Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Why is it that some parts of India (Bihar and Uttar Pradesh come to mind) have so much more poverty than most of the other states? (Goa, of course, seems to be a statistical quirk, a small, urban, former Portuguese colony - like comparing Hong Kong to the rest of the PRC)
I found this out while reading what I could about Bihar. I must say that the families of the children lost in the midday meal tragedy have my condolences. India is several thousands away and I have no connection to it, but as someone who considers his daughter to be the most precious part of my life, I can't imagine how horrible this tragedy is to the families. It has been on my mind and has been depressing me since I heard about it.
My eldest daughter just sent me a message - I have not heard from her of a week. She is in India and has been there for the last month or so. She works for an NGO and has been alternating from the cities to rural communities. Tomorrow she will be in Africa..then back to India then home to Canada ....I just can't wait for her report on India...She is a pragmatic young woman with a very un institutional approach to things...I can get back to you in a month and let you know what she observed.
Compared to the western and southern parts, north-central India has always been poorly ran ever since the days of the British Raj and there is a notable element of petty caste based politics in the political scene. Out of all of the major Indian states, Bihar usually ranks the near or at the bottom on most social, political, and economic indicators. One thing I noticed about north-central India is that the wealthy tend to be extremely petty, corrupt, and exploitative of the poor.
I think a lot of countries has region that's viewed as being somewhat backwards: the southern US, northern England, northeastern Pakistan, eastern Germany, southern Italy, northeastern Brazil, etc. In India's case, it happens to be the north-central part though the east central part isn't too far behind(this is mainly due to far left parties holding power in some of those states). The current situation is sort of ironic since the north-central part of India was always considered the heart of India in many ways and was a prosperous region in the past.
How much wealthier are the southern states compared to the north anyway? I think states like Kerala while wealthy for India, would still be quite poor by world standards.
^If we are talking about north central India, I would say it terms of wealth the differences are moderate. Economically, you'll see a larger difference between the western edge of the country and the north-central part. However when you look at other indicators(literacy rates, corruption levels, birth rates, etc) the southern part of the country is far ahead of states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and slightly/moderately ahead the rest of the country.
The east-central part(West Bengal, Orissa, etc) of the country is sort of behind economically as well, but this is due largely to left wing parties instituting policies that stifle economic growth. You don't see the sort of dysfunctionalism that's in Bihar here or anywhere else in India for that matter. Bihar is broken, and it's going to probably take a large degree of federal intervention to fix it.
The per-capita income discrepancy between Maryland and Mississippi, the two extremes in the US, is about 2:1. In India, the ratio between the highest and lowest is about 3:1, if you exclude three tiny urban states at the wealthiest end, and Bihar at the lowest.
Part of the reason Bihar's per capita GDP is lower is because it has the highest proportion of children and young adults, which increases the population without increasing the productivity, which skews that statistics. By global standards, a 3:1 ratio of richest to poorest is not extreme.
Bihar has a bad reputation in India as a backward state. When I was traveling in India, we had the most trouble getting around in the northern Gangetic plain states. Plus, we had a nerve-wracking encounter with a drunken mob, late at night in Patna on the way to a hotel. South India was much better organized (at least in respect to traveling), while eastern India had a lot of labor strikes going on at the time.
This was over twenty years ago, however, and I don't know much about the current status of these states. The poisoning of the schoolchildren was a horrible story, but no one state in any country has a monopoly on bad actions.
The Varanasi-Agra-Delhi triangle is probably the most touristed part of the country so I'd think tourist infrastructure there would be good.
You'd think. Mostly we were traveling via Indian Railways which I think is amazing (moving that many people, and providing service to so much of the country is quite an achievement). Occasionally, we had to use the dreaded Indian buses. We had a rail pass, but couldn't book legs in advance, and it was hard to get information about routes, availability, etc. at the train stations in this part of the country (or even find somebody to ask). In most of the rest of the country it was a not a problem getting on the routes we wanted. Maybe this was a atypical and in any case online booking has undoubtedly made the whole process much easier now.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
