MADRAS, India -- One important cause for the debacle of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition in the recent Indian general elections was their slogan, "India Shining." Some analysts feel that it alienated the country's millions of poor people.
India shines only for its "haves." Some 57 years after India won independence from Britain, there are still about 700 million men, women and children who struggle to merely exist. Half of this 700 million survive on a dollar a day, the dollar being shared by a whole family of seven or eight people. The other half does not even have this: It goes to bed hungry every night.
The remaining 300 million members of the nation's billion-plus population belong to the middle class, which is subdivided into lower, middle and upper segments. And the number of truly rich Indians adds up to only 40 or 50 million.