Ashok, a Delhi-based taxi driver, would be classified as middle class by the statisticians at the Asian Development Bank. But middle class in India means something different from in the West.

Ashok, a Delhi-based taxi driver, would be classified as middle class by the statisticians at the Asian Development Bank. But middle class in India means something different from in the West.

Ashok comes from a small village in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, some 700 km north of the nation's capital. He is thus like two-thirds of Indians who come from the countryside, rather than the city. His parents and brothers are rice farmers. 

One advantage of farm life is that the physical activity is good for the health. Both his father and mother are still in good health at the ages of 65 and 57 respectively. Although India is still a poor country (its GDP per capita is just 3% of the US), its life expectancy is 65 years, not that far behind the 79 years of the super-rich US.

Ashok is married with two young daughters aged 5 and 2 years old. Like most people from rural India, Ashok had an arranged marriage. His parents met with and selected Sawrna to marry Ashok. Although he never met his bride-to-be before their marriage, he did see her from a distance.

Ashok is a Muslim like 176 million other Indians, making them the second biggest religious group in this country of 1.2 billion people. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world, after Indonesia.

Some 13 years ago, Ashok moved down to New Delhi to work as a taxi driver. He obtained his taxi-driver's license, thanks to driving lessons from his uncle who also lives in Delhi. He is now one of a group of taxi drivers who work on the margins of a major Delhi hotel.

Ashok has no family in New Delhi, other than his uncle. He returns home every 2-3 months to see his wife and family. But thanks to today's much cheaper telephone charges, he is able to call his wife and children every day, because he misses them dearly. While he would love to bring them to Delhi, he could never afford to do so. And his wife would find life in the capital without her family much too difficult.

Ashok does not of course own his taxi. He rents it for 600 rupees a day (about $10), and must also pay for gas, maintenance and other costs.

Like lots of poor people, Ashok's daily income is highly variable. Some days, he might earn a just few hundred rupees. Other days, he can earn a few thousand. It all depends on the number of clients -- there are always much less in the hot and humid summer months of May/June. It also depends on their generosity -- some give tips, others don't.

Ashok might average around 1200 rupees a day after expenses, about $20. This would put him squarely in India's emerging middle class, according to statisticians at the Asian Development Bank.

But Ashok must send as much money as he can back home to support his wife, daughters and family. He is sending his elder daughter to a private school (his younger daughter will start next year), because government-run schools are so bad in India. His dream is for his daughters to get a better education than he did.

In a country where half the population is functionally illiterate, Ashok is clearly in the top half, having completed 10th grade (16 years old) at a state school. This is clearly motivating his aspirations for his daughters. This has also driven his decision to not have any more children -- if he had more children, he could not offer his children the same education and opportunity in life.

Ashok's life might seem tough. He works out of a taxi car park, as one of 30 taxis registered with the hotel. When a taxi-driver is available for work, he writes his number on a board, and stands in a queue, waiting for the hotel to call that a customer requires a taxi. The wait can be minutes or hours depending on the time of day, the season or just plain chance.

But the taxi car park is a real community. Taxi drivers sleep in the car park on open beds. They each pay the police 2000 rupees a month, to avoid being arrested. When it rains, they hang a tarpaulin over their bed, hooked to the hotel wall. They do their washing in the street, and also hang it to the hotel wall. 

But above all, the taxi drivers hang out together. They eat together, and drink tea or sometimes beer, even though Ashok is a Muslim. They watch cricket together on a television. In the carpark, they have small hindu and sikh shrines, necessary spiritual supports for the dangerous profession of taxi driving. They even have a post box in the car park! 

In short, Ashok's life has many pleasures -- especially since most customers are nice, and appreciate his work. But sometimes the hotel guards get impatient and tough with taxi drivers like Ashok, especially when VIPs are passing through.

All things considered, the greatest pleasure for Ashok is saving money, and sending it to his family. However, despite the money that Ashok can make driving a taxi in Delhi, his dream is to return home to his family and village. He would like to save up enough money to buy a business or farm.

Ashok's life is emblematic of the slow and steady progress that India is making. He has escaped the life of rural poverty that has been the lot of his family for millennia. Even today, some two-thirds India's population live on less than $2 a day. Hopefully, Ashok's daughters will enjoy a better life than he does.

When speaking with Ashok about life in India, one of the striking things is the country's democracy. No-one is frightened of expressing their opinion -- and everyone seems to have opinions. Indeed, even poor Indians seem proud of their democracy, especially compared with the situation in China. Those who compare India's economic performance with China might make a more relevant comparison with the military regime of Pakistan, which is way behind India on every score.

Ashok's opinions on politics are clear: "India is much too corrupt, sir. If you are a rich man, you do whatever you want. All the political parties are very rich. But the Bharatiya Janata Party is less corrupt than the Indian National Congress".

Most political observers would agree with Ashok. The upcoming national elections will likely bring a welcome change of government from the present Congress administration. And a star from India's highly decentralized political system, Gujarat's Narendra Damodardas Modi, will likely be the next Prime Minister.

Dynastic politics in the form of Congress's Rahul Gandhi will not win -- in sharp contrast to the dynastic democracies of Japan and Korea, and the dynastic dictatorship of China. India may be a chaotic democracy, but it is a real democracy!

L'école de Rajesh Sharma n'a pas de bureau ni de chaise. Le « toit » est un pont de métro 10 mètres au-dessus. Les tableaux noirs sont des rectangles noirs peints sur le mur de la station adjacente. Malgré son caractère improvisé, l'école donne espoir aux enfants pauvres dans le quartier.

M. Sharma, 41 ans, qui dirige une épicerie en face de la station de métro de Yamuna Vihar, a créé cette école il y a trois ans pour offrir un enseignement gratuit aux enfants des ouvriers et des fermiers.

Étant pauvres et analphabètes pour la plupart, les familles de ces enfants, soit ne voient habituellement aucune nécessité à éduquer leurs enfants, soit sont inquiets des coûts impliqués, car s'ils envoient leurs enfants à l'école, ils ne peuvent plus soutenir leur famille.

Mr Sharma lui-même a abandonné le collège dans sa troisième année en raison des difficultés financières de sa famille. L'idée d'ouvrir une école lui est venue lors d'une promenade matinale le long de la rivière Yamuna alors qu' il voit des enfants occupés à désherber et à couper des fleurs. 

"Je leur ai demandé quelle à école ils allaient et ils m'ont regardé sans aucune réponse. Je n'avais jamais pensé avant cela que tous les enfants ne pouvaient pas aller à l'école.» dit Mr. Sharma.

Aini Mr Sharma et son ami, Laxmi Chandra, un enseignant à la retraite, donnent des cours sous le pont du métro pendant deux heures tous les matins de la semaine. Les étudiants, qui sont maintenant plus de 70, s'asseyent sur des tapis de mousse et récitent leurs cours alors que les trains roulent quelques mètres au dessus de leur tête. Tandis que les plus jeunes apprennent l'alphabet anglais, ceux entre 10 et 16 ans étudient les mathématiques, les tables de multiplication, la géométrie, enseignés par Mr Chandra.

Au début, Mr Sharma supportait le coût entier des fournitures: des manuels, des crayons et des cahiers d'exercices.

Au fil du temps, ceux qui ont entendu parler de l'école ont commencé à baisser fortement les prix des fournitures, parfois anonymement.

"Un homme est venu une fois avec 60 cartables. Il n'a pas donné son nom. Il a dit que cela n'était pas important, aussi longtemps que les enfants aurait une éducation décente! »

Mr Sharma a commencé cette école, dans le but d'offrir aux enfants issus de familles pauvres, une éducation de base.

Toutefois, après que le gouvernement a mis en oeuvre la Loi sur l'éducation l'année dernière, qui garantit une scolarité gratuite pour les enfants âgés de 6 à 14 ans, Mr Sharma a décidé de se concentrer sur la préparation des enfants pour l'admission à l'école en les aidant à travailler sur le programme d'études.

Toutefois les difficultés dans la cause ne s'arrêtent pas là. Les enfants d'agriculteurs et d'ouvriers hésitent à s'inscrire, influencés principalement par les préjugés de leurs parents, dont la plupart sont analphabètes.

Mr Sharma doit se battre sans cesse pour obtenir que les parents envoient leurs enfants à ses cours ne serait-ce que quelques heures chaque jour.

"Ils disent: « mon fils est trop vieux maintenant pour rattraper le reste du groupe. Laissez le travailler avec nous" 

"Les excuses pour les filles sont encore pires. La plupart du temps ils ne peuvent pas même se résoudre à croire qu'elles méritent une éducation. Généalement ils ne demandent qu'à la marier. » 

 

Rajesh Sharma's school has no desks or chairs. The "roof" is a metro railway bridge 10 meters overhead. The blackboards are black rectangles painted on the wall of the adjacent station. Despite its makeshift nature, the school offers hope to poor children in the neighborhood.

Mr Sharma, 41, who runs a grocery across the street from the Yamuna Vihar metro station, started the school three years ago to offer free education to the children of the local laborers and farmers.

Being poor and mostly illiterate, the families of these children usually either see no need for them to be educated, or worry about the costs involved, particularly when sending them to school means they cannot help to support the family.

Mr Sharma himself dropped out of college in his third year because of his family's financial difficulties. The idea to open a school came to him on a morning walk along the Yamuna river when he saw some children weeding and picking flowers.

"I asked them which school they go to and they looked at me at with no answer. It had not occurred to me before that not every child has access to a school." Mr Sharma says.

So Mr Sharma and his friend, Laxmi Chandra, a retired teacher, teach classes under the metro bridge for two hours every weekday morning. The students, who now number more than 70, sit on foam mats and recite after their teachers as trains rumble overhead and traffic rolls past a few meters away. While the younger children learn the English alphabet, those between 10 and 16 study mathematics, from multiplication tables to geometry, taught by Mr Chandra.

Mr Sharma initially bore the entire cost of providing the children with textbooks, pencils and exercise books.

Over time, people who heard about the school began dropping off supplies, sometimes anonymously.

"One man came with 60 school bags once. He would not tell me his name or what he did. He said none of that mattered as long as the children got a decent education."

Mr Sharma started the school with the aim of providing children from poor families with a basic education.

However, after the government enforced the 2009 Right to Education Act last year, which guarantees free schooling for children between the ages of 6 and 14, Mr Sharma decided to focus on preparing the children for admission to school and helping them to cope with the curriculum.

However the difficulties in the cause don't end there. The children of farmers and laborers are reluctant to enroll, influenced mainly by the prejudice of their parents, most of whom are illiterate.

Mr Sharma has to battle constantly to get parents to send their children to his classes for just a couple of hours each day.

"They say, 'My son is too old now to catch up with the rest of his age group and study. Let us put him to work'," he said.

"The excuses for the daughters are even worse. Most of the time they cannot even bring themselves to believe that she deserves an education. Other times they are just waiting to marry her off."