India's buzzing urban centres, which have been drawing millions of economic immigrants for decades, look distressing and demoralising, with streets perpetually jam-packed, desperate beggars everywhere and signs of extreme inequality right in your face.
The naked eye's perspective of urban India is a picture of shocking extremes and contrasting fortunes; newly built high-rise modern apartments stand a few blocks away from homeless people living under bridges.
Top-of-the-range SUVs and the latest German sedans jostle for space with hundreds of compact tricycles, motorbikes and bicycles on three-lane highways that are converted into six lanes in cities such as the capital New Delhi and the economic hub, Mumbai.
Highways in India are not off-limits to any mode of transport, including tractors pulling trailers with tons of bricks. Pedestrians and beggars hustle as traffic trickles through.
A taxi driver who took me from Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi to the hotel nearby summed up the behaviour of Delhi motorists when he said the lanes on the roads “are visible but nobody cares about them”.
“If your car, motorbike or bicycle can fit in a space to be able to get in front on the road, we all want to get to the front,” the taxi driver said.
Law enforcement seems non-existent in many parts of urban India, with sideswipes forever waiting to happen as vehicles fight for space on the city's roads. However for an ordinary Indian motorist this daily struggle is a way of life.
Despite the chaos which overwhelms any outsider, India has been swimming against the tide. As global economies slow down, with some, including Germany, recently going into recession, the massive south Asian nation has been seeing economic growth.
Law enforcement seems non-existent in many parts of urban India, with sideswipes forever waiting to happen as vehicles fight for space on the city's roads
According to the World Bank, growth in India over the past two decades has led to remarkable progress in reducing extreme poverty. However to my eye, extreme poverty remains rife in areas like Mumbai and New Delhi.
Unlike Johannesburg, where you can land at OR Tambo International Airport and drive to the Union Buildings without seeing any hint of poverty, India doesn't offer such a misleading picture.
In Gauteng, a visitor to Sandton or Pretoria East may depart with a very skewed view of our country, which is considered the world's most unequal society.
In India, poverty or extreme inequality springs up on you as you leave the airport building.
Those in abject poverty live next door to the super wealthy, mainly in Mumbai, the country's financial centre and one of its biggest cities.
Despite these disparities, the World Bank says that between 2011 and 2019 India is estimated to have halved the share of the population living in extreme poverty — below $2.15 (about R40) per person per day.
With the Covid pandemic slowing the pace of poverty reduction, India’s GDP still managed to recover to expand at an estimated 6.9% in 2022/2023, according to the World Bank.
Employment indicators have improved since 2020 but concerns remain about the quality of jobs created and the real growth in wages, as well as around the low participation of women in the labour force, the World Bank says.
Mumbai's impressive Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport is situated alongside a number of slums, with shacks built with anything from corrugated iron to wooden sheets — or anything you can imagine.
With space a scarce commodity in the city of more than 20-million inhabitants, some of the shacks are built on top of each other, seemingly without any privacy considerations.
Despite their living conditions, including having to queue for water from tankers on a daily basis and relying on public toilets, many are optimistic about their country's future.
Indian flags fly everywhere, including miniature ones inside taxis and larger ones in public spaces, mainly in the middle of traffic circles.
Signs of nationalistic campaigns also abound, such as the “Nation First, Always First” mantra which is displayed in many public places alongside the Indian flag. It was initially a theme for the 75th Independence Day celebrations in 2021 and is still being used to rally Indians behind a common vision.
Mumbai's impressive Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport is situated alongside a number of slums, with shacks built with anything from corrugated iron to wooden sheets — or anything you can imagine.
The World Bank notes, however, that India lags behind in other areas, including feeding children, stating that “child malnutrition has remained high, with 35.5% of children under the age of five years being stunted, with the figure rising to 67% for children in the 6-59 months age group”.
India's external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, recently noted that despite the challenges, the country had made major advances in the last 10 years, including raising around 450-million people out of poverty.
He said they had created what he calls “the new middle class in the making” — a group that is expected to be a key driver of the economy.
“In many ways the last decade has been one of considerable progress. Of course a lot of our challenges are still there, we are very conscious of them, but we look at the glass both half full and half empty continuously so that we balance one with the other,” Jaishankar told a group of visiting G20 journalists in New Delhi.
Next weekend, India will host the 18th G20 summit in New Delhi.
Jaishankar said Indians were proud of what they had achieved, especially inclusive digitisation, and wanted to share their tales of success with the G20 countries.
“We take a lot of satisfaction today in the digital progress of India ... the big changes which have happened in this country are in many ways digitally powered,” Jaishankar said.
He acknowledged that many reforms were still needed.
Jaishankar was open about India's agenda, including growing its manufacturing sector, which many may see as a challenge to China — one of the world's main manufacturing hubs.
“We want India to be a major manufacturer, to be part of the global supply chain. We see a desire for more resilient and reliable supply chains ... international economy today wants more decentralised production centres not limited to one geography.”
He said improvements in infrastructure and the quality of human resources, while making it easier to do business with India, had positioned the country as “potential location for more manufacturing”.
“We are the number five economy in nominal terms. We used to be between 10 and 12 for the last many decades ... so our expectation is that by the end of this decade we would, in nominal terms, be the third largest economy,” Jaishankar said.
Other projects being undertaken include connecting, by road or rail, parts of India which were not directly connected to the mainland
For a country whose population will soon hit 1.4-billion, it must be a challenge to rally the majority behind a common vision. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who's wrapping up his second term in office, has become a central rallying figure for Indians who have bought into his idea that the next 25 years will belong their country.
That message was among the key themes in Modi's Independence Day speech in which he called for “collective responsibility” in India's quest to become a fully developed country.
“When the nation celebrates 100 years of freedom in 2047, at that time the tricolour should be of a developed India in the world. We must not pause even for a moment, nor should we step back. For this, awareness, transparency and impartiality are the necessary strengths,” he said to enthusiastic applause.
Modi, who will stand for re-election next year, wants the Indian presidency of the G20 to reflect the voice of developing economies and the global south.
Modi's administration is pushing for the AU to become a permanent member of the G20 and has invited nine countries to be part of next weekend's summit, including developing nations such as Nigeria, Egypt, Mauritius and Bangladesh.
The Indian government has played a key role in digitisation, with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an initiative by the Reserve Bank of India and the Indian Bank's Association, operating retail payments and settlement systems in the country.
The nonprofit body was founded in 2008 under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act and now has 65 partners including 19 private sector banks in India.
NPCI's Unified Public Interface launched in 2016 now facilitates more than 4.5-billion transactions a month, and is seen as a driver of financial inclusion in India.
It's an initiative India will be presenting to other G20 countries as it feels it can be emulated elsewhere by other central banks.
India is experiencing an infrastructure investment boom which is visible almost everywhere.
Dozens of projects worth trillions of rupees and running concurrently include heavy investment in rail infrastructure. An ambitious bullet train to connect Mumbai and Ahmadabad is expected to begin services in 2026.
According to Indian Railways, they will spend 2.4-trillion rupees (about R542bn) on a number of rail projects this year alone, with other new projects earmarked for the near future.
In Mumbai, a new north-to-south metro rail system is being constructed and is largely seen as a game changer in connecting the previously unconnected parts of the city and in helping to reduce traffic and improve travel times.
Other projects being undertaken include connecting, by road or rail, parts of India which were not directly connected to the mainland.
India's successful lunar exploration mission, Chandrayaan-3, which landed the first rover on the moon’s southern polar region, has been used by Modi's administration to unify the country and highlight how far it has progressed.
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