The Indian government wants to introduce a 10 rupee coin. 10 rupees is not even 20 cents, but who is this new coin for?
In “Maximum City,” Suketu Mehta says India has two currencies.
When my cousin walks across the street to the ATM, she takes out sums of money that the average rickshaw-driver, stationed in the street, won’t earn in a month. The idea of “two currencies” reflects the lack of a middle class.
In the United States, we have two currencies also, but these currencies meet in the middle class. For many people, $1000 is a vast sum. But to those earning in the top .01%, that same amount is loose change.
In India, the difference is even more marked. A 10 rupee coin is so small that it would be worthless to some of my wealthy relatives. But to the vast majority of Indian people, 10 rupees is a decent amount of money. It covers the price of a kilo of carrots at the open-air vegetable market near the station.
There is a vast gap between these two societies in terms of what would be considered a decent amount of money. In the States, $10,000 is a significant sum for most people, even those who earn in the top 5%. But in India, you’d have to multiply 10 rupees several times in order to make a dent in the annual income of the top 5%.
People like my cousin are perhaps the middle ground, a growing class of people who withdraw thousands of rupees from the ATM but still hand it over in intervals of 10 when paying the minimum fare on a cab trip. They bridge the two classes, the class of those who have drivers and air-conditioned cars, and the class of those who are the drivers.
hey there! following your posts with interest. wondering - how is this different (is it?) from the have-and-have-not class divisions that have always existed everywhere? and do people feel there is more mobility between classes than there was before the 'reinvention' of India as a 'knowledge' country?
ReplyDeletehi there! It's always nice to get new readers! There's definitely a bigger gulf between India's lower and upper classes than between those same classes in the States. My economics professors once referred to it as the "Geni coefficient" but basically, it measures how much of the country's GDP is produced by the upper 1 percent of the population. In India, that coefficient skews heavily towards the upper 1 percent.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in the past, social class was governed by caste. Now that the caste system is on its way out, access to education is still really limited for those born in villages or even in urban slums.