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NEW DELHI, INDIA, December 31, 2003: The usually more balanced Associated Press posted an article (“source” above) today that reads, in part, “The last year was, it seems, pretty good for India. ‘The Golden Year,’ a major newsweekly proclaimed in a recent cover story. ‘The Feel-good Year,’ another magazine declared. Politicians and headline writers battle it out for the most frequent mentions of the greatness of 2003. The stock market is bouncing around near record highs, foreign exchange reserves have topped $100 billion and malls are being built by the dozen. India’s growing middle class is coming into its own amid a surge in conspicuous consumption. And India is celebrating with an orgy of self-congratulation. ‘If it is good news, it must be India 2003,’ Deputy Prime Minister Lal K. Advani declared in a speech. In a country still stereotyped as being little more than teeming slums and chanting holy men, columnists now offer advice on taking advantage of low-interest rates to get home loans. But the teeming slums are still there, along with disease, rampant unemployment and an ever-widening divide between rich and poor. India’s president counts 260 million Indians, one quarter of the nation, as poor. So some here wonder if the burst in Indian optimism — which ties together everything from a booming economy to a slick government ad campaign and excellent monsoon rains — simply forgets a large percentage of the country. Those conditions are often miserable. New Delhi alone has an estimated 200,000 homeless people. Across the country, there are 41.6 million people — four times the population of Belgium — registered at unemployment offices. Over the past weekend, two dozen homeless people died of the cold in north India, where temperatures dipped to 35.6 Fahrenheit — frigid for a nation where heat kills hundreds of people every summer. The government’s response was to open a few shelters and to tell the homeless not to sleep on the pavement.”



The problem with the report isn’t in its listing of statistics, or in its uncalled-for slight against “chanting holy men,” but in its lack of comparison to other countries.



Compare, for example, this report: “During this year the number of homeless New Yorkers residing in shelters each night has reached the highest point in New York City’s history. In November 2003 more than 38,500 homeless men, women, and children were sleeping each night in the New York City shelter system, including 16,900 children, 13,400 adult family members, and 8,200 single adults. Thousands more sleep on city streets, park benches, and subway trains.”



Or compare the fact that 400 homeless people freeze to death each winter in Moscow, or the fact that the 2003 heat wave in Europe killed 35,000 people, 14,000 in France alone.



Or consider that America, with a population of just under 300 million has 8.7 million unemployed, while India with one billion population, or three times as many people, has 41.6 million unemployed, a rate a little less than twice that of the US — which could be considered rather good for a “developing” country.



Or the part about the rich getting richer, compare again New York City from this Newsday article of 2002, “The 1990s wealth effect fueled by the stock market and dot-com craze failed to trickle down to most New Yorkers, according to newly released U.S. Census data. Instead, the rich got richer, particularly in Manhattan. In every other borough, the 2000 Census data suggest, earnings slipped over the decade. ‘New York City is a high-priced, congested area with a lot of wealthy and a lot of poor,’ said Christopher Jones, a director of the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit research and planning organization.” Twelve percent of Americans, 35 million, live in poverty, according to the US census, compared to 25% of Indians.

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