The Foreign Service Journal, October 2011

I t was 9 p.m. and I was heading to the red-carpet premiere of a new movie starring legendary Bolly- wood actor Amitabh Bhachan. I hit the usual bumper-to-bumper traffic in the suburbs of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and, almost unconsciously, reached for my headphones to tune out the din of construction and incessant honking. As I started to adjust them, I heard a knock on my car window. It was a young boy, holding his unbuttoned shirt open and flashing his wounded chest, laced with ghastly scars from kerosene oil. I frantically looked away and shut my eyes, hoping the image would dis- appear — only to see in my mind’s eye the boy staring at me, wishing my re- action this time would bring him some good fortune. Before pulling away from the busy intersection, I struggled with the im- pulse to give himmy pocket change. I thought back to my recent travels in India and the conversations with ac- tivists from various nongovernmental organizations and local Mumbai resi- dents. They made me wonder wheth- er giving money would be enough to help this young boy escape his dire fate. How could my one gesture re- lieve him of the daily grind of selling pop magazines or begging at the city’s many intersections? Throughout the movie premiere, my mind kept wandering back to this question. It is impossible to ignore the fact that 60 percent of this city’s popu- lation lives in slums, scraping by on barely one dollar a day. So much money is going into high-rise housing, bridge construction and sprawling multiplex malls; yet innumerable chil- dren remain mired in poverty, even as they are tantalized by the sight of that phenomenal wealth. On my way home at midnight, I turned the corner of my street to see a 27-story building, radiantly lit in every room, towering over me. Built by the fourth-richest man in the world, this huge, cutting-edge structure repre- sents the new money and moderniza- tion of a country emerging on the global stage, striving for a place among the major powers. Mumbai is emblematic not just of India’s fast economic growth, but also its burgeoning middle-class popula- tion. In 1980, the middle class com- prised 65 million people — a large number to be sure, but just 8 percent of the country’s total population. By 2008, when I began learning Hindi for my Foreign Service assign- ment here, that number had nearly tripled to 300 million, larger than the entire population of many nations. And it is predicted to double, ac- counting for 50 percent of the Indian population, by 2020. These individuals are breaking new ground economically and socially. They work out at fitness centers; com- mute to work as software engineers, developers and researchers; and fuel the city’s surging information technol- ogy and financial sectors. At the same time, they seem to have a deeper connection to the poor. Their forefathers dealt with great hardships, some as farmers in rural villages, living in one-room huts with no electricity or clean water. Those past generations paved the way for their children to climb out of poverty. Knowing this, the growing middle class appears to be more socially minded. Within another decade, their courage and youthful optimism could transform politics and compel govern- ment leaders to address the remaining hurdles of poor infrastructure and san- itation and devastating poverty. Such activism is not the sole an- swer to eradicating poverty, but it is a step toward calling leaders and offi- cials to action and holding them ac- countable. It is perhaps the only genuine good fortune the young boy begging on the streets of Mumbai can hope for. Sandya Das joined the Foreign Serv- ice in 2008. She recently completed a consular tour in Mumbai and is cur- rently a political officer and consular officer in Juba, South Sudan. R EFLECTIONS Bridging the Gap in Mumbai B Y S ANDYA D AS 76 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1 The image of a young boy walking the streets, begging for a living, continued to haunt me.