The dark side of India's growth story

The dark side of India's growth story
Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, believes that while India has several Silicon Valleys within it, the country also has three Nigerias within.

"The Indian private sector is doing extraordinary things and the country is bursting with energy, yet behind all these is the reality," Zakaria said alluding to the rampant poverty that coexists with affluence. That reality, he said, is that there are still close to 800 million people in India who live on less than $2 a day despite India being a democracy, which is its greatest pride.

His remarks came during a keynote address at the Child Relief and You-United States fundraiser May 5 in the presence of 200-odd guests.

Zakaria said in India, democracy has not allowed the rule of the majority.

"What you see issue after issue, state after state is that powerful minorities, farmers, minority interests and landed interests have been able to capture the political system and extract government benefits for themselves [by way of] subsidies, etc," he said.

Noting that Indian democracy is wedded to these powerful minorities, he said this is not an unfamiliar concept in democracy -- in the US they are called special interests. But he said in India it has proved deadly because people who do not get represented are the ones who are powerless. Little wonder, he said, that at the annual United Nations Human Development Index, India fares very badly.