Political-Social Dilemmas

India, like China, a huge geography with an immense population, is forging ahead with empowering itself into a political-economic colossus on the world stage. The country has moved steadily into the future, enabled by the sheer numbers of its population whose native intelligence and capable enterprise move the entire country to advance its agenda as one of a trio of burgeoning new successful economies on the world stage.

Like China, which has only a week earlier launched a spacecraft of its own, India too has realized success in her massive investment in her space programme, launching a $100-million space vehicle on a mission to the moon. the Indian Space Research Organization is said to have executed a precise "copy book" launch of a 1.3-tonne space vehicle to reach lunar orbit in 15 days to relay back data to its headquarters.

That's quite the investment. Most countries, on the other hand, invest massive amounts of their treasury in their militaries, in armaments, in advanced military missiles, and of course both India and China fall into this weapons-acquisition category as well. Unsurprisingly, with their vast and diverse populations, poverty remains an issue in both countries.

Wouldn't it seem to make more sense, governance-wise, to invest huge sums in bettering the lives of such countries' vast indigent populations? Well, it most certainly would seem so, if it were not for the sad fact that both countries, like most other countries of the world, feel themselves embattled, vulnerable because of the existence of neighbours whose focus and threatening actions leave no doubt as to their belligerent intentions.

That said, India, like China, is moving steadily ahead in its trajectory toward super-power status, with its vast economic engine and its relative political stability as a great democracy. Per capita income since 2000 has risen by 7.2%, an exponential growth for the country. All levels of society have engaged in entrepreneurial enterprises creating thousands of new companies and ever-growing levels of employment.

Their money markets are busy buying up other successful companies, in North America and Europe. To the extent that direct investment in other countries last year alone totalled a whopping $14-billion. There's been a decline in the poverty rate, but relative to the past. Of India's 1.2 billion people, 23% live on $1 a day, but by the World Bank's benchmark standard of $1.25 a day, fully 40% live in poverty.

There's been a move from widespread subsistence farming to other occupations, which appear to have resulted in greater numbers of Indians becoming mass consumers of mass consumer goods like electronics and televisions. Among the low caste untouchables, the Dalit, traditional constraints are slowly breaking down, and they have become emboldened to agitate for their rights.

As it happens, as the formerly indigent become more reflective of a lower middle class they become more agitated about their relative deprivation, which spurs them to fight for equal rights. And the emerging conflicts between the castes and divergent religions is causing increasingly violent rifts in Indian society, with Hindus increasingly attacking Christians, and Hindus and Muslims edging toward conflict.

Marking a societal malaise that the government of India has yet to come to grips with.