India ranking 132 out of 152 countries in its commitment to reducing inequality –is home to 1.2 billion people as many live in extreme poverty. The Indians who move abroad are usually the most qualified and this increases the problem. Population is not the problem here. If you have billion mouths to feed, remember you have two billion hands to work. Give them opportunity to work here, earn as per their qualifications and skills, one day India may or may not remain poor – it depends on what measures we take today. The population of our country restricts people of extraordinary capability to contain their living space which is not acceptable to them. They have the ability to live in a much better environment and do not like when India has no opportunities open for them.
Compared to India, among the neighbours, Nepal ranks 81, Sri Lanka 138, Pakistan 139, and Bangladesh 141. Sweden ranks No 1, followed by Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Finland, Austria and France. United Kingdom ranks 17, South Africa 21, United States 23, Russia 85, and China 87. India and other countries ranking equally badly “will fail to end poverty and fail to make sustainable economic progress that benefits everyone in society. The report is prepared by well-known UK-based NGO Oxfam in collaboration with the US-based Development Finance International, says that if India were to reduce inequality by a third, more than 170 million people would no longer be poor.
Indians today, encouraging society and believe in adjusting, which simply does not match with the thinking of some people. So their search ends in Canada, Middle East, Australia, US or UK for higher living standards and opportunity. If you look at education condition, no Indian university feature in the Top 100 in the world. That doesn’t mean all universities in our country are rubbish. But it rules potential employers’ ideas when they have someone who’s studied at NYU whether or not he’s that much better than someone who’s done his studies at Local University. The facilities and approach to education, furthermore, in the UK and US seems to be far more conducive to actually learning the subject. For life in general, people are drawn to the standard of living abroad.
Coming to the gender gap in India, Women make up the majority of the world’s low-paid workers and are disproportionately concentrated in the most insecure roles in the informal sector, the situation is extremely bad in Asia. In Asia 75% of working women are working informally, lacking access to basic benefits such as sick pay, maternity leave or pension. Women are often paid less than men for doing the same job, despite working longer hours; for instance, in India, the wage gap is 32.6%. The inequality crisis is not inevitable and that governments are not powerless in the face of it. A number of governments, in recent as well as more distant history, including Sweden, Chile, Uruguay and Namibia, have shown they can buck the trend of growing inequality by taking clear steps to reduce it. Unfortunately, many other governments, including Nigeria and India, are failing to make use of the tools available to them to tackle this global scourge. Unless they take concerted action now, they will fail to end poverty and fail to make sustainable economic progress that benefits everyone in society.
A lot of Indians are tempted by high salaries offered in the developed countries such as USA, UK, Australia and move to a foreign country for the higher wages. What counts is the cost of living as a percentage of income. Here, we are neither concerned only about income or only about cost living, but about cost of living, seen from the context of income. Seen this way, USA is cheaper than India on most articles that make up the cost of living, except rent, where the percentage of income spent on rent in USA is more than the percentage of income spent on rent in India. The availability of resources in the country is biggest basic thing to avail the standards of living for the people. India relies heavily on coal to produce electricity, in countries like Germany and Japan, most of electricity is produced by atomic energy and some of it by renewable sources like solar – this keeps this energy prices down in the long term. Government subsidies on cooking gas in India is keep its price to 400 per cylinder; without this subsidy, the price of cooking gas would be 1200+ per cylinder. The Indian government subsidizes a lot of education because of which, parent don’t have to spend as much on education. In the West, no such subsidy exists and most people pay high fees on their children’s education. Similarly, the government controls the prices of a lot of other things that affect the cost of living of the common man. In Canada, there is universal public healthcare – all medical costs are borne by the government – which in turn collects it through taxes; People in Canada spend $0 on hospital bills – the only money they spend on healthcare is through taxes. In USA, the hospital costs are very high – this brings up the cost of living again.
Since the general level of development of the entire public infrastructure is better (better roads, electricity, water supply, better sewage, better public health and sanitation, internet and mobile connectivity, transport etc) and all material goods are in abundance, a person lives a better quality life. Plus, one does not have to struggle for these things – they are pretty easily available. In India, one cannot be confident about these services – the electricity and water supply is erratic, the roads are terrible, outside the big cities, the internet connectivity is slow, the hospitals are in poor shape – overcrowded, understaffed and unhygienic. May be this is the reason people go abroad thinking that they will get higher salaries- but in reality the cost of living in those cities is much higher than in India – whatever higher standard of living is achieved is largely due to the better standard of public infrastructure and a minor part due to the actual salary. If our government tries to improve infrastructure and retain skillful hands working for our own country, then poverty can be reduced tremendously.
(Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@www.afternoonvoice.com)
