India - Poor And Rich
- By Sam George
- Published 07/28/2008
Sam George
Sam George is the Executive Director of PARIVAR International - a non-profit initiative to address the needs of youth and families of Asian Indian origin in North America and to the Asian Indian community worldwide. Parivar means family in many Indian languages. Sam George also serves as one of the founding directors of Urban India Ministries
www.UrbanIndia.org Sam George and his wife, Mary have spoken at premarital and family events in many countries. They are parents of two boys and make their home in the northern suburbs of Chicago. Sam is the author of the book “Understanding the Coconut Generation: Ministry to the Americanized Asian Indians." Check out this website www.CoconutGeneration.com Coconut (brown on the outside, white on the inside) is a metaphor for the Americanized Asian Indians. Sam George can be reached at sam@coconutgeneration.com
I recently came across this strange paradox. India is both poor & rich!
35 per cent of Indian population lives on less than $1 a day, which is comparable to Bangladesh’s 36 per cent and much worse than Pakistan’s 17 per cent.
The World Bank reported that India is 12th wealthiest nation in 2005 with its GDP touching 785.47 billion dollars or Rs 35,34,615 crore . US was the wealthiest nation with GDP of 12.46 trillion dollars. While India was way down compared to China, positioned fourth with 2.23 trillion dollars of GDP, it was wealthier than Mexico, Russia and Australia. According to recent Forbe’s list of Wealthiest people in the world, there are 23 billionaires in India with combined net worth of $99bn, surpassing former Asian leader Japan’s 27 billionaires with their total worth of $67bn.
The outsourcing revolution has created unprecendented opportuntities and wealth for Indians. But we are also seeing unprecendented levels of social and moral crises in India?Is all this development and progress at the cost of India’s soul? Jesus asked once - “What good is to gain the whole world and yet loose our soul?” (Lk 9:25)
But should we measure wealth of a nation only in economic terms only? Are people in richer nations happy? Has riches solved people’s eternal quests?
Coconut Generation
