Don't look back in hunger.

There is more money spent each year in the USA on domestic garden products than is collected in tax every year by the Indian government, where the population is over a billion!

Staggering isn't it? I have to stop from time to time and remind myself just how desperately poor the majority of this country is. You can find yourself becoming so desensitised to the poverty surrounding you everyday, living in the relative wealth that we enjoy. No more than 500 yards from our home is a flyover where several families - including babies - eat, drink, wash and sleep. They fetch their water from a well on the other side of the road using a bucket on a rope. When you stop and consider it, it is so disturbing to think that people live like that in a civilised world, so close to one of the most upmarket parts of the city.

I had a moment last week were a beggar - a girl younger than 10 - came up to me at the traffic lights and rather than pester me for "one chapati sir" looked in and walked right past. She recognised me and realised that she had tried umpteen times before with no joy so wasn't going to waste her time again. It was only when she ignored me for the first time that I could actually comprehend the absurdity of the situation. What is more unusual, an 8 or 9 year old girl walking past you in the street and not asking for money or a shoeless unwashed 8 or 9 year old girl begging for money in 40 deg heat? The fact that I thought it was the former disgusted me. I felt Completely ashamed, guilty, and horrified that I had let myself think of this girl begging as normality and not something that the whole country should be ashamed of.

The problem is that the gap between the 'haves' and 'have nots' here is absolutely massive and unlikely to change anytime soon. The 'haves'- the category we fall into -have the means to live an extraordinarily privileged lifestyle.They say that money can't buy you love, but here money can buy you time. Time to spend doing what you want to do with the people you love the most thanks to the drivers, nannies,cleaners, gardeners and cooks in your employ which are all par for the course. It seems so gauche sometimes to have all this staff but the guilt is balanced out by the fact that you are at least employing people and helping them to make a better life for themselves.The average wage is less than 1000 pounds pa and someone would be considered to be 'doing well' if they earned 4 -5 thousand pa!

Our housekeeper, Indu gets about 100 pounds a month which is a decent wage by Indian standards - and incidentally manages to put her son through university in Australia - but do we have a responsibility to pay her more? We are told not to by the Indian locals we know but I can't help but feel the status quo suits them. There has never really been much encouragement for the lower caste's to better themselves and the higher caste's would like to keep it that way but change has to come in this country from the bottom to the top and everyone needs to do their bit. We did ours this weekend by giving the housekeeper more money. It may not make a difference in the great scheme of things but it will do to Indu and at least we are trying. Lets hope the Indian government starts doing theirs sooner rather than later.