Like Africa, India was colonized by outsiders from the sixteenth century until it achieved independence in 1947. Like China, India has had a class system designed to keep many people (known as "untouchables") in extreme poverty, performing the kinds of labor that wealthier citizens refuse to do. These two factors together have caused much of India's poverty. Since 1991 India has experienced economic expansion akin to China's, which has left its population even more divided between the so-called haves and have-nots.
Colonialism and the Caste System in India
India is the site of origin for four major world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. This has made the country rich with cultural and philosophical traditions, but it has also led to violent disputes that made India vulnerable to colonial takeover, wars with neighboring countries, and the creation of Hinduism's caste (class or birth ranking) system that continues to keep many Indians in poverty, in part due to the legal entrenchment of castes during the period of British colonialism from 1757 to 1947.
According to the World Factbook, Hinduism is India's dominant religion, with 80.5% of Indians counted as followers. One tenet of Hinduism that has strongly influenced secular Indian society is that of castes—the categories into which different kinds of occupations are placed based on the labor or social class into which a person was born. Castes are believed by some to have been instituted by the conquering Indo-European (Aryan) people who invaded northwest India around 1500 BCE and imposed the castes as a way to organize the conquered peoples, although other scholars dispute this theory. As in early China, early Indian government was based on a series of dynasties, which further aggravated tensions between the rich and poor.
In "The Caste System and the Stages of Life in Hinduism" (2005, http://www.friesian.com/caste.htm), Kelley L. Ross reports that there are thousands of "subcastes" throughout India—many of them regionally based—but the five traditional rankings are Brahmins (priests and teachers), Ksytrias (warriors and rulers), Vaisyas (farmers, merchants, and artisans), Sudras (laborers), and Untouchables (polluted laborers, also known as "outcastes"). Typical occupations of untouchables include anything dealing with dead bodies, such as disposing of dead animals and unclaimed human bodies, and tanning leather. Castes are not, however, based on economic factors in the same way that class is. According to the Bhagavad Gita (the main religious text of Hinduism), Brahmins, Ksytrias, and Vaisyas are "different, in harmony with the three powers of their born nature." In other words, the three top castes are inborn states of being, not based on economic status. Ross also notes that when the British created their official census for India in the mid-nineteenth century, they included their own interpretations of the castes: "Existing tribal people as well as Untouchables are also called the 'scheduled castes,' since the British drew up a 'schedule' listing the castes that they regarded as backwards, underprivileged, or oppressed."
While in Hinduism one's caste is not necessarily a fixed position (a person can advance to another caste through reincarnation by his or her actions, although movement is not possible in one lifetime), when the British instituted their census in 1872 they included questions on religion and ethnic identity, in keeping with the European preoccupation at the time with establishing a link between social status and racial purity (the British associated Indian castes with race, an association that some Indians came to share). This led to a deepening of the chasm between the classes as well as the castes, as British social policy was imposed on the Indians.
THE INDIAN APARTHEID
The result of centuries of adherence to the caste system is a social structure that still closely resembles that of South Africa's apartheid. The caste formerly called untouchables are now called Dalits, but they are nonetheless at the bottom of India's social hierarchy, especially in the rural states and villages. According to the Human Rights Watch (2006, http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/sasia/india.htm), there are at least 160 million Dalits in India, even though the concept and practice of "untouchability" was outlawed by India's constitution in 1950. The Dalits are routinely discriminated against: they typically cannot own or access land; they must work in the most undesirable occupations (as always, dealing with corpses and waste); they are abused by local police and denied rights; their living quarters and public spaces are strictly segregated; and their children do not receive equal education. Dalit children are also the ones most commonly sold into debt bondage and forced labor. Dalit workers commonly earn just $0.38 to $0.88 per day. Women of the Dalit caste suffer perhaps the most: they are routinely raped as punishment for any offenses their family members commit, and their numbers are increasing in the commercial sex trade because of poverty and lack of other financial opportunities.
Economics of Contemporary India
India is an example of a country that is both emerging and transitional: although it has been a democracy since its independence, certain elements of its economy have been planned because of efforts to encourage social equality. To make up for centuries of discrimination against the lower-caste Indians by the British rulers, the post-independence Indian government developed a mixed economy, with a certain amount of market freedom in the private sector (independent, privately owned businesses) and socialist-style control of the public sector (services such as the railroad and postal systems). With India failing to keep up with the huge growth of other Asian economies in the 1980s, the Indian government began in 1991 to open up the country's markets—including parts of the public sector—to private ownership, foreign investment, and increased trade in an effort to stimulate the economy.
According to Bloomberg.com ("India Economy Likely Grew 7.7% in Dec. Qtr on Consumer Spending," February 22, 2006), the Indian economy grew at a rate of 8.1% in 2005. By comparison, the growth rate of the United States in the same period was 3.1%, and that of the European Union countries was 1.7%. The main reason for this high rate of growth—outside of the loosening of the country's markets—is India's abundance of well-educated, English-speaking workers who are willing to accept relatively low wages for steady jobs. Western countries, therefore, began to outsource jobs and set up operations in India to save money and take advantage of the labor force's talents. At the 2005 India Economic Summit, the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh announced that India could achieve a 10% annual growth rate within two to three years if infrastructure and agriculture were improved and the savings rates increased ("10% Growth for India Could Soon Be a Reality, Says PM Singh," November 29, 2005, http://www.weforum.org/site/homepublic.nsf/Content/10%25+growth+for+India+could+soon+be+a+reality, +says+PM+Singh).
INDIA'S NEW AFFLUENCE
Yet, as in China, the divide between those who are benefiting from India's wealth and those who are not is larger than ever. Amy Waldman reported in "Mile by Mile, India Paves a Smoother Road to Its Future," (New York Times, December 4, 2005) that in 1999 the Indian government committed more than $12 billion to update and expand India's crumbling highway system. (Indian infrastructure has been notoriously bad for decades.) The National Highways Development Project (NHDP) is a fifteen-year plan to significantly improve 40,000 miles of roadways running through thirteen of India's thirty-five official states and territories, including the major cities of Mumbai, New Delhi, Calcutta, and Zhenhai. The highway's name, the Golden Quadrilateral, points to the symbolic significance of the project, which the Indian government has promised will increase the country's competitiveness and improve the lives of India's citizens.
The Golden Quadrilateral, however, was quickly coming to highlight the growing gulf between the rich and poor. Discussing the highway's promise to unite and uplift India, Waldman stated:
But coherence may bring collision. Since 1991, India's population of poor has dropped to 26% from 36%, yet the poor seem poorer than ever. India now juxtaposes pre- and postindustrial societies: citizens who live on dirt floors without electricity and others who live like twenty-first-century Americans, only with more servants. The highway throws these two Indias into jarring proximity.
Waldman further reported ("In Today's India, Status Comes with Four Wheels," New York Times, December 5, 2005), that 250 million people have entered India's middle class since the mid-1990s and that many others have become "super-rich." For these middle- and upper-class Indians, their new wealth has opened them up to an abundance of consumer choices. In fact, one of India's most popular consumer items in the early twenty-first century has been luxury automobiles—an apparent paradox in a country where so many citizens still rely on walking and ox carts for transportation.
With a massive public roadway winding through the country, it is possible that opportunities will be brought to India's many poor rural villages. However, India is also experiencing a migration—similar to China's—to its cities, which many Indians believe hold the most promise for lifting them out of poverty. The rural poor in India are some of the most impoverished people in the world. According to statistics from the Indian government cited by Jayati Ghosh in "Income Inequality in India" (February 17, 2004, http://www.countercurrents.org/eco-ghosh170204.htm), while per capita consumption has increased 40% since 1989–90 for the richest 20% of the country's urban population, India's poorest group, the bottom 80% of rural dwellers (approximately 600 million people), has actually experienced a drop in consumption since 1989–90, signaling a significantly growing gap in income. (India measures poverty by household consumption rather than by income.) Because India's agricultural sector has seen slow and even negative growth in the first part of the twenty-first century, farming is now seen as a dead-end life for poor families, who often send a young adult member to a large city or industrial center to work and who in turn sends money back home.
… AND PERSISTENT POVERTY
There is no question that overall poverty in India has dropped since the 1980s, when 44.5% of the country lived below the poverty thresh-old. In fact, several human development indicators have improved. Life expectancy, just fifty-six years in the 1980s, rose to sixty years in the 1990s, and then increased to sixty-one years in 2000. (See Table 4.6.) According to the World Bank in "Poverty in India," primary school enrollment rose from 68% in 1992–93 to 82% in 2000, with 108 million children ages six to ten attending school. The fertility rate has dropped since the 1960s, from an average of six children per Indian woman to an average of three. Infant mortality has also improved, from 146 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1950 to sixty-eight in 2004.
Other indicators have worsened, however. The maternal mortality rate has increased from 424 deaths per 100,000 live births to 540 per 100,000, and, as of 2000, there were four million known cases of HIV—a
TABLE 4.6 Progress on social indicators in India, selected years 1980–2000
| TABLE 4.6 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Progress on social indicators in India, selected years 1980–2000 | |||
| 1980s | 1990s | 2000 | |
| Note: n.a. is not applicable. | |||
| SOURCE: "Table 1. Progress on Social Indicators, 1980–2000," in India: Sustaining Reform, Reducing Poverty, Report No. 25797-IN, The World Bank, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Sector Unit, South Asia Region, July 14, 2003, http://www.wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2003/07/18/000012009_20030718114757/Rendered/PDF/257970IN.pdf (accessed April 10, 2006) | |||
| Poverty | |||
| Poverty incidence (%) | 44.5 | 36.0 | 26.1 |
| Adjusted poverty incidence (%) | 28.6 | ||
| Education | |||
| Overall literacy rate: 7+ years (%) | 44 | 52 | 65 |
| Female literacy rate as a percent of male literacy rate (%) | 53 | 61 | 71 |
| Net enrollment rate (NER): grades 1-5 (%) | 47 | 51 | 77 |
| Female NER as a percent of male NER: grades 1-5 (%) | 70 | 80 | 81 |
| Health | |||
| Life expectancy at birth (years) | 56 | 60 | 61 |
| Infant mortality rate 0-4 years (per 1,000 live births) | 115 | 79 | 68 |
| Maternal mortality rate (per 100,000) | n.a. | 424 | 540 |
| Prevalence of HIV (million people) | n.a. | 3.5 | 4.0 |
| Sanitation | |||
| Access to improved water resources (%) | n.a | 68 | 78 |
| Number of households with toilet facility (%) | n.a. | 30 | 36 |
CASTE-BASED VIOLENCE
As poverty deepens in India's poor, rural states, tensions between the castes is on the rise. Alexander Zaitchik reported in "Bihar's Blues" (January 20, 2006, http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.php?id=406) that Maoist guerilla fighters claiming to represent Dalit interests were seeking revenge on the higher castes in India's poorest states, such as Bihar in the northeast, where the Dalits are routinely subjected to such horrifying violence as mass immolation (being burned alive). However, the situation is not as simple as rebels protecting the country's poorest and most vulnerable citizens. The Maoists have been known to kill anyone they believe to be sympathetic to the higher castes, with or without evidence.
According to Zaitchik, until the 1960s Bihar—where Buddha is said to have achieved enlightenment—was considered one of the most successful states in post-independence India, with many universities, abundant natural resources, and a well-educated citizenry. Bihar leaders in the 1960s, however, failed to implement needed land reforms that would have distributed land equitably among the castes. Instead, the Dalits remained landless and increasingly impoverished. As of 2006 more than half of Bihar's citizens were illiterate. The culture of corruption that arose led to a ruling body and police officials that fail to prosecute or even investigate crimes against Dalits. As the poverty gap widens in India, caste-based violence is spreading throughout the country.
In October 2005 representatives of the human rights organization Amnesty International testified before the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on Africa, Human Rights, and International Operations, that the following abuses against Dalits are common in India:
- Socioeconomic discrimination
- Beatings, slashings, and other forms of torture
- Arson—the burning of Dalit communities
- Violence against women
- Rape, gang rape, and the parading of women through the streets naked as a form of punishment, as the right of the upper-caste male, or to punish or embarrass the woman's family
- Beating and torture of women
- Summary execution, many times by burning alive
- Bonded labor
- Denial of rights, especially land rights
- Police abuses against Dalits and custodial abuse
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