Girish Mishra
Two reports have appeared simultaneously. One report has been carried by the American magazine Forbes and the other by the German journal Der Spiegel’s English version. These two reports underline that India, despite being one country, is getting divided into two worlds, which may have disastrous consequences... It emerges from the perusal of the list that as many as 27 billionaires are from India, who include 10 new entrants. No other country barring the US has so many new billionaires...
In the case of India too, rise in stock market prices by 54 per cent over the year have thrown up so many new billionaires...
It needs to be noted that most of these new billionaires and millionaires from India are from the services sector. They have been dealing in information technology and financial services. Only a handful of them have anything to do with the production of goods...
The German newspaper Der Spiegel's report begins with the concrete case of Ramakrishna Murthy, who after working for 10 years as a food chemist has just been thrown out by his employer, Hindustan Lever, a subsidiary of the Anglo-Dutch multination, Unilever.
The company has told him that, at 52 years of age, he is “too old, too inflexible and too expensive” for it to afford him. Finding no alternative but to vacate his apartment he has moved to a long abandoned dilapidated house.
To quote the report, "Now he and his family are living without any kind of appreciable social safety net in an abandoned house that is falling apart on the edge of Bangalore. They struggle to make ends meet with his wife’s salary."
Murthy regards himself "as one the victims of the 'Indian economic wonder' and, as such, one of the 'losers of globalization' – those who have lost their jobs as a result of India’s economic liberalization."
(Article from www.zmag.org)
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