YOU GONNA GET THAT:

Boom splits India's middle class (Scott Baldauf, 5/13/04, CS Monitor)

For the BJP, or Bharatiya Janata Party as it is called, it was not supposed to work this way. Early opinion polls, going into the election, portrayed a BJP that couldn't lose. The economy was booming. Foreign exchange reserves - an indicator of foreign investment dollars coming in - were at an all time high. Even the Indian cricket team defeated their longtime rivals, Pakistan. Throwing millions into a glitzy television ad campaign called "India Shining," the BJP called early elections and awaited the sweets and flowers.

Yet the undercurrent of discontent is unmistakable.

"India is not shining; the BJP is shining, and those are two different things altogether," says Dipankar Gupta, a sociologist at Jawaharlal Nehru University. "People who have jobs are getting lots of money, but those who don't have jobs, don't. If you look at public hospitals, they're a mess, the railways are a mess, the water is dangerous to drink. We have yet a lot to achieve."

Indeed, even the signs of prosperity - call centers, computer software developers, and so on - have a feel of desperation. These positions number roughly 1 million, a small fraction of the India's 400 million workforce.

At call centers it's common to see hundreds of college graduates apply for a few dozen jobs. And while the private sector has begun to create jobs, mainly in major metropolitan areas, it has not been able to keep up with the 700,000 new job seekers entering the workforce each year.

"For five years, they haven't created one job, but they've added 5 million new unemployed people," says Prem Shankar Jha, a senior political analyst. "They haven't done a thing for the real people of this country."

Mr. Jha points out that the BJP, bowing to middle class demands, have augmented consumer subsidies that divert government resources away from improving public services and infrastructure. "This is a response to organized middle class groups, and they get the [larger] benefit." [...]

Mrs. Devgan says that while the benefits of a boom economy are still filtering down to ordinary families, there has been a massive - and in Indian terms, quite sudden - cultural shift that she finds frustrating.

"When we were in school, we used to so easily follow what the teacher told us," she says. "Now the children question the teacher. They really don't listen. They are so exposed to the media."

It's a phenomenon that troubles Gopal and Pranamita Sarma as well, one that they experience often among their neighbors in the lavish apartment complex, Ambience Island.

"Values have changed, both for better and for worse," says Gopal. "A lot of people think there is an easy way through life. Children have learned from their fathers how to bribe. But it's also true that a lot of people are willing to work harder than their parents did, and I think that's good."

His faith in India, ultimately, has to do with size and momentum.

"Between India and China, we generate more than 10 percent of the global economy," says Gopal, who has master's degree in economics. "We don't need the United States; it's the US that needs us."

Someone might point out to Gopal that answering phones isn't rocket science.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 12, 2004 11:45 PM