Can There Be Any Hope?

All of India knows that even as many Indians have benefited from the rapid economic growth of the past quarter century, millions have also been marginalised by the so-called transformation.

This division has given a new edge in marketised India to the long-standing fracture between the “Two Indias”. There is now the thriving India – mainly urban, skilled and entrepreneurial, with close links to the globalised world – which acts as if the other India does not exist. This other India – mainly rural but also the underbelly of the cities – has been left behind because it has neither assets nor skills. The poor also have to cope with a collapse in public services. The trend now is for the thriving India to “secede” socially, economically and even politically from the rest of India. But it still has to deal with the other India because it needs its labour and needs its land, water, forests and all manner of natural resources that belong to the marginalised in order to fuel its growth and beautify its cities. This new division of Indian society is emblematic of the weaknesses of Indian democracy.