India remains one of the most unequal countries worldwide when it comes to economic and gender inequalities. We met two families to illustrate this gap.
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00:00Early morning in Varanasi in the north of India,
00:04Kismati Devi prepares tea still using firewood.
00:08She used to live in a mud house with her seven children and husband.
00:12Now they have a better house funded by the government.
00:15They're still poor, but nevertheless,
00:17her living conditions have improved a lot over the last 20 years.
00:25Things have changed now.
00:27Since my daughter's birth,
00:28we can even feed the cattle scraps of the bread we bake.
00:31We didn't even have basic amenities,
00:34so when it was hot, we used hand fans,
00:37and we weren't able to sleep because of the heat.
00:39Now we have electricity in the house,
00:42we have an electric fan, and we have light.
00:51Brush hour in Delhi, and in the barber business.
00:54Just the ones who can afford it come to him.
00:57Jawed Habib is a shooting star.
01:00He owns his own nationwide brand with more than 900 franchises.
01:05His idea has made him a rich man.
01:08The 60-year-old businessman first started working in his father's hair salon.
01:19I studied French because I never wanted to take over my father's business.
01:24I wanted to do hotel management,
01:26so I went to Jawaharlal Nehru University.
01:30And then I was sent to London to learn the barber business there.
01:34At that time, I was working in McDonald's as a student,
01:38and it was there that I realized
01:40that I wanted to become the McDonald's of hairstyling.
01:44That's why he started his franchise business.
01:47Back to Varanasi,
01:49which is also the constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
01:52Millions of people in India still live like this,
01:55the largest number of poor worldwide is in India.
01:58Experts say the subsidies these people get from the government are not enough.
02:02Indian society is divided.
02:0563 million Indians are pushed into poverty every year
02:09because they can't afford health care costs.
02:12It would take 941 years for a minimum wage worker in rural India
02:17to earn what a top executive at a leading Indian garment company earns in one year.
02:23At the same time, there are 119 billionaires in India.
02:27There were only nine in the year 2000.
02:31From 2018 to 2022,
02:33India was producing 70 new millionaires every single day.
02:38I think there's no doubt that inequality has increased dramatically in the last 20 years.
02:43And that is a function of the kind of economic growth that we've had.
02:47So earlier, we certainly had inequality of many different kinds.
02:51By class, caste, gender, location and so on.
02:54But now we've had an extreme accentuation of these.
02:58And particularly in the last decade,
03:00the incomes and assets of the top 10% of the country,
03:04the top 1% of the country have exploded.
03:08Back to the family in Varanasi.
03:10Mother and daughter are speaking to family members that moved to the city.
03:14Where do you go?
03:16Where do you go?
03:19Education here is key.
03:21It's also why the youngest daughter is so keen to empower the children in the village
03:26so that they'll have a better life later on.
03:28She started teaching the girls thanks to an NGO.
03:32Nevertheless, she continued her own studies and wants to make a difference in her family.
03:37When I wasn't working, my parents used to pressure me about marriage.
03:47But since I joined an NGO and began earning money,
03:52nobody asks me about marriage anymore.
03:55And I'm also not interested in it at the moment.
03:59That's the same in almost all the poor families.
04:02The family members have to contribute to the family income.
04:05In rich families, the parents don't depend on the children.
04:09They send them abroad for their studies.
04:12Like Jawed Habib in Delhi, for instance.
04:15He sent his kids to Europe to study abroad and has a decent life in Delhi.
04:20For the wealthy class in India, this is quite common.
04:24I've got a son. His name is Anosh.
04:27Anosh has learned to cut hair, but now he handles the corporate office in Mumbai.
04:33My wife shuttles between Dubai and India.
04:36When my kids used to study in London, she used to live with them.
04:40Then my daughter settled in Dubai.
04:43And because she is still very close to us, my wife keeps shuttling between India and Mumbai.
04:50But only a few people in India have these opportunities.
04:54And this is how the rich and middle class in India,
04:57which earn 500,000 rupees or even more per year,
05:01grew so fast over the last nine years.
05:04The ones that grew faster than average were the middle and rich classes,
05:08not the poor ones.
05:10And this is how the rich and middle class in India,
05:13which earn 500,000 rupees or even more per year,
05:16grew so fast over the last nine years.
05:19The ones that grew faster than average were the middle and rich classes,
05:23not the poor ones.
05:26So if you have growth and you pay no attention to redistribution,
05:31especially in a country like India,
05:34where we are also dealing with very serious social inequalities,
05:38so you have to do something so that they are all,
05:42Jawed knows about the inequality in society.
05:45He's teaching people on the margins, like this blind man.
05:50He runs seven academies and trains around 10,000 barbers per year.
05:56His mission?
05:58He wants to give something back to the country that made him a rich man.
06:05India was considered a poor country.
06:08Education has changed me a lot.
06:11Science taught me that in India, doctors and engineers are needed.
06:15However, even in this India, a barber could also become a successful brand.
06:21But what would the foundation of this success be?
06:24Education. Education and education.
06:30In the village, it's time for the harvest.
06:32The main problem?
06:34The family belongs to a lower caste,
06:36and that means they don't own their own land.
06:39That always leaves them dependent on others to grow grain for food,
06:43a big reason for the inequality.
06:46My daughter works outside and helps me with weeding, planting and harvesting.
06:51My husband, my son, everyone pitches in.
06:54My son works in the city, but he still helps us.
06:57By doing this, we produce grain for ourselves and also earn a little money.
07:02That's how we survive.
07:05So we've had wage suppression,
07:07and in fact, reliance on the unpaid labor of women and the lower castes and so on.
07:12But also we've had the exploitation of, let's say, those who don't have political voice.
07:17So, for example, the traditional dwellers,
07:20they are the Vasis whose lands have been appropriated for mining, for other kinds of things.
07:26At least some things in the village have changed for the better.
07:30The government provided gas cylinders for more than 100 million families.
07:34The problem is they can't always use them due to the infrastructure
07:38and the high cost of refilling the cylinders,
07:41so they often end up using firewood.
07:44Overcoming inequality will be one of the biggest challenges for the government
07:49and might even slow down economic growth.