Its India Week - Road to the Middle Class

BOTH THE LONDON Times and the Economist (sub) have done features on India this week as it comes off three years in a row of 8 percent GDP growth. Is it for real, they ask? Yes, but. Writes David Aaronovitch:

Isn’t IT India a little like Bollywood India — lots of glitz but as substantial a representation of reality as the Ice Cool man and his fleck-free hair? This week the subcontinent was admonished with typical grandness by The Economist. “India,” it concluded, “needs to grow much faster. Otherwise, poverty will persist for decades and social tensions will mount.”

Well yes. India does have its problems. The Economist tells the story of the desperate slowness of moving freight across the sub-continent.

The lorry is loaded at 2pm in central Kolkata. But cannot leave until after 10pm, because heavy vehicles can use city streets only at certain times.

After innumerable delays with closed border crossings, night road closures “to avoid the danger of attacks by bandits or Maoist insurgents” (in central India?) the truck arrives on the morning of day eight, “having achieved an average speed of 11km per hour and spent 32 hours waiting at tollbooths and checkpoints.”

India is building a “golden quadrilateral” limited-access highway to connect Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, and Mumbai. Sounds as though it can’t come quick enough.

But what about those Maoist insurgents? What’s that all about?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

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In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
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