The Two-India Theory

I did my undergraduation in what can be called a rural area in nothern Andhra Pradesh(Srikakulam dt). It was during those years that for the first time I saw villages without electricity and villages in conditions that resembled iron-age times. I have no idea how the people of those villages subsist; I saw some agriculture, but I did not see much water and absolutely no irrigation. There were some small industries but surely not enough to employ a substantial number of the population. Very few schools and those only in the slightly bigger areas that can be called towns. None lived in any reasonably good housing; the nearest hospital was miles away and whether they could afford any medical care is very doubtful. What would the day to day reality of the people who lived in these villages be like?

My friends, myself and everybody else who were doing their undergraduation there lived in close proximity to the above mentioned places. We spoke of examinations, about the new novelity then-the internet and email, about how the food tasted, of foreign education, about events happening in the world and in our country, of nuclear weapons and satellite launches and of personal goals and ambitions. That was our reality.

I used to spend a lot of time in the library reading every newspaper and news magazine. Only in my third and final year did I begin to realize that the media dealt with my kind of reality. And that reality was only a part, actually only a small part of the true reality out there! There was very little or no coverage of the reality faced by the villages mentioned above! There still is very little or no coverage of such issues .

This is what I would like to call the two- India theory. The India Part 1, to which I and all the people I know belong; and part 2 to which all the people living and subsisting in the above mentioned villages belong. Same country, but very starkly different realities!