Thursday, November 27, 2008

peace, contentment, health ???

Quoted the India incidence........

What happened in Mumbai will not shake India to its foundations. India is tough and has weathered bigger storms. But the highly symbolic attacks dramatise a much wider set of struggles: the product of growing wealth for some and a revolution in communications.

The spectre haunting the nation is the old ghost in new clothes - class conflict, propelled by the same communications revolution that enables it to launch moon probes and claim recognition as a global power. In the new media age, awareness of injustice and disparity is growing among the poor, along with a sense that "we're not going to take this any more."

It will be some time before anyone knows for sure who was responsible for yesterday's calculated lunacy. But we can be almost sure among them will be young men left out of the prosperity a growing minority of Indians have experienced. Religion sometimes propels violence, but deprivation and injustice are felt around the country. Last month 12 police were killed by suspected Naxalites in Bijapur, eastern India. It was the latest encounter between police and Naxalites or Maoists, who are leading a resistance by tribal people and landless labourers in a belt snaking from Nepal down the highlands of eastern India. Near Kolkata, the attempt by Tata, a giant conglomerate, to build a factory for the new cheap mini-car the Nano was chased away by landholders mobilised against inadequate compensation for their land. Tata announced earlier this month it would build the factory elsewhere.

Scholars, policy-makers and politicians debate whether disaffection among India's 140 million Muslims results from poverty and disadvantage rather than religious alienation. A poll by Outlook magazine showed close to 80 per cent thought economic divisions were responsible for religious conflict.

In the most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, a Dalit (former Untouchable) woman, Mayawati, led her party to an election victory last year, becoming Chief Minister for the fourth time; that would have been unthinkable three generations ago. A government report last year estimated that more than 75 per cent of Indians spent less than 20 rupees (62 cents) a day to live. But Mukesh Ambani, one of the world's richest men, is completing a new $1.5 billion house in Mumbai. Until the current generation, two things mitigated India's disparities of wealth: the ideology of caste and the isolation imposed by poor communications. You accepted the role of the caste into which you were born and believed that your next life would be better; you aspired eventually to escape the cycle of rebirth.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home