Copyright thenewshimachal
Incomplete Story Half Written in Neon, Half in Hunger Step into any of India’s metropolitan cities on a Saturday evening, and the picture is dazzling: neon lights flooding glass towers, air-conditioned malls brimming with shoppers carrying branded bags, food courts buzzing with laughter, and luxury cars queuing outside like restless horses waiting for their masters. This India is confident, young, and hungry for consumption. It flaunts prosperity as if poverty were a forgotten relic of the past. Yet, just a few miles away—sometimes only across the road—there exists another India. Here, hunger is not a metaphor but a daily companion. Families survive on diluted dal and half-roti meals. Children sleep with empty stomachs, and parents numb their despair with borrowed money or unpaid credit from the local ration shop. For them, malls are not temples of aspiration; they are fortresses of exclusion. This coexistence of two drastically different realities—glittering malls and empty stomachs—defines India’s paradox in the twenty-first century. India is among the world’s fastest-growing major economies. Its billionaires are multiplying faster than its farmers can recover from debt. The World Bank’s 2025 report claims India has “almost eradicated extreme poverty”. Yet, the World Inequality Database paints a starker picture: the top 1% of Indians control over 40% of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 50% share barely 3%. The Human Development Report 2025 warns of widening inequality despite rising HDI scores. India is growing, yes—but not together. The malls celebrate this growing affluence, yet the slums beside them remind us of the inequality hiding behind glass walls. The urban elite can spend ₹500 on a single coffee at an international café chain, while rural families often struggle to secure ₹500 for a week’s groceries. What makes this contradiction sharper is that both these worlds exist not in distant geographies, but side by side—sometimes only a traffic signal apart. Hunger in India is not just about starvation; it is about malnutrition, stunted growth, and wasted potential. The Global Hunger Index repeatedly places India in a troubling position, far behind countries with lesser resources. According to government surveys, millions of children under five suffer from stunting and wasting due to poor nutrition. Meanwhile, urban supermarkets discard tonnes of food every day—food that could have fed the empty stomachs only a few kilometres away. This wastage is not merely economic inefficiency; it is a moral tragedy. Ironically, the people who grow our food are often the hungriest. Farmers across states are trapped in cycles of debt, low procurement prices, and unpredictable climate shocks. While consumers in malls debate between imported apples and organic avocados, the farmer who harvested the wheat for their pizza base might be contemplating suicide over an unpaid loan. Agriculture, once the pride of the nation, is now treated as a backward occupation. Government policies often prioritise export earnings and urban infrastructure over ensuring farmers get fair returns. This widening gap between those who feed the country and those who feed on its prosperity is one of India’s gravest injustices. The chasm between intent and reality is what deepens the tragedy. Despite the noble intent and massive financial outlay behind India’s social safety nets, the benefits meant to uplift the “empty stomachs” are often waylaid before reaching them. Leakages, corruption, and bureaucratic inefficiency turn schemes into hollow promises. The Public Distribution System, hailed as a lifeline for the poor, still excludes millions due to errors in ration cards and Aadhar-linked verification. Fertiliser subsidies fail to reach small farmers in time, and crop insurance schemes often compensate banks and insurers more generously than cultivators themselves. Poverty may appear to vanish on paper, but in villages and slums across the country, its shadow remains heavy and unrelenting. Inequality is not just about numbers—it shapes dignity, hope, and belonging. A young boy selling balloons outside a mall may watch children his age playing inside a gaming zone, but he knows that glass doors are not meant to open for him. A domestic worker may polish the marble floors of luxury apartments but return to a leaking tin-roof hut every night. This daily humiliation builds resentment. It creates two psychological Indias—one that believes the country is on the path to greatness, and another that quietly feels betrayed by the promises of independence and democracy. Bridging this gap is not impossible, but it requires political will and social empathy. Strengthening nutrition programs, expanding mid-day meals, investing in farmer-centric policies, redistributing surplus food, ensuring fair taxation, and providing education to disadvantaged children are steps that can transform the story. The malls and the slums, the cafes and the ration shops, the sports cars and the bullock carts—these are not just contrasts, they are conversations India must have with itself. Prosperity is meaningless if it shines only in pockets while darkness deepens elsewhere. The true measure of India’s progress will not be the size of its shopping malls, but whether every child goes to bed with a full stomach. Until then, the story of the world’s largest democracy will remain incomplete—half written in neon, half in hunger.
