[lit-ideas] Re: fyi: Myth of the New India (nyt)
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 09:21:38 -0700
By PANKAJ MISHRA
(...) Many serious problems confront India. They are unlikely to be solved as long as the
wealthy, both inside and outside the country, choose to believe their own complacent
myths.
Very good article. Mishra is one of the best observers about India. India has lots of
serious infrastructure problems, plus they don't have any idea of the coming impact of
technology.
Most, if not all, of the Indians whom I work with assume that technology and globablization
will bring benefits to India.
But many of them often look at me in disbelief when I say that globalization will also bring
problems to India. To them, it's benefits-only.
- Globalization will force India to compete on the global market, and many Indian production
jobs will move to cheaper markets. Yes, there are markets cheaper than India. Indian workers
demand salaries as high as $300 per month. Chinese can do the same work for $50.
- Globalization will bring outsiders into India. There's currently only 30,000 foreign
workers in all of India.
- Globalization will educate women, who will have their own high incomes, and many of them
will choose to not marry. This will confound parents and start the breakup of the family
structure. No more docile wives who spend hours to cook Indian food, which is complex and
labor-intensive, and raise the children that every Indian extended family expects.
- Globalization will bring people into the workplace. Yes, and it'll bring lower castes into
the workplace, and they'll make money, and they'll come into the nice malls and the good
neighborhoods.
- Globalization will increase the cost of living. India's food is cheap because there are
literally tens of millions of family farms. With global competition from agbiz (corporate
mega-farms), they will be wiped out. Millions will move to the already-swollen cities.
Bombay has 18 million people already.
- Globalization will increase the gap between rich and poor, possibly so wide that it can
never be bridged. American society (if one can even assume anymore that there is a shared
American society) went from a broad middle-class to today's low-income workers and
high-income workers, with very little inbetween.
Globalization will change India's culture and society, just as the culture of the American
small town has largely disappeared in the USA.
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
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