middle class depend on others to perform tasks that in other countries (including much of China) are done by devices, or by the consumer himself. The nature of these tasks means that education of the masses is not a priority. It has been said that in the USA only the truly poor do not own a car. In India only the truly poor do not have a servant.

Current projections anticipate that the Indian population will increase by 60% over the next 40 years to around 1.7 billion. Unless there is the political will to address the root causes of poverty and to develop a workable financial plan to invest in developing the infrastructure there is no sign that this burgeoning population will be equipped to participate in the added value activities that will fuel real economic growth or to significantly improve their own prospects.

One reads frequently of the tensions in Chinese society caused by the unequal nature of the economic growth pattern and wealth distribution but, interestingly, perhaps because India has lived with this massive disparity for so long that it is considered the norm, there are few rumblings about a potential explosion in Indian society provoked by the Have-nots. Mumbai alone has some 10 million people living in slums (perhaps more, who knows?). I have often wondered how London, for example, would cope with that situation. Even if London had only 1% of Mumbai’s slum dwellers I suspect the city would be unworkable. The army would probably have to be mobilised to keep order. So, it is true that the Indian poor have been remarkably docile for a long time. The political landscape is composed of parties representing special interest groups that emphasis the religious and caste differences of their electoral blocks. Perhaps for this reason, and the failure of reaching a consensus, the social balance has not been upset but can it be imputed that this situation will persist?

In the 1960’s there were a rash of doom-laden predictions published as sober analysis in the West that India would disintegrate under the pressures of economic failure, religious divisions and corruption. Those predictions proved to be incorrect. The new paradigm is that India is an unstoppable superpower in the making. This belief has been eagerly and uncritically adopted in India. I would suggest that unless the middle class begins to care and make sacrifices in the interest of a common society these current predictions may also prove to be unfounded.

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 9:15 am and is filed under Letters from Bombay, Society, Economy, Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.