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India: Conflicts Within

India is having its moment. Having shed the bonds of colonialism, years of bitter civil strife and a stagnant economy, the country boasts nine percent growth a year with a capable middle class and world-beating industry whose latest feat is the mass production of a $2,500 car.

But just beneath the veneer of India Shining lies an underclass that lags further behind. More than 80 percent of the population — some 836 million people — live on less than 50 cents a day; farmers are killing themselves by the thousands; water and other critical resources grow scarcer; and the rights of lower-caste and tribal groups are often trampled in favor of big business.

Religious, ethnic and class tensions have always ebbed and surged in the world's largest democracy. Yet traditional pockets of unrest like Kashmir and the Northeast have of late shown signs of improvement. The advance of Leftist extremism, meanwhile, slowly gains traction among those forgotten or pushed aside to sustain what some call an "economic miracle."

Today Maoist insurgents keen to exploit the state's enduring weaknesses stalk the Hindu heartland. They are waging their "people's war" in dirt-poor, under-policed areas where conditions are most fertile, part of a long-term campaign that aims to overrun the country. And the threat they pose, nascent as it may be, is sure to intensify as the inequality gap widens. Jason Motlagh travels around the sub-continent to explore the other India up close.

This reporting project is part of Rising Powers: The New Global Reality, a project sponsored by the Stanley Foundation. It is designed to raise awareness, motivate new thinking, and ultimately improve US foreign policy regarding the global transformation taking place, as a new group of countries exhibit a growing influence over the future of the world.

Visit Georgia and Beyond: Russia's response to separatism and ethnic conflict and A Turkish Dilemma, two other Pulitzer Center/Stanley Foundation Rising Powers reporting project.

Jason Motlagh

Jason Motlagh is a roving freelance multimedia journalist. He has reported from over 30 countries throughout West Africa, the Mideast, Central and South Asia for leading US and international media outlets

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