The Problem of India

Abstract

The problem of India can be very simply stated. It is the problem of 370 million human beings who are living in conditions of extreme poverty and semi-starvation for the vast majority, and are at the same time living under a foreign rule which holds complete control over their lives and maintains by force the social system leading to these terrible conditions.… R. Palme Dutt penned these lines forty years ago in…his classic study of colonialism's powerful role in creating the poverty and underdevelopment of modern South Asia. Although Dutt was writing in 1940, not a single word of his statement has lost its poignancy. Some of the statistics and magnitudes have changed, but the ugly contours have not: indeed they have worsened absolutely and relatively.… Today instead of the vast majority of 370 million human beings living in conditions of extreme poverty and semi-starvation, a vast majority of 650 million can be spoken of in India alone, and the number becomes 800 million if we include Pakistan and Bangladesh, once part of the jewel of Britain's worldwide empire.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.