Caste and color in urban India

As cities become the cultural centrality of Indian civilization, the caste lost its dominance, more solidly grounded in rural India. In big cities or Euro-American-Indian, everyday personal contacts are much more flexible and less identity. With just a visual or a brief exchange transaction services, there is no way to assign one person to the Rajput caste, however powerful was his sense of belonging or my desire to find out. The breed is mark ethnic and operates as a magma gaps than linguistic, regional and in some cases, religious and labor. So be diluted when no longer useful. But this truth, intuitively if not for the signs a significant proportion of Indian sociologists, does not mean that inequality will disappear and, at a stroke.

In recent years, the Indian elite is proudly that their purchasing power and culture has shortened the distance to the West. And in a sense, are right: in urban India is much more effective instrument of class as social segregation (if I heard Lenin!), The traditional cleavage between rich and poor, more attentive to the disquisitions of pocket Cradle consumption and chivalry. I checked this fully in the festival last Dashera, advocacy of good over evil. Each year, the authority of the neighborhood assembled a makeshift stage, with hundreds of chairs and three gigantic terrace hell big heads that will direct the pyre faller after the god Ram concrete victory over the demon Ravana.

The sum of theatrical performance, religious paraphernalia and final burning of the lousy, the result is the typical human flood that colors every religious festival in India. But this time he had guards watching over and selectively requiring an alleged free ticket. This I knew then, I spent the makeshift barrier without knowing anything about history. Seeing how organized the respectable, I began to understand that what was happening: the park was full of "kameez" silk jeans and young children with a maid. And against the fence, huddled struggling to see something the caste of servants, the noisy teenagers with loud clothes, the fabric saris bad, or people with hair repeinada apegotado bathing in tubs without shampoo bottle.

The guards, rather than organizing access, were separating the wheat from the chaff, India that demand for which has not, under the guise of a ticket to me or asked me because there was. Is that you do not have bad pint , a neighbor came to me with an argument of joint night. This is India, my son. It is true that the waiting time, the alert guardian relaxed and more alert kids managed, one way or another (scaling gate, the guard despistando) enter the park and join the fun, without the right to chair. But by then, I had forgotten the god Ram and I was busy watching the servants Ram and Sita Prasad, New Delhi.

The Ram and Sita who would own the words of Balram, the driver of the novel awarded the British Booker "White Tiger", referring to the jersey of his boss: "It was not like the shirt I would buy in a store. Most of it was empty and white, and had a small design in the center. I would have bought something very colorful, with lots of words and designs on it. More value for your money. " A white tigers are known for their ornate designs clothing lines unequivocal turbulent low price, and also for darker skin, working in full sun, used as errand boys, drivers, cleaners. In all cases, with salaries that cause embarrassment and a life which only rarely rises above the standard of dignity.

The first historical mention of the castes or varnas ("colors") is paramount in the mythical "Rig Veda", songs with more than 3,000 years. But in India today in northern cities, the gap is not varna visual but mostly clothing and sun, depending on the soft skin well worth the higher social classes, there are bleaching creams in each toilet for this fight constant, and the complexion of the people Agromán salary below 100 euros, which is so prohibited from entering the shopping mall as the mention of its existence in India of the "success story", ie the version that elites strive to sell abroad and thus to be taken seriously in international forums.

"In India, 'said the other day the sociologist Dipankar Gupta - the rich depend on the poor. They could not live on their level without them. Take for example the field of information technology, supposedly a success story. They themselves admit that their profits come from the low labor costs, and based on no technical training tasks. I know big spenders are two dollar tip the hotel porter while angry when a servant asked a small increase. "

Propaganda campaigns and corporate mantra books aside, here are the details: According to World Bank (2005), 41.6 percent of Indians live on less than $ 1.25 a day international poverty line (according to the indicator Indian national, the percentage drops to 27.5 percent). The figures are alarming, but there are two clauses that put them. The first is to live with more than $ 1.25 a day does not mean that you live comfortably. If we put the limit at $ 2 a day, it appears that 75.6 percent of India's population is not exceeded: this means that in India, 800 million people live on less than two dollars a day. The "great indian middle class" (great Indian middle class) is less great in a society where only 3 percent of the population owns a car.

The second point concerns the Indian model. As Gupta himself recalls in his book "The caged phoenix", this way of measuring poverty is a sad understatement, because what makes the line is if people can buy enough food to ensure their own survival. This means that 27.5 percent of the population unable to arrive at the amount fixed by the standard is not alone in poverty, but of actual starvation. That is, for better or worse, hungry.

In the city, although shelter from fourth world, the situation is not as dramatic and urgent as in impoverished rural areas. The bulk of the Indian growth in the years it has been postreforma the top of the pyramid, ie manufacturing and services sector. But this does not mean that the urban poor are not subjected to a brutal drama. In full Dashera party knew very illustrative of the history of one of the ironing of the neighborhood was lucky or unlucky enough to give birth to a girl with very light skin, a feature much appreciated-a light-skinned girls are they presuppose a future husband better positioned and more social consideration than its neighbor kidnapped her and tried to snatch it, until the police intervened to bring peace and nothing else.

Tion to something else: just days after the party in the park, I had occasion to witness what kind of plague afflicting the police. It was night market and a walking patrol agents stationed along the stalls, specializing in the fireworks of Diwali (the festival of lights). At ten pm, closing time, is engaged in a whispered discussion among vendors, all women, in a coming and going quietly agitated and one of the officers, quietly supported on a pole beside the road. "We asked, told me one of them-500 rupees to let us continue another hour of sale." True to the reputation police crushing the poor, the main victims of corruption and paying bribes, one passed a bill in the pocket of the policeman, named Bhardwaj (as plaque), the end of the other survivor.

The power of the agents of neighborhood-tanned in the sun, to be exact-reached people of the neighborhood: the police do not ever speak in the same way to the white tigers subjected to daily wage than their masters. Rich and poor are closely connected, but social segregation is the gauge that separates the citizen of the subject, true that the occasional parentheses elections: some out of the malls, the others remain faithful can not choose-their dusty "dhabas" of teas to five rupees.

A large country-be indignant scholars rightly, is much more than the class gap is reduced to a simplistic dichotomy of rich and poor. Okay, the reason of wealth inequality explains only a part of India, but is of fundamental importance: the castes, religions, languages, operating regional bickering within India and founded the organization in the country. Also the classes but also add that to the outside are the wealthy, among those who has the very powerful diaspora who act as ambassadors of the country because their habits are closer to the West manage the strategy of its national narrative.

Let me explain with an example: shortly after arriving in India, I caught the abracadabrismos of the Anglophone press, which they use (use) the West to take the pulse of the country. On the street, I saw streams of people struggling for survival, the constant recourse to the tricks of Lazarillo de Tormes. But the media were far more occupied customary events taking place in the cavalcade, yesterday won the cricket world, today we reached the moon , everyone admires the power of India, poverty-that-is lacking invented by Pakistan to destabilize the country. Then I realized the trick: to many readers (readers elite, which are expressed in English), poverty has become part of the props, is a landscape element with which one has coexisting ("closely connected" ) from birth, and therefore generally not material-news. What you need to tell, come to say, is that India is already a success story.

The great paradox of the Indian elite in this regard is that, while practicing a savage social dumping within its borders and take advantage of low costs of the maid of the kitchen and the buttons of the company, try to mute or turn down the noise of its existence and that of the hundreds of millions of poor who are still in the country. The minister of Interior-before-Finance, Palaniappan Chidambaram, came to juggling to say that India is a poor country but a country in which "the bulk of the population is poor." He also said-I agree that if the administration added to 200 or 300 million people are in production, the country's gross domestic product will shoot. The dilemma is whether to do so the authorities will start sending tickets to white tigers for the upcoming theatrical feature. Because until now, the best way they can still enjoy the servants of the party is pulling the Diwali firecrackers purchased by the master, his heir to have fun safely.