How are India’s people handling the country’s transition into a growing world economic power? Do they feel any change in their status in the world? Is there more economic equity among the people as India’s economic performance grows?
At first I have to say India is a huge country. Mumbai itself, where I have been stationed for the last month has nineteen million inhabitants. By 2030 it is said that India will have more inhabitants than China. So answering a question about how the people of India are handling the country’s transition into a growing world economic power, I will not be able to. I am going to answer the questions from my point of view, from what I have experienced during the month of March 2008. It is also important to take in consideration that I have no earlier experience of India and its people. What I have had the chance to see is probably very far away from what “the billion people of India” sees. Here are some of my reflections on the questions. It is obvious that a big change is going on in Mumbai and India. Business is blossoming and the whole world has their eyes on India. Some of the people I have talked to see a bright and beautiful future for the country. One person even talked about India as a new super power, the next USA. Yes, that’s the way it is seen if you look a businessmen’s or women’s point of view, what I call the people with money. For them it looks like their markets are broadening fast. Suddenly they have the whole world at their feet for expanding their work. Countries all over the globe are investing in India as “the new thing”. It is obvious that India is a whole new market and the people with money know their rising status of becoming an economic power. This people seem happy and satisfied of their situation. But also a bit blind to the fact that everyone in India doesn’t have their kind of money. Because, as I said India has millions and millions of inhabitants and many of them can not expand their business outside India’s borders. Some of them don’t even know what the rest of the world looks like or if there is “a rest of the world”. Of course some of the poorer people see a change as well but its minimal compared to the people with money (economical insights) and some of course doesn’t see a change at all. The transition therefore, in my opinion, takes place at many different levels. For people of a higher class (former high cast) the change goes pretty fast. Each day the world is so to speak little by little opening up. For the poorer people (former low cast) the change seems to happen very slowly. The thing is when we talk about India’s transition into a growing world economic power I feel we forget the people who hasn’t got a chance to see what we see. Maybe they hear that India nowadays is growing but I’m not sure they actually see the change in their daily lives, maybe in a year or in ten. Of course something IS happening like always and in time hopefully the poor will get richer and the rich will stay rich and the gap between them will diminish. But who knows, it is all about time. India, I believe will not become a superpower if the poor people keep getting ignored. India will also not become a superpower if an outer force tries to change the situation, the change has to come from within, inside the country and it has to take its own time. It is very clear to me that the talk today mostly is about the economy of India but it is important to identify that the county is changing in so many ways. The country and its people have to make up with the rule of the British as well as with problems inside their own systems. I do not want India to become a new USA, I want the country to be whatever they can be but right now it seems a long and a hard way to walk if they don’t look from all perspectives, high and low.
