Suburbia and All That
GURGAON, INDIA-To drive into this burgeoning New Delhi suburb, it seems, is to leave behind the developing world and enter a vibrant, if narrow, slice of the developed world. In a land still plagued by deep poverty and backwardness, Gurgaon has become a renowned home of international call centers, business-processing operations, and information-technology firms. There are gleaming, glass-paned high-tech towers, condominium blocks, multiplexes, and shopping malls, where Indians dine at Ruby Tuesday, browse for Samsung electronics, or kick the tires at a Toyota, Ford, or Chevy dealer. If one overlooks the dusty pockets of poverty nearby, a few water buffaloes picking at garbage near shantytowns, the look is more Southern California office park than the India of yore.
Gurgaon and places like it are experiencing a building boom fueled by the rupees of the new Indian middle class. Gated communities equipped with gyms, pools, and squash courts sport names like Beverly Park and Hamilton Court. The goal of one new development called Aura Nx: "redefining the standards of residential opulence."
And while the new prosperity brings some strains to families, life has gotten a lot better for the new residents of Gurgaon and other emblems of the new India. Sanjeev Singh, 39, a rising executive with a firm called Genpact (which opened India's first call center), lives the Gurgaon good life: He and his wife, a part-time lawyer, own a four-bedroom condo, have vacationed in Europe and Southeast Asia, and drive a Ford Ikon and Suzuki Maruti. His two kids go to a private school, and the family dines out a couple of times a week-pizza or pasta or maybe Japanese or Chinese food. He exercises at a gym and enjoys that most un-Indian of caffeinated drinks: cappuccino. "There's so much more opportunity to spend and enjoy," he says over dinner in Genpact's cafeteria. "Life has really changed."
Affluence. Down in Bangalore, the good life has also emerged for many of those riding the wave of the city's high-tech industry. Anand Ganapathy Chennira, a marketing specialist for Infosys Technologies, has had his own home built-and stocked it with Samsung and Sony tvs and entertainment gear. It's also where he parks his Toyota Corolla. Chennira, 39, has developed some pretty firm consumer preferences: cologne by Calvin Klein, Polo shirts, a Motorola cellphone, and a Montblanc pen.
Across India, the sudden affluence is changing everything from health to politics. With long working hours and an influx of fast and prepared foods, obesity and type 2 diabetes are becoming endemic in higher-income areas. The World Health Organization warned that India could become the diabetes capital of the world. The battle against expanding midriffs is being waged at a proliferating number of "slimming centers."
Along with waistlines, borrowing to consume-a sharp break with a traditional, cash-only culture-is expanding, too. Though only one in 50 households now has a credit card, the Indian credit card market is growing at around 35 percent a year, likely the fastest in Asia.
As for politics, India's yuppies are starting to upstage the left-leaning intelligentsia-lending crucial support to New Delhi's dramatic shift to a "strategic partnership" with the United States. Says Radha Kumar, a leading foreign policy analyst at the Islamic National University in New Delhi, "The new middle class is almost entirely pro-U.S. They were created by globalization and the it revolution."
This story appears in the May 1, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
advertisement
