Announcing a new team blog: How the Other Half Lives. www.theotherindia.org
In 1890, Jacob Riis, a Dutch immigrant to the US, wrote about - and photographed - the appalling slum conditions in New York City. Around the 1890s, half of New Yorkers lived in slums (similar to modern Bombay) and Riis wrote his book to garner much needed attention. The book was called How the Other Half Lives. The vast number of homeless immigrants who pour into India's metropolises every day and live in slums are the other half of a shining India. We know that India still remains deeply divided between its elites and its have-nots; a divide so great that much of the elite does not even see it, happily believing that the nation as a whole is on its way to superpower status. There is no doubt at all that economic liberalisation has helped a section of the economy, yet there is equally no doubt that there are faultlines in economic growth and equitability. Social rifts - such as those pertaining to caste and communal tensions - intersect in complex ways with the changing economic landscape. This blog will attempt to explore that uncertain terrain. It will focus on the "other half" that is often ignored by a market-driven mainstream media. It will attempt to present a fuller picture of India and a fuller examination of issues of concern than what we normally see around us. To this end, we hope to ask questions and suggest answers. Riis's book was popular not only because of its documentation of the problem, but also because it offered solutions to the tenement problems in New York. We hope that this blog, too, will not only highlight the "other half" but also search for and discuss solutions. We are aware that for a country as diverse as India, there is no one approach for tackling all of our economic, social, and political problems. We would like to examine and discuss different approaches. In the end, we are not fundamentally opposed to anyone else's ideas about how India must develop and progress. What we want to do is to raise the issues that concern us and encourage debate about them, because we think they concern us all. Because India is changing, in many ways and dramatically. Yet in many ways India is also much the same. This blog is a fruit of the tension between those two thoughts, an attempt to examine the ground in between. Thanks, Dilip, Uma, Anand, Vikrum, Shivam «¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥««¤»¥«¤»§«¤» This is ZESTEconomics. Post economics-related articles and event info to [email protected] If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTEconomics by sending a blank mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTEconomics/join ==theZESTcommunity====================================== [1] ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCurrent/ [2] ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTEconomics/ [3] ZESTGlobal: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTGlobal/ [4] ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/ [5] ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/ [6] ZESTCaste: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ [7] ZESTAlternative: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTAlternative/ [8] TalkZEST: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TalkZEST/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTEconomics/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
