A woman I went to college with in New Delhi, now 29, lives in her family home on Prithviraj Road, one of the toniest parts of the capital. She has a shiny new convertible BMW 3 series, bought by her father. She doesn’t have a job.
One can have a regular software engineer’s job and with little financial planning, he/she can buy BMW 3 series in America. In India, it is IMPOSSIBLE for a person having job to buy it.
On a recent evening at a posh lounge in Delhi, I saw Prada and Gucci-clad teenagers arrive in Lamborghinis, Jaguars and Porsches. They air kissed and went to the bar. “Hedonism is back,” a note on the bar’s website says. After an hour or so of drinking, a chubby guy in the group got the bill. “Oh, just 60? Not bad,” he said loudly. It was 60,000 rupees ($1,000.)
Whenever one visits India, for first 2 days they cannot stop observing how people leave half eaten food in restaurant as there is a man starving right outside on the street. But after 2 days, brain tunes out poverty. What can one person do?