India a country of 'extreme paradoxes': Tharoor

Terming India a country of 'extreme paradoxes' with 48 'dollar billionaires' on the one hand and 260 million below poverty line people on the other, former top UN official Shashi Tharoor has said a great distance still remains to be covered before the country's emerging status as superpower percolates down to all levels.

While India boasts of its nuclear strength, 600 million people are still living in darkness, 150 million do not have access to health clinics and farmers' suicides make it to the pages of newspapers now and then, Tharoor said at a 'Face To Face' programme organised by Bengal Initiative, a conclave of front-runners in different fields of the state, on Sunday night.

On the cellphone revolution in the country, the former UN Under Secretary General said it signified the emblematic transformation of the lumbering Indian elephant to that of an agile tiger. The number of cellphone users in India, he noted, had reached a staggering 8.3 million.

On this front, the country occupied the number one slot outpacing China, but the villagers have to still fetch water trudging kilometres in the countryside, he said.

Cellphone had worked as a kind of an empowerment tool for the common man, he said but added that while it displayed the enterprising zeal of the country, 'for real empowerment the government will have to undertake some drastic measures.'

The government should de-regulate PSUs and open them for free enterprise and take control of rural healthcare, power, water supply, he said and spoke about the 'poor' infrastructure in vast areas of the country with bullock carts still ferrying people in some rural belts when automobile giants turn up at the national capital.