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The rich man in his castle: politics and poverty in India.

Article Excerpt
Early in 2004, the Indian Government launched 'India Shining, a media campaign intended to create a feel-good factor based on several years of high economic growth rates that would hopefully ensure its victory in the subsequent general election. Instead, the world's largest democratic electorate voted out the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Government that had ruled since 1996.

There can be little doubt that the BJP made a serious mistake in resting on its record of promoting economic reform. The enormous gaps that have arisen between rich and poor are graphically displayed in many of Delhi's richer suburbs, where many owners are demolishing their houses to build larger ones and those employed to carry out the work sleep each night on the pavement in front of the gates. Most of the workers are from the country, drawn to cities in the hope that some of the benefits of reform will trickle down to them. And so they do, at about thirty rupees (less than $AUD1) per day. The situation brings to mind, and almost literally depicts, part of a verse from the nineteenth-century hymn 'All Things Bright and Beautiful':

The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate ...

However, the second half of the verse is probably even more relevant:

He made them, high or lowly, and ordered their estate.

Its relevance lies in the perception that, as in nineteenth-century England, one's station in life in India is somehow pre-ordained. With about 80 per cent of India's population linked to a caste-based social structure, this dimension cannot be ignored, least of all in politics. The ideology of the BJP is rooted in Hindutva or Hindu nationalism and cultural 'values',...

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