Munger - 2

I vividly remember that after having lived in Munger for a couple of months, I had written a letter to my parents in which I had talked about the enormous difference between the lives of managers living in the park and those living outside.

The factory is a five minute park from the colony where I live. As soon as I step out of the high green gates of the park , I get glimpses of the real world ,of the world that has not seen the 9% growth in GDP that we are talking about. Men squatting on the roads sipping a glass of tea and looking forward to another day of unemployment. Children preferring to run across the roads in tattered clothes rather than going to a school without walls and teachers.

If Premchand had seen the high walls and barbed wire separating our colony from the outside world he would have compared it to the barriers that the prosperous Indians create between themselves and their not so lucky brethren. I wonder how the Capitalist countries have managed to create a decent standard of living for at least 90% of their population, while we still have 25 % of our people living below the poverty line even after toeing the so called socialist policies.

I have never seen such contrasts anywhere -- except maybe in Mumbai where a a 40 storey building will come up beside a sprawling slum. I often wonder how people live in those buildings without ever feeling guilty.