Mainstream India is like any other developing country with its teething problems of corruption, and bad governance.
KWEKWE, ZIMBABWE: This is with reference to Seema Mustafa piece “Hurtling into a bottomless pit” (June 1). While agreeing with the writer, I would like to chip in with comments on the artificiality of the Shining India image, which the last three successive governments tried to project and which was blindly followed by the media. In reality, India is too diverse and may I say, too poor to fool the world for a long period of time.
Take the state of Bihar for example. People here live in slums but the media wants us to believe that everyone is a Birla, Tata or an Ambani. Yes, India has Tatas and Ambanis but very few. Mainstream India is like any other developing country with its teething problems of corruption, nepotism and bad governance. If the Indian leadership realises this reality and stops competing with the likes of China, it would bring more realism to the country’s development goals. India can build the palaces of IPL and Bollywood in a sea of misery but cannot maintain this arrangement for long.
Waqar Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, June 3rd, 2013.
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