[Reader-list] How the Other Half Lives

[Shivam]

Announcing a new team blog - How the Other Half Lives - at 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.

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
www.theotherindia.org