The South Asian: My Journey Through Two Indias

September 08, 2007

My Journey Through Two Indias

Ram Krishnan, an NRI living in the USA writes about his learnings as he travels through India.

I am more than half was through my July/August 2007 tour of India.

You may be reading the glowing tributes for India and its progress. You may be reading that India is all set to enter the world stage.

May be I am spending too much time in villages.

I am feeling more horrible this year - that no one cares about India's poor.

When I hear a speech attributed to Finance Minister Chidambaram that if we cannot grow rice in India because it needs too much water, we will 'just' import it.

Some of my educated friends are saying that if a farmer cannot make a living. let him sell his farm at a very high price, invest it, live of the interest and move to the city.

In one extreme, a few Economics 'scholars' openly admit that they are waiting for today's marginal farmers to die. Then they will bring mechanized farming, just like the US.

Shall we return to the days of PL480 - when India could not feed its population of 500 million or so in the 60's.

I don't get it.

I have tried to put this down in the attached article.

Posted by collective at September 08, 2007 11:31 AM

Comments

Indias' policy on open-economy semms to be a disaster in pending like Mexico if not in exact terms. I studied/experienced the developments between 1990-2000 in india, as a middle class guy, iwas happy to see the whitegoods / Cars /mobiles and other so called luxury (not any more in urbane india!)items choice has really gone up, but i didnt see any solid development in infrastructure / health / social development hahpening with the so called new genre economic policy except that rural-urban divide is more rampant and this is paving way to a situation where all flock to citys and citys not in a position to provide minimum living conditions to all these!

Gandhis' vision of rural india developing to provide considerable amount of earnings/quality life to villagers had failed in independent india.

Posted by: Sundaresan Sridhar on September 14, 2007 07:18 AM

ARCHIVED ARTICLES