INDIA RISING
India, the second most populous nation in the world, is being transformed. We have heard about the rise of Asian tigers and the Chinese dragon - now here comes the elephant. India's economy is growing more than 9% a year, and the country is modernizing so fast that old friends are bewildered by the changes. India is now the world's fourth largest economy. At the same time, more than a quarter of India's 1.1 billion people still live in slums and live on less than one dollar a day.
Bombay remains a temple of contrasts. The booming middle class takes a Sunday stroll on Juhu Beach in the upscale Bandra-area.
The class divide is starkest in cities like Bombay and Bangalore, where million-dollar apartments overlook million-population slums. UNICEF estimates that there are 11 million street children in India – at least 125,000 children live on the streets of Mumbai.
Home to 19 million people, Bombay, is projected by 2015 to be the planet’s second most populous metropolis, after Tokyo. But it’s already a world of its own with Bollywood stars, 24-hour traffic jams, sprawling slums and Manhattan-priced high rises.
Forty-five per cent of Indian children under the age of five are malnourished.
The urban extremes can be hard to take in the Indian mega cities. A new golf course has sprung up in downtown Mumbai, while new skyscrapers are being built in the background.
A group of men are watching the latest news on the billboard outside the Bombay Stock Exchange – the oldest stock exchange in Asia. The city’s stock exchange accounts for 92% of the country’s total share turnover. India’s main stock index, the Sensex, has tripled in the past three years.
The upper class relax with white wine in the softly lit tapas bar, Olive, in the old textile district of Bangalore. The booming concentration of business activity breeds a sophisticated, cosmopolitan outlook with fancy restaurants and nightclubs.
According to one estimate, more than 20 per cent of India’s economy is dependent on children, the equivalent of 55 million youngsters under 14 years of age. The key thing India has to offer the global economy is some of the world’s cheapest labour.
Despite the explosion of consumerism and capitalism in India’s booming cities, more than half of all Indians still live in rural areas. Globalisation has brought tremendous changes in India and, for some, tremendous rewards.
India’s booming technology industry has bred a new middle class some 250 million strong. Many are engineers employed by outsourcing firms like Infosys, whose Bangalore headquarters, employs some 19,000 people. At the same time, more than a quarter of India’s 1.1 billion people still live in slums.
Two young muslim girls hang out at the Haji Ali mosque. Lying as it does on an islet off the coast of Worli in the heart of the city, the mosque is one of the most recognizable landmarks of Mumbai.
In Dhobi ghats Saat Rasta near Mahalaxmi Station a young man is swinging the laundry. A unique feature of Mumbai, the dhobi is a traditional laundryman, who will collect your dirty linen, wash it, and return it neatly pressed to your doorstep. The clothes are soaked in sudsy water, thrashed on the flogging stones, then tossed into huge vats of boiling starch and hung out to dry.
A young woman in a textile factory in Bangalore.
To know Bombay is to know modern India. Full of ambitions and an emblem of globalization you can reach out and touch, a giant city where change is pouring in on a daily basis. To migrants from India’s poor states, the metropolis is known as Mayanagri, the City of Dreams.
India’s massive overpopulation, poverty, environmental problems and the chaotic infrastructure, as well as widespread corruption, are major challenges.
The Sassoon Docks is one of the few docks open to the public and is the main fish loading and trading centre in South Mumbai. Hundreds of women squat around enormous piles of tiny shrimp, shelling them one by one. Everywhere it is dirty and stinky, yet somehow these women remain pristine and clean in their exquisite orange, pink and turquoise sarees.
School boys are playing basket in front of the newly build UB City in Bangalore.
In 2006 the Danish company Novozymes signed a US$ 115 million agreement to acquire the enzyme activities of India-based Biocon, stating that the move will help strengthen its position in the attractive Indian enzyme market. This indian employee at the Novozymes factory in Bangalore is now a part of the world’s leading enzyme manufacturer.
The class divide is stark in Bombay. UNICEF estimates that there are 11 million street children in India – at least 125,000 children live on the streets of Mumbai.
Religion is very important to most Indians, and the country is dotted with temples and religious shrines.