Unfair. Pakistan foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar’s pricey black Birkin bag got more play than all her other assets — even the Roberto Cavalli shades — during her recent visit to India. Blame it on the makers of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Had Ms Khar not timed her visit to this country so close to the release of this delightful Bollywood film, the texting, tweeting, Facebook-loving populace may not have mistaken her as the original “Bagwati”.

But even then, it is grossly unfair to single out Ms Khar for being into labels when so many of us among the non-Birkin-carrying classes in this country are equally deft at using labels to defend a point we want to make.
Back in the Eighties when I was in college in Kolkata (then called Calcutta), life was simpler — you were either a “capitalist pig”, a “comrade”, or just plain “bourgeois”. Today, a wider repertoire of labels to pigeonhole people is on offer; some of the most popular ones in circulation include neoliberal, jholawallah, NGO-type, Left-libber and sanctimonious activist. In these time-strapped days, the labels are supposed to do the work. Arguments need not be made. As the war between the labels hots up, there is a new game in town — either you rant against “crony capitalism” or against “crony socialism”. Twenty years after India reached out to the global marketplace, the middle ground is shrinking.
And yet, you don’t have to be an economist or a scholar to feel that things are not that simple. Many of us who have lived through the ’70s and the ’80s remember the time when a car meant the Ambassador, the telephone was a chunky black Bakelite instrument and making a long-distance call could turn out to be a day-long project — you booked a call in the morning and waited, and waited and waited. Sometimes the call came through, often it did not.
Today, many of us have more money, more choices, are more demanding and probably more beautiful. One south Delhi market alone has close to 20 top-end beauty salons. Each one is doing well and clients — men and women — stream in from morning to late evening. “Everyone demands to look good. And everybody can,” exclaimed a hairdresser.
Many commentators have pointed out that rickshaw-pullers and housemaids have cellphones in today’s India and no doubt connectivity and exposure to different universes do wondrous things. One unhesitatingly lauds the upward march of so many from different social and economic backgrounds. And yet, amid this plethora of expanding choices, the space for reasoned discourse is contracting and a black-and-white tone substituting the shades of grey that reflect the diversity and complexity of the country.
An idea is no longer good or bad: it is either a “jholawallah idea” or a “neoliberal idea”. Jholawallahs, in the eyes of those with animus towards the cloth satchel, tend to be “Left-liberal”, are likely to congregate with “NGO types”, and be well-disposed towards the “so-called civil society” and support “primarily redistributive, welfarist” schemes like National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the proposed food security law etc. Jholawallahs in turn hit out at “neoliberals” for being unstinting advocates of the brave new world of India today (post 1991) and accuse them of bringing about the agrarian crisis and every other crisis in the country. The middle road, minus the “isms”, does not make for sound bytes and is increasingly not heard.
But middle-of-the-roaders are not necessarily a small number. Across India, a growing number of people are happy to reap the benefits of the opening up of the Indian market, but nevertheless have questions and critiques about the way things are going.
Boomtown Gurgaon, an emerging IT hub, probably exemplifies the concerns of middle-of-the-roaders everywhere. Gurgaon has malls, a theme park, fancy condominiums but as Jim Yardley, Pulitzer-winning reporter working for the New York Times pointed out in the article In India, dynamism wrestles with dysfunction (June 8), “Consider what it does not have: a functioning citywide sewer or drainage system; reliable electricity or water; and public sidewalks, adequate parking, decent roads or any citywide system of public transportation. Garbage is still regularly tossed in empty lots by the side of the road.”
This happens because many among those who aspire to first-world standards in the houses they live in, the cars they drive, the private schools they send their children to, did not raise the bar when it came to public spaces and public goods.
What is happening in Gurgaon is not an isolated instance. It is replicated across urban India in the rise and rise of gated communities where everything is in order within the boundaries and little works outside. The government deserves a rap for the state of affairs, but private contractors who build roads with faulty designs and cut costs on material are equally blameworthy.
Upward-mobile Indians are doing everything the do-it-yourself (DIY) way. Many apartment blocks in Mumbai rely on private water tankers rather than municipal supply, most apartments in power-scarce cities have their own generators, middle-class and upper middle-class families and increasingly even slum dwellers send their children to public schools. India spent billions staging the 2010 Commonwealth Games but news reports suggest that much of the newly built sports infrastructure is already in a state of disrepair and as for sports facilities for ordinary children, forget it. How many can afford the private clubs where one can go swimming on a hot summer day?
Do middle-class Indians want to live this way, or do they want the same public services that are taken for granted in most developed countries — clean roads without potholes, high-quality government hospitals and schools, municipality-run clean swimming pools and sports facilities, a working garbage collecting system…
And then there are the millions who are not having as good a time as some of us think, and who cannot be wished away.
The trouble is, raising any of these questions is not leading to reasoned debate, it is leading to name-calling. Twenty years after India embarked on the path to economic reform, there is a lot to celebrate. There is also a long way to go and questions
about how to get to the goal. These questions cannot be wished away, nor can abuse or colourful adjectives substitute real debate.

Patralekha Chatterjee writes on development issues in India and emerging economies and can be reached patralekha.chatterjee@gmail.com