India (Frommer's, 4th Edition) by Keith Bain Read Free Book Online

Economic Freedom, trailing even Gabon.
    Meanwhile, agrarian crises continue to brew in rural India, with droughts and floods, paradoxically, always major impediments to the earning and survival strategies of millions of people across the nation. In 2009, a much-delayed monsoon once again severely hampered crop production. And to compound natural disaster, India struggles with a massive, often overburdened, infrastructure and bloated bureaucracy. In 2008, the country fell behind China in the Global Corruption Perception Index, and many people on the ground harbor suspicion and some sort of resentment against the government, no matter who’s in charge; studies reveal that Rs 9,000 million is paid in bribes by 30% of the population (which lives below the official poverty line) just to coerce public servants into doing jobs they’re already paid to do. In mid-July 2009, the issue of corruption came into the limelight in a big way when a bridge under construction for the Delhi Metro collapsed and killed six people; reports revealed that the accident was a direct result of cuts to the safety budget on the project, supposedly to save on construction costs, but in actuality a selfish scheme to put more money into the pockets of fewer contractors than was appropriate.
    All of this doesn’t exactly enhance India’s marketability. It ranks low when it comes to attracting foreign visitors; in comparative studies of India’s Travel and Tourism Competitiveness, it comes in lower (relatively tiny places like Panama and Puerto Rico rate higher), and that’s in the wake of the most intensive national branding and marketing campaign—“Incredible India!”—the country has yet seen; there are more hotels and tourism products than ever before, and the international imagination has surely been touched by films such as Slumdog Millionaire and the success of the book Shantaram . Yet acts and threats of terror, perceptions of crime and poverty, and fear of illness, scams, and hostility continue to plague India, keeping many travelers away. No wonder India is confusing, confounding, incomprehensible. How can you make sense of this land? It’s like emptying an ocean with a spoon.
    All through the 1970s and even 1980s, Western diplomats and journalists predicted the “Balkanization” of India. It didn’t happen, but in 1991 India’s foreign exchange reserves plunged to a catastrophic $1 billion, barely sufficient to service 2 weeks of imports. India was forced to embark on its radical liberalization program. Since then, India’s economy has grown at a rate rivaled only by neighbor China: 2007–08 saw India’s thousand-billion dollar economy grow by a staggering 9.8%, the fastest in 20 years; and even with the world economic slump, the nation’s GDP grew by 6.7% in 2008–2009, while the stock market has continued soaring to unheard-of numbers (on May 18, 2009, in fact, the Bombay Stock Exchange rose by 17.3%, the highest single-day percentage gain of any exchange across the world, ever). But this growth has also spurred inflation (which peaked at a whopping 12% in Aug 2008) and a rise in interest rates, not to mention the obvious fact that India will no doubt experience the knock-on effect of the world’s economic winter.
    Statistics show that the overall standard of living has improved drastically, but the truth is that the benefits of a booming economy have not reached a vast percentage of the population, and India still has the world’s largest concentration of poor. Nearly 300 million people live without the basic necessities of life: water, food, roads, education, medical care, and jobs. These are the Indians living on the outer edges of the nation’s consciousness, far away in remote tribal areas, barren wastelands, and dirty slums, totally outside the market economy.
    With a billion voters, every national election here is the biggest spectacle of fair and peaceful democracy that humankind has ever witnessed. And yet