India’s economy and society are marked by a deep and extensive dualism. There are examples galore — backward agriculture versus global firms; rural versus urban world views; dehumanising slums cheek by jowl with swanky highrises; wretched urban squalor five miles away from the New Delhi Municipal Corporation’s carefully tended Bungalow Zone in Lutyens’ Delhi; the bullock cart versus plush air travel; and vast areas of darkness just outside major cities.
Add to that moneylending in rural areas and for informal trade, finance at three per cent per month or 40 per cent per annum versus. . .
