NEW DELHI — On Saturday night, when India lifted the Cricket World Cup for the first time in 28 years, the nation was filled with rare collective joy and a deceptive sense of wellbeing. Firecrackers exploded in the air. People from all classes celebrated late into the night. Sonia Gandhi, president of the Indian National Congress party and the country’s most powerful person — and probably the only woman of Italian origin who comprehends cricket — was seen in her car showing a thumbs-up sign to the delirious crowds on Delhi’s streets.

It might have appeared on Saturday that there is much that connects the different rungs of the Indian society and that cricket is the proof. But the truth is that cricket is the only manmade phenomenon that connects the nation’s upper classes with its vast masses. There is absolutely nothing else. In fact, daily life in India is a fierce contest between the affluent and the educated on the one side, and the brooding impoverished on the other.

The pursuit of India’s elite is to protect themselves from India — from its crowds, dust, heat, poverty, politics, governance and everything else that is in plain sight. To achieve this, they embed themselves in their private islands that the forces and the odors of the republic cannot easily penetrate.

The islands that protect Indians from India are simple and material: A luxurious car with an unspeaking driver who works for 12 hours every day at less than $200 a month, or at least an S.U.V. with strong metal fenders that can absorb routine minor accidents. A house in a beautiful residential community that the Other Indians can enter only as maids and drivers. Membership in an exclusive club. Essentially a life in a bubble where there is no sign of the government except for the treachery of the service tax.