Indian Rupeee is going up or going down a few notches - brisk trades do take place in foreign exchange market as also in the Stock markets spread across major cities of Indiia. Script prices of some Fortune-five hundred companies sucks up lifeline air or release gas to be comfortable. That is everyday story. It doesn’t interest the common man who does not have any financial stake. The jump in Oil priices and its reflection in share market is also of no importance to the common man as they don’t put money in the shares of oil companies of India.
News of Oil Exploring companies find of new gas field is also of no news to this common man as he is not a stake holder.
These matters never excite them though it tickles the news media and the the business players and their allies.Why this happen.
Lets crunch the stat. The simple fact that out of a billion odd population, the super rich and the rich constitue two percent of the population. Then the upper and the middle class with suffiicient purchasing power may constitute not more than another ten percent. So, the remaining eighty-eight pecent of India’s population constitue the majority comprising the people leaving below poverty line ( as per Indian Standard ), the poor who are slightly better off and the lower middle class mass who survives but have not enough purchasing power.If we measure “poor” by the American standard - an individual’s earning not more than ten thousand dollars in an year or for a family as a whole not exceeding twenty thousand dollars, then most of the people categorised under lower middle class shall slip below the poverty liine.
Anyway, Indian economy and US economy are different. Cost of living is also not similar. Let’s say, a man can survive a month in India with INR three thousand per month or INR thirty-six thousand per annum equivalent to US seven hundred eighty-two dollars!! It is possible. And so in India these families are not treated as poor – they are lower middle class.
If we go by percentage – the gigantic nature of the problem may not be understood unless we quantify the figure in numbers. If we say eight eight crore people living in India in towns, villagees, cities who are either poor or not well off, the alarm will start ringing in your head. But that is the harse truth.
Now the question is how to run the economy of hundred-crore people catering to the interest of only twelve percent of the population who have financial and muscle power, and who actually rules India.
There lies the irony. In USA one in every tenth is a poor and one in every fourth black is poor too. But by defining poverty as per the convenience of the ruler, what is flashed across the globe by Indian media is a very rosy picture of India. Only the other day, a Mumbai turist guide was booked by the local government for encouraging Slum tourism to a few foreigners in exchange for a few hundred bucks.. But how far one can hide the true identity of a nation – the real INDIA, that’s what we wonder. Further, a democracy is meant to be a rule of the majority. But while the true illiterates amongst the eighty-eight percent section is alarmingly high , leading to a picarious situation where common man is bribed and forced to sell his Vote for a candidate. That’s the darker side of Indian poverty (which we may look into in a separate blog).These are the representatives, a sizeable of them have allegedly brived through the elctions and become the rule makers reaching the corridor of Parliament. Can it reflect the aspirations of that eight eight percent have-not population . But who is listening!!!
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