Subroto Bagchi on India Empowered Series

The latest person to adorn the India Empowered Series is Subroto Bagchi:

Finally, in my empowered India, people will be valued not just for mental work but for physical work they do. People who perform physical work, will be paid respectable wages that make basic comforts in life as accessible to them as they are to you and I. One day, I got down at the Orly airport in France and was picked up by a cab driver. The man was as well dressed as any one else. We got chatting on the way as he was driving me to a hotel near Versailles where I had a conference to attend. Next to my hotel, stood an even more beautiful hotel and pointing it out to me, the man said, that is where his wedding took place. I was simply amazed.

When will it be in India that a taxi driver in Mumbai or New Delhi can dress up half as well as you and I? When can he take his family to enjoy the same holiday destination that you and I go to? When will it be that the maid who comes to clean the house can dress up half as well as you and I without being suspected of thievery?

To me, India will be emancipated and empowered when the man scavenging on the municipal truck will work in sanitary conditions comparable with any developed country and is paid half as well as an entry-level software engineer. In an empowered India, women will not have to lower their eyes when they walk past a stranger, lest they be presumed to be available for solicitation. In that India, we will not underpay people who work with their hands and make a living with their skills. Till such time that we do not recognize the importance of these things, we will not be an empowered nation.