Did you know that India’s GDP numbers occur in a parallel universe? It was news to me too. But hey, if it’s on national TV and Nidhi Razdan asks the viewer – “while we obsess over GDP numbers, what about the real India where children die after eating midday meals? Can India really claim to be an emerging superpower?” (Left, Right and Center, NDTV 24X7, July 19 2013) – what else am I supposed to infer?

It’s not that I’m nit-picking. It’s that this “real India”/”aam aadmi” narrative is both hopelessly naïve and callously patronising at the same time. The funny bit is, when I tried actively searching for examples for this piece of how this narrative has been built, I couldn’t find any. Google Baba, as Ravish Kumar calls it, for once, didn’t help. There’s isn’t an article or a website or a film which tells you that the “Real India” is only the poor India. Yet, when an anchor juxtaposes an economic concern like GDP with the phrase “the real India”, you know what s/he is talking about even before the sentence is over. Somehow, we’ve been convinced, almost as though through subliminal messaging, that those of us privileged enough to have a roof over our heads and enough food to keep us from starving are not a part of “real India”.

Let’s be clear about one thing – the state of those below the poverty line is not more or less “real” than that of say, the so called middle class. It is graver. To artificially pit one economic group against the other is to do a grave disservice to the disadvantaged group. It is this very narrative that pits social progress against economic indicators and is used to make emotional arguments in favour of flawed socio-economic policies like the Food Security Bill (FSB). As an editorial in the Business Standard rightly puts it, the debate is not whether the starving in India are entitled to food, it’s about whether the FSB is the best and most fiscally prudent to do so.

So, for instance, when Amartya Sen says “what I don’t like is that when people talk about fiscal responsibility, they do it while sitting in their AC rooms, powered by subsidised electricity, eating food cooked by subsidised gas and travelling in subsidised diesel cars.” or Sanjay Jha tweets this, it’s patronising.

It’s patronising because the subtext of what they seem to be saying is this: what do you ignoramuses know about complex things like government budgeting? Do you have an Economics degree or something? Don’t bother your little brains with things you don’t understand when you yourself survive only because of the government’s benevolence. Have you ever even been to the “real” India? No, right? So shut up and don’t meddle.

Proponents of the bill who resort to arguments such as these would do well to read this op-ed in The Hindu, which argues in favour of the FSB by using facts instead of sneering barbs to support its assertions. You may still not agree with it, but at least one can respect the contrarian view for being grounded in logic instead of rhetoric (To be fair to Dr Sen though, he did say in the interview that the FSB is needed in the absence of alternatives).

There are two major reasons why this “real India” narrative is dangerous and distinctly undemocratic. First, it assumes that those who already avail of subsidies and don’t lead absolutely wretched lives have enough, don’t face financial trouble, are privileged and shouldn’t complain. Anand Ranganathan has written a brilliant piece explaining why this isn’t so. The fact of the matter is that every tax-paying Indian has the right to question this and any other Bill under consideration.

In this debate on the social media, Vir Sanghvi makes the questionable assertion that people with access to a computer are not ordinary people. It is not just business people who are the elite but anyone who is on Twitter. The “real”aam aadmi is the poor man killing himself because he can’t repay loans or the person whose daughter is being raped by the sarpanch next door. That people like Arvind Kejriwal shouldn’t count themselves among ordinary citizens because they are educated. Sorry, but a decent education and an internet connection are rights, not privileges. And here lies the crux of the problem – narrative shapers, or those with access to TV air time and column space, have time and again tried to portray rights as privileges which we should be thankful to the establishment for and somehow be embarrassed about. Inadvertently, it has led to the crowding out of the educated voice that still has to bear the brunt of government policies.

Elites are those people who don’t have to worry about a retirement fund, can traipse into the offices of politicians and influence policy and who can afford to send their children to a college abroad without having to worry about its cost if they don’t make the impossibly high cut-offs in “good” Indian colleges. “Middle India” consists of those who can get a top-notch education only after having slogged it through college and passing exams tougher than the Triwizard Tournament. These are those of us who need to think of savings and student loan repayments from the day we start working. The disadvantaged are those who haven’t got the bare minimum due to them in terms of food, shelter and clothing by either the government or by society. It is important to recognise all of these realities, read on to know why.

Second and more importantly, it encourages the notion that certain government policies affect only certain sections of society. Falling GDP growth rates, inefficient allocation of coal mines or spectrum, the huge current account deficit and yes, the FSB affect all citizens. They may not affect all Indians uniformly or symmetrically, but to imagine that all of our economic fates are not intertwined is stupid. Of course, the unfair allocation of a telecom license at a low rate would first and foremost adversely impact an honest telecom provider, but it also indirectly affects every citizen because it means lesser money for public services like roads and bridges. Similarly,when Aruna Roy beseechingly asks– “growth for whom?”,the answer is – growth for everybody, ma’am. A GDP jump of 9% may mean hard cash in the bank for the owner of a small manufacturing unit in a small town whose loan can now be sanctioned because banks are willing to lend, but it also means employment for the greater number of people he now needs to employ.

This brings me to the point of why it’s important to recognise these realities in the context of the fact that all our fates are economically enmeshed. “Middle India”, to some extent, suffers from the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) syndrome. It believes that it is the government’s problem to uplift the disadvantaged – which suits the government just fine because it is a tacit sanction of the dole culture which directly translates into votes. Here’s what – the poor in India and those without education don’t need handouts. They need sustainable employment, and not just for a 100 days a year. They need opportunities, not charity. We’ve not realised that “inclusive growth” is not a project to be outsourced to the government every 5 years.It is possible to contribute to national socio-economic inclusion in a manner that grants dignity, respect and possibly material gain to the giver and the taker. The good news is that this realisation has already come about to an extent. People have plunged into social entrepreneurship full time by starting offbeat organisations such as Milaap, a crowdsourced venture which helps connect disadvantaged loan seekers to loan givers or Impact Investment Exchange Asia, a social stock exchange which helps social enterprises raise capital. Alternatively, Teach for India and Social Involvement Programme in colleges like the one at St Xavier’s College Mumbai, my alma mater, wherein any student who wants to graduate with Honours has to put in a certain number of hours of social work have been good short-term outlets for those of us who cannot commit fully to a career in the social sector. The bottomline is that there are degrees of involvement available and if we continue to wait for the government to help equitably distribute growth, the wait is going to be a long one.

Ultimately, the “poor India is the real India” narrative is wrong and deceitful because it robs a sizeable chunk of the population of a voice while simultaneously allowing it to wash its hands off its responsibilities. We are not going to grow in silos and why should we? It is those who do not recognise this who are the ones living in the unreal times.

The views expressed are personal