India Shining – or does it?

                Welcome to Gurgaon, the billboard screams at you. It need not scream to know that you are entering one of the biggest industrial towns of the country. The 32 lane toll gate with nearly 500 cars standing on either side of the road is the sign of the emerging India. Multi-storeyed buildings adorned the road. Shopping malls at every street corner beckons. The KFC’s, the Audi’s, the Apple’s, Raymond’s, the Denim’s, you name it, we have it. Welcome to the brave new world! Welcome to the new India!

                A planned city being built is unheard of in my country. At least, I have never heard of any planning going in to our cities. But, Gurgaon definitely is planned. Straight lanes, with neatly arranged buildings, makes you wonder, finally some planning has been put in to it. My sceptic mind said, probably, just probably we are moving in the right direction. Probably, India shining is not a political gimmick. With all these India shining dreams running along, I stopped my vehicle in the next signal, when a small girl with a child in her shoulders came begging for a throw away coin.

                Ah! There you go again. I could almost hear my mind saying, this is a small thing. Look at the broader picture. Even that girl, probably is earning more because of this economical growth. The middle class has become richer, the upper class has quadrupled. We earn more, we spend more and that is essentially the crux of development, isn’t? Come on, we still have small children as beggars, my mind wrestled with the paradox.

                The small girl begging is just the outward sign. There were hundreds of thousands of daily labourers building those posh monuments, living in shanty houses with no toilets, no kitchens and for some not even proper places to sleep. And believe me, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Where are the workers from? Where are their families? How much are they paid? What do they eat? What if the job gets done? Where do their children study? Or do they study? Question marks are many. Answers as always are rare.

                True! India is shining. But  “All the glitters is not gold” ! We can glitter on the outside, but for us to become gold, real gold, we have to seriously introspect. We can buy a Jaguar and eat in the Kfc, but if we are not able to provide at least food and shelter to the poor we cannot grow. We can invent rockets and travel in metros but if we cannot provide proper education to poor children, we cannot grow.

Economics do not show whether the small child on her sister’s lap had anything to eat that entire day, neither does it show whether our growth is real.