2025-10-15
6 分钟The Economist Hello, Rosie Bloor here, co-host of The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs podcast.
You're about to hear an article from the latest edition of The Economist, read aloud.
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It is not just naive tourists who ask the question.
It is common, too, among highly educated Indians who live in nice homes and employ maids, cooks and drivers.
It goes something like this.
How, in a country so transparently unequal, does social peace largely prevail?
Why are India's cities, where the gulf between rich and poor is most readily visible, not more like Rio de Janeiro or Johannesburg?
Manu Joseph, a contrarian newspaper columnist, attempts some answers in a new book, Why the Poor Don't Kill Us.
It is the talk of living rooms across the country.
Mr. Joseph offers several reasons.
The very ugliness of India's cities protects the rich, he says, because it reassures the poor that they have not been left behind.
Police brutality, dismal prisons, and extrajudicial killings cower the poor into behaving.
Politicians distribute goodies to keep the poor quiet.
A belief in education and English language skills provides hope of betterment.
Even flashy displays of wealth play a part by showing the poor what they can aspire to, and besides, the miserable are not as miserable as we think.
As Mr. Joseph expands on these theories, he is consistently entertaining, occasionally insightful, and frequently incoherent.
If the book is a hit among India's chattering classes, that is because it reassures them that their worst sin is merely to have good intentions.
Start with the premise that the poor do not rise up against India's rich.
This may come as a surprise to the naxalite movement, the world's longest-running Maoist insurgency.