India (Frommer's, 4th Edition) - Keith Bain [17]
1 India Today
by Frommer’s authors and Anita Pratap
Pratap is a former CNN bureau chief for South Asia, author, journalist, and columnist for Outlook, India’s weekly newsmagazine
Whatever your understanding of India today, the exact opposite is probably equally true. Life has changed dramatically since India began to liberalize its economy in the 1990s, and yet it remains a land where several centuries exist simultaneously. If you visit one of its scientific centers, you could well believe you are at NASA, but walk to a village that still has no connection to a drivable road (and there are thousands of them), and you will find people living exactly as they did 2,000 years ago (albeit, perhaps, with a cellphone pressed against an ear or a satellite dish poking out of the roof of a mud house). More than 25% of the world’s software engineers are Indian, but another 25% of the Indian population goes to bed hungry every night. Women like Pratibha Patil, the female president of India elected in July 2007, have risen to top positions of power and authority in both the political and corporate world, yet in some regions, girls are still awaiting access to primary school education. Millions more across the country struggle without the most basic human rights.
India has the world’s highest number of malnourished children, yet obesity in urban children is a new and menacing problem. The country has armed itself with nuclear weapons, but has difficulty providing drinking water to millions of its citizens. It ranks low in the United Nations’ Human Development Index, which measures quality of life, trailing even Sri Lanka and the Maldives in meeting targets set in the U.N. Millennium Development Goals Report, but in terms of purchasing parity, India is the third-biggest economy in the world after the United States and China. During the call center boom time, the country saw the rapid emergence of a large new class of young urbanites keen to flash their disposable incomes, and as a result a luxury market in India exploded, with every international brand from Louis Vuitton to Greubel Forsey vying for their slice of this burgeoning market. Yet, with its shackled judicial system and excessive regulation, India struggles with a reputation as a “mostly unfree” economy coming in at 123 in the 2009 Index of Economic Freedom, trailing even Gabon.
Meanwhile, agrarian crises continue to brew in rural India, with droughts and floods, paradoxically, always major impediments to the earning and survival strategies of millions of people across the nation. In 2009, a much-delayed monsoon once again severely hampered crop production. And to compound natural disaster, India struggles with a massive, often overburdened, infrastructure and bloated bureaucracy. In 2008, the country fell behind China in the Global Corruption Perception Index, and many people on the ground harbor suspicion and some sort of resentment against the government, no matter who’s in charge; studies reveal that Rs 9,000 million is paid in bribes by 30% of the population (which lives below the official poverty line) just to coerce public servants into doing jobs they’re already paid to do. In mid-July 2009, the issue of corruption came into the limelight in a big way when a bridge under construction for the Delhi Metro collapsed and killed six people; reports revealed that the accident was a direct result of cuts to the safety budget on the project, supposedly to save on construction costs, but in actuality a selfish scheme to put more money into the pockets of fewer contractors than was appropriate.
All of this doesn’t exactly enhance India