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The rural sector that accounts for two-thirds of India’s billion-plus population is growing at a snail’s pace as compared to other sectors of the overall economy, writes Rabia Rahat
Wedged in between a posh hotel, a modern highway and a booming technology corridor, this village of open sewers and sporadic power is at the front-end of a controversy about who benefits from economic growth in India. "It’s good our country progresses," said Raj Singh, a 41-year-old cook, as he walked through dirty streets in the lower caste district of Kalwari, about 55 km from New Delhi. "But that development should happen in my village. Here the poor are getting poorer. We are forgotten. Nobody comes here." India’s Congress-led government presented its annual budget lately, promising more of the breakneck growth that has seen gleaming high-rises spring up in booming cities across India where millions are employed in services like call centres. But behind the headlines of "Shining India" are worries that growth is failing to trickle down to the poor and the communist-backed government is concerned that a by-product of the boom - a rising inflation rate - is making many people poorer. "It’s rather like if the US government focused its growth strategy on making New York brokers wealthier," said D.K. Joshi, principal economist at domestic credit rating agency CRISIL. "There are millions in call centres that benefit from growth. But India’s population is massive and a huge chunk of the population is not benefiting," said Joshi. The rural sector, for example, accounts for two-thirds of India’s billion-plus population but is growing at less than one third of the pace of the overall economy. Outside Kalwari, men sat by a main road. Some picked up rubbish scraps. They supplemented their meagre incomes, they said, by occasionally being picked up in a lorry to attend political rallies in Delhi. Kalwari is a bus ride away from Gurgaon, a town of call centres, new suburbs and one of the largest McDonald’s in India. But few farmers thought they, or their children, would ever find work there. "We are uneducated, unskilled people. Who will take us?" said Balvan Yadav, a 32-year-old farmer. On the opening of the budget session, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam told parliament the centre-left government was committed to "inclusive development". It has introduced measures to help India’s 260 million poor, from programs that guarantee jobs for rural poor to food subsidies. But many of the funds do not reach their target through poor implementation or corruption. Raj Singh’s hut has neither electricity nor running water. Children play near stinking gutters. The caste divisions of a village so close to the capital, also underscores how obstacles to modernisation in India are hard to overcome. Singh has two children. One, a girl, was married off at 15. His other child, a boy, goes to school, "if the teachers turn up" and otherwise works to supplement Singh’s 2,000 rupees ($44) a month income by helping out in the fields. India has higher levels of malnourished children than Sub-Saharan Africa, according to a recent survey backed by the United Nation Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and some key health indicators have hardly budged despite the boom. The city-rural divide has widened in India and was reflected in a 2004 election when millions of rural poor voted against the free market reforms of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This year, reforms from the Congress-led coalition like special economic zones to encourage industrial development have been suspended due to a backlash from farmers. And in March, the Congress party was ousted from power in the states of Punjab and Uttarakhand in elections reflecting voter anger over inflation and economic reforms. "The question now is not growth, but the nature of the growth. Who will benefit?," asks Joshi. India may be considered an economic giant but if the giant has to develop at the same high speed then it has to target its agricultural sector too. 
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