Inside Gate, India’s Good Life; Outside, the Slums

This New York Times article really depressed me.  Its written about Gurgaon but the same thing is happening in Bangalore.   Huge self contained gated enclaves functioning almost as city states, rimmed by slums. 

Now I actually do not blame people for wanting this.  People want consistant power, carefully maintained lawns and infrastructure, security, etc.  Its human and natural, some people in India have wealth.  Theres one of these gated communities in Bangalore that is almost an exact replica of California suburbia, quite surreal really.  But I can understand the attraction.  The government of India is either can't or won't manage to provide a lot of basic services in a reasonable way and so people are going to turn to private enterprise.  Before, highly educated Indians would simply go to those California suburbs directly... now they replicate it at home.   So be it.

What gets me upset is not the community, or even the gate per se.  Its whats outside.
Its one thing to have misery among deprivation, that is comprehensible at least.  But to have people living in these conditions amidst an economic boom?  Alongside so much wealth, growth and prosperity?   It strikes at our sense of justice and equality.  It cries out.

Someone told me recently as part of a discussion on rural health "There will always be two Indias".   For a moment I wondered, is this just the way of things?    The British, the Moghuls, countless Maharajas, inequality does seem to have been around for a long time in India.  Perhaps this is why people are so willing to tolerate this latest edition (well except the Maoists in the hills, who should not be ignored).  But then I remembered the Indus Valley Civilization.

There was a fantastic series of articles on the latest research on the Indus Valley Civilization in the latest issue of Science AAAS
(sadly not availible to non-subscribers  this page seems pretty decent though)  The latest archeological studies have revealed more detail, but do not seem to have changed the core picture.  An extraodinarily advanced society of exquisitely planned roads and the worlds first urban sanitation system.  A society without the gaudy temples and palaces of parallel ancient civilization, it instead seems to have invested in roads, sewage, and huge public spaces.  There do seem to have been the somewhat wealthy in this ancient civilization of traders, they were buried within additional beads and so forth.  Some houses were slightly bigger than others, the Science article reports.  Ok, we get it, it was still a civilization of human beings... not aliens ;)  But what great human beings!

The connection between modern Indian civilization and this civilization is complex and disputed.  I personally do not feel that this is a particularly useful argument to have.

What matters is they were here, they are part of our heritage, and they were a truly great people.    I think in many ways legacy is something a people/culture can choose.  A model exists for a humanistic, egalitarian, technological advanced, and secular India.   Why not hold it up high? 

Realities will not change in a moment.  Dreams do not put food on peoples tables or get children the antibiotics they need.  But at least they are a beginning.  At least they give us a common goal.  At least they let us believe that what is before us is not all that can ever be.