I watched an interview with the author Arundhati Roy on Newsnight last week about aspects of life in India in these times of change .. it has haunted me all week.
One aspect was about the growing gap between the rich and the poor. With India producing more and more millionaires, Mumbai has more per capita than Manhattan. Yet at the same time , there are millions and millions of people in dire poverty. The growth of the Indian economy is set to overtake that of China by 2013 at current growth rates.
Just one of the features Arundhati was highlighting was the plight of thousands of Indigenous Indians whose lands are being despoiled by the mining of bauxite. The bauxite, being porous, is also the key to the land holding water...and without it the land can't grow the food that's needed....a really vicious circle where the extraction of the mineral is going to make aluminium, bumping up the Indian economy, making a few people rich and leaving many of the poor in an even more desperate state.
As she said in the interview , Arudhati asks the question ...FOR WHAT? India hurtling towards a so called prosperous 'western style' economy at the expense of millions of its own people, so many of whom don't have even the basics to live?
She also talked about pockets of people who have quite a different vision of modernity ..those who appreciate the urgency and emergency situation of the planet.
Surely true progress can never be at the expense of humanity ....can never be just for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many?
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