The New York Times ran an article on India’s fashion week – more is more, with a dollop of too much. As the title indicates, the author didn’t think too highly of the likes of Suneet Vernma and Ritu Kumar – page 3 icons of the Times of India. “Chances are slim, after all, that Ms. Allen's Worth Avenue clientele would be drawn to the patchwork, beaded, embroidered, hand-blocked and vegetable-dyed clothes Payal Jain imagined for a show she called "The Wandering Mendicant."

Now clearly, this sounds supercilious – like a rich aunt turning up her nose at her less well heeled country bumpkin niece. But frankly, when I read this I couldn’t help but laugh. Because Indian fashion is in fact quite pathetic. But for me, it is also the ultimate symbol of the decadence and complete callousness of the rich in India.

Hideous malls are coming up everywhere luring the great Indian middle class with brand names and designer labels – and in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai and Pune - mummy, papa, chintu and pinky are hopping into their Opel Astras by the droves and spending their Saturday evenings trying to get a hold of the latest Gucci bags and Louis Vuitton sandals. Meanwhile, there are kids on the traffic light intersection – unclothed, unkempt, with bloated bellies and bleak eyes. They watch through the darkened windows of the cars, as Chintu plays with his gameboy and Pinky flashes her new vuitton bag. We live in two Indias – those who are inside their comfortable air-conditioned cars and those who can just watch helplessly from the outside.

So Mr Friedman, the world is not flat. Yes, more Indians and Chinese are plugging and playing on this global playing field. And as an Indian, I cannot help but take pride in India’s IT success – the Narayannurthy’s and Azim Premji’s are worthy of credit, but as an Indian I also cannot help but feel that I am living in a bubble. A bubble where we watch Karan Johar films with Anjali and Rahul in Archie land, a bubble where we believe that India is shining with its call centers and software engineers, a bubble where we splurge in malls and multiplexes, a bubble where we chose to ignore the fact that we live in a country that is home to the greatest number of the world’s poor.

I am an unashamed advocate of economic liberalization and globalization. Over the last decade, India’s GDP has grown substantially and its middle class has enjoyed the fruits of this economic success. Fifteen years ago my parents couldn’t have thought of taking a vacation in the US. So there is nothing wrong about free markets or free trade. As Amartya Sen says – freedom – be it social, political or economic is the key to development. But with freedom comes responsibility, comes purpose. Last week I went to a synagogue (for the first time), and there this lady was talking about Passover and how Moses’s sermon at Sinai is often quoted out of context. He didn’t just say, “let my people go,” he said, “ let my people go so that they may serve me.”

So don't we have a responsibility to use our freedom wisely, to use it to look out for the other India. To believe in unadulterated idealism is naïve, and I myself am not likely to hang around in slums and villages. But the least we could do is roll down those tinted windows and look at those children waiting at the traffic intersections in the eye. For us, the poor are often invisible – they are the nameless faceless people who clean our houses, pester us for money outside temples and traffic intersections, and die in caste violence in remote villages in Bihar. So the least we can do is look the child in the eye - for seeing is believing.

In a country where more than 400 million people do not have enough to eat, to say its chic to look poor is cruel. And too much is too much.