FOCUS
INDIA @ 63 – OF QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Directive Principles of State Policy had enshrined in the Constitution that, “The state shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of the Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years”. That was 60 years ago, in Jan. 1950, and we are in 2010. It was only in April 2010, that parliament enacted the Right to Education (RTE) as a fundamental right, after over 60 years of declaring its avowed objective of empowering ordinary Indians.
But A. Subramanian, of Save the Children, writes “Terminal 3 in New Delhi (international airport) took just 37 months to go from conception to reality. It took 63 years to enact right to education bill and it is stalled because of lack of funds”. He asks a very relevant question “Have we got our priorities wrong?” Absolutely. It is indeed deeply disturbing that our priorities have always been wonky. We have always barked up the wrong tree.
“India’s democracy has the generosity and flexibility to be able to address the concerns of any area or group in the country. We are building a new India in which every citizen would have a stake, an India which would be prosperous and in which all citizens would be able to live a life of honour and dignity in an environment of peace and goodwill” Dr Manmohan Singh invoked hope on 15th of August while addressing the nation on the 64th independence day celebration from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi.
Right enough, late in the day, in the southern city of Bangalore, ostensibly after eating lunch distributed at a local Beggars’ Rehabilitation Centre (BRC), over 50 took ill. With no medical attention available for the next 2 days, some 12 died, with double that number falling seriously ill with continuous bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea. If this was the news of 18th Aug, 8 more died the following day, informed the media, with Karnataka State Human Rights Commission (KSHRC) claiming that there were 92 deaths at the BRC during the last, only, 19 days. This was the proverbial last straw for the administration to be exposed so completely that the government removed the Minister of Social Welfare D. Sudhakar, who had earlier in the day had reportedly stated that there is ‘nothing abnormal about deaths in Beggars Homes’.
This represents the dichotomy of our developmental paradigm, of reality on the ground and those of rhetorical verbose.
If deaths in the Beggars Home was macabre enough, what followed was even more bizarre. In spite of mass death – 20 in one go – the authorities of the rehabilitation centre permitted cremation without any post-mortem, saying that “Since they died of natural causes there was no need for post mortem.” Both the medical officer of the centre, who came in only on the 3rd day of the mass death, and the Police Commissioner Bidari, reportedly have concurred. Yes of course, there will be nobody who will question their wisdom, because, those who died were all, the faceless, power less and money less. While it may be true that the incident has shaken the collective conscience of the Bangalore civil society, it has also exposed its duplicity of being a mute witness to the on-going criminal neglect of institutions of social welfare. What right do we have, to call ourselves civislised when we cannot protect our weak and infirm? Yet all our Prime Ministers for all its 63 years as a free country have only said MERA BHARATH MAHAN from the elevated platforms of 15th Aug. freedom celebrations.
“To-day India stands among the fastest growing economies of the world. As the world’s largest democracy we have become an example for many other countries to emulate”, Sardar Dr Manmohan Singh reportedly told Indians, speaking after unfurling the tricolour at the historic venue. But what is the ground reality?!?
India is home to the largest number of poor people, India is home to the largest number of malnutritioned children. India is home to the largest number of families without toilets. India is home to a rabidly corrupt bureaucracy and political class. India is home to the fastest growing population, in absolute numbers, even faster than China. And our socio economic planners and managers do not seem to appreciate that population indeed is our greatest problem and challenge, for the redistributive exercise of the nations GDP. The latest United Nations Development Report (UNDP) has the veritable mine of statistics deprecating our shoddy and one sided socio-economic development.
Speaking to the constituent assembly on the midnight of 14/15th August 1947, the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Nehru, had given a clarion call to Indians of all hues “The service of India means, the service of millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty, of ignorance, of disease, of inequality of opportunity.” Down 63 years where are we? is a question of profoundly multiple dimension.
Back in 1997, on completion of half a century, India as a free nation, George Mathews of Institute of Social Sciences wrote “On August 15, 1947, some 347 million Indians set out on a voyage of rediscovery and renewal. It was a movement of a people yearning for a freer and better life. Where have they and their children arrived half a century later?” Yes, what is the meaningful answer to this ringing question through the prism of the ordinary citizen?
“The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us but as long as there are tears and suffering so long our work will not be over”, Nehru’s emotional invocation to Indians had continued on that historic day. Looking back over the last 63 years of our break from the colonial yoke, what kind of canvas that we are looking at?
Yes, country has seen tremendous growth especially since the last 20 years in multiple areas, yet there is a huge yawning gap in different areas. It is an inexorable story of failure of our redistributive justice of all our 10 already completed 5 years development plans.
We need to recognise, despite double digit growth of recent past, the absolute number of poor, below the poverty line, is over 500 million. In 1947 it was 300 million, or almost 85% of the then population, the number now is added by another 200 million. It is true that many of those in the above 85% have seen better days and continued to prosper, but a very good chunk remained poor and addition to the BPL rank continued unabated.
Despite tremendous increase in the physical infrastructure in elementary education, not very far from 50% of population and about 2/3rd of women are illiterate. While mid-day meals have helped in increasing the number of school intake of children, it didn’t sustain beyond primary school, only to be found as child labourer, in some farms, roadside eateries, and some low paying industries in sub-human conditions.
Thousands of health centres were set up by the government. But the proportion of people actually using them is not even 25%. After 10 developmental plans, over 500 million people are without safe drinking water. Over 600 million are without toilets. Lack of affordable housing is another huge problem that persisted.
India has made globally recognisable achievements on many fronts. It is steadily growing in its clout as a regional power. Morgan Stanley has even predicted that, we will surpass China in growth within the next 5 years. Yet why do we have these gargantuan problems defying management and solutions?
Look at some smaller countries of the far-east and China. They all began like us only. They left us far behind in human development index. Unlike our political masters and their elite babus, the men at the helm in those countries showed more practical concern for the human well being. Without fanfare, those countries went about pursuing primary health care, basic education and economic sustenance to all their people. Our well meaning laws simply didn’t work for the ‘aam aadmi’. There is this huge gap between the manager and the managed and the gap continued its yawning distance, year after year. For the man on the street everything became so distant, he became irrelevant in the larger canvass. The classic example of our granaries overflowing with open storage of grain rotting in rain water and people going hungry and dying of starvation is a sad commentary on our monumental failure even after 6 decades of being masters of our own fate.
“Socio-economic system continues to generate poverty. The political structure is either unconcerned or helpless about it. State remains removed from the people. Due to lack of regular interaction with people, the elected representatives depend on political brokers, contractors and criminals for their public image and on the civil servants for their performance. Trained in the ethos of another era, these civil servants excel in maintaining a status loaded against the people. They continued to be masters in disguise with the politician often eating out of their hands.”
“The multi-dimensional failure of social policy and state planning in respect of human development explains India’s inability to stabilise its already high population. High fertility is seen by the poor as the available option against child mortality and low individual earning capacity” wrote George Mathews commenting on the evolution of Indian state.
Directive Principles of State Policy had enshrined in the Constitution that, “The state shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of the Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years”. That was 60 years ago, in Jan. 1950, and we are in 2010. It was only in April 2010, that parliament enacted the Right to Education (RTE) as a fundamental right, after over 60 years of declaring its avowed objective of empowering ordinary Indians.
But A. Subramanian, of Save the Children, writes “Terminal 3 in New Delhi (international airport) took just 37 months to go from conception to reality. It took 63 years to enact right to education bill and it is stalled because of lack of funds”. He asks a very relevant question “Have we got our priorities wrong?” Absolutely. It is indeed deeply disturbing that our priorities have always been wonky. We have always barked up the wrong tree.
“This country’s revenue mostly gets spent on development of well to-do areas and therefore the well to do people. The marginalised sections living on the margin and beyond, in their rural hibernation are the ones left out in the lurch to fend for themselves. They become one day inane statistics of national development plans, under the column death-due to starvation. They get sunk into the abyss more and more. For them there is no redemption. They end up selling their babies, their kidneys, their blood, all for the population, who are the affording class. Oh poor Bharath Maatha! Again here too, when they sell their priceless possessions, they are paid pittance, so that the middleman, and woman included, who are the well heeled in a ‘civilised society’, make their money for their ‘living in style’ with their Black Berrys and limousines. Are we a spiritually bankrupt nation!” We had written this eight years ago in these columns, and ground condition has not changed. If any, it has only worsened in some areas. Similar bankruptsy is palpably visible when it comes to addressing rampart malnutrition among children.
While it is quite understandable that you need to have upgraded airports and to host Common Wealth Games to bolster the global image of the country, can we push under the carpet the basic demands of a huge section of the population, their need for safe drinking water, health centres within the reachable radius, primary schools in the vicinity, quality food at reasonable price, without the unpleasant shocks of galloping inflation, which should not only provide calories but also nutrition. Of course the problems of India with its burgeoning population is not as easy as it can be argued. However what is sadly missing is not the lack of resources, but the lack of will to do it.
For example look at the formation of Prime Ministers ‘Connect on Nutrition’ formed over 2 years ago. They have not met even once, despite the serious problem witnessed in Delhi itself with over 40% of children below 5 years of age reportedly being underweight and are with stunted growth. According to unofficial estimates some two million children die of preventable diseases, and some 40 million children are found working in hazardous and ill paid jobs.
While the government prides itself in world class air terminals and conducting hugely wasteful Common Wealth Games, it’s a matter of shame that every government for all the 63 years only paid lip service to address the issue of malnutrition among children and the problems of child labour.
Yes, there are good intentions too in the form of NREGS, trying to empower the marginalisd, especially rural women folks. Yes we do have a Prime Minister who is transparently honest and who does not promote anything or anybody in particular. But he has not been able to transmit his own commitment to other ministerial colleagues and the babudom in general. There are any number of questionable actions by the coterie politics and veiled interest trying to promote interest of individuals and groups and derailing the delivery system. How can that stop is a question disturbing many in the country. Is there a way out? May be there is.
Some years ago, one of our great thinkers in the public domain, Justice V K Krishna Iyer had expressed his deep concern at the shoddy governance. He wrote “In India, a socialist, secular, democratic republic is over a billion strong, and is perhaps the world’s first in ancient heritage, second in primitive poverty, third in contemporary crimes, twelfth in total wealth. In the context of institutions and the developmental dynamics desiderated by modern technology, India can be a Kohinoor diamond and can be rich in resources if creatively catalysed. Yet is a frustrated fraction of mankind because of environmental, colonial, corrupt and stultifying contradictions. Our creative statesmen can transform the country, if they wished to. Feudalism, capitalism and Marxism co-exist in a Bharath, which is plunged in widespread socialist injustice. Perestroika and glasnost, and a do or die struggle for systemic transformation, are the militant urgency of the hour.”
Indeed the provoking thoughts of Justice Iyer reflects the unease in growth. We need to address it, address it quickly, consciously, transparently and from many fronts. In a panel discussion on CNN IBN, the other day a panelist insisted, it is the lack of political will that is hampering our growth. Shouldn’t we recollect the completion of Terminal 3 at New Delhi International Airport on war footing, just to be on time for Common Wealth Games? Selective urgency is our national malaise and that is our governance problem. Quoting the latest Nuclear Liability Bill, how the UPA government reached out to opposition BJP to get the bill passed, only because there was an apparent urgency. President Obama is expected in Nov. 2010, and he has to be conveyed this agreement on the liability of reactor suppliers to India for nuclear power generation. Panelist wondered why doesn’t Obama comes very often, so that we can get more laws passed. Indeed, if all can get to-gether in the over-all interest of the country, action and therefore the development, is always possible.
But A. Subramanian, of Save the Children, writes “Terminal 3 in New Delhi (international airport) took just 37 months to go from conception to reality. It took 63 years to enact right to education bill and it is stalled because of lack of funds”. He asks a very relevant question “Have we got our priorities wrong?” Absolutely. It is indeed deeply disturbing that our priorities have always been wonky. We have always barked up the wrong tree.
“India’s democracy has the generosity and flexibility to be able to address the concerns of any area or group in the country. We are building a new India in which every citizen would have a stake, an India which would be prosperous and in which all citizens would be able to live a life of honour and dignity in an environment of peace and goodwill” Dr Manmohan Singh invoked hope on 15th of August while addressing the nation on the 64th independence day celebration from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi.
Right enough, late in the day, in the southern city of Bangalore, ostensibly after eating lunch distributed at a local Beggars’ Rehabilitation Centre (BRC), over 50 took ill. With no medical attention available for the next 2 days, some 12 died, with double that number falling seriously ill with continuous bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea. If this was the news of 18th Aug, 8 more died the following day, informed the media, with Karnataka State Human Rights Commission (KSHRC) claiming that there were 92 deaths at the BRC during the last, only, 19 days. This was the proverbial last straw for the administration to be exposed so completely that the government removed the Minister of Social Welfare D. Sudhakar, who had earlier in the day had reportedly stated that there is ‘nothing abnormal about deaths in Beggars Homes’.
This represents the dichotomy of our developmental paradigm, of reality on the ground and those of rhetorical verbose.
If deaths in the Beggars Home was macabre enough, what followed was even more bizarre. In spite of mass death – 20 in one go – the authorities of the rehabilitation centre permitted cremation without any post-mortem, saying that “Since they died of natural causes there was no need for post mortem.” Both the medical officer of the centre, who came in only on the 3rd day of the mass death, and the Police Commissioner Bidari, reportedly have concurred. Yes of course, there will be nobody who will question their wisdom, because, those who died were all, the faceless, power less and money less. While it may be true that the incident has shaken the collective conscience of the Bangalore civil society, it has also exposed its duplicity of being a mute witness to the on-going criminal neglect of institutions of social welfare. What right do we have, to call ourselves civislised when we cannot protect our weak and infirm? Yet all our Prime Ministers for all its 63 years as a free country have only said MERA BHARATH MAHAN from the elevated platforms of 15th Aug. freedom celebrations.
“To-day India stands among the fastest growing economies of the world. As the world’s largest democracy we have become an example for many other countries to emulate”, Sardar Dr Manmohan Singh reportedly told Indians, speaking after unfurling the tricolour at the historic venue. But what is the ground reality?!?
India is home to the largest number of poor people, India is home to the largest number of malnutritioned children. India is home to the largest number of families without toilets. India is home to a rabidly corrupt bureaucracy and political class. India is home to the fastest growing population, in absolute numbers, even faster than China. And our socio economic planners and managers do not seem to appreciate that population indeed is our greatest problem and challenge, for the redistributive exercise of the nations GDP. The latest United Nations Development Report (UNDP) has the veritable mine of statistics deprecating our shoddy and one sided socio-economic development.
Speaking to the constituent assembly on the midnight of 14/15th August 1947, the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Nehru, had given a clarion call to Indians of all hues “The service of India means, the service of millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty, of ignorance, of disease, of inequality of opportunity.” Down 63 years where are we? is a question of profoundly multiple dimension.
Back in 1997, on completion of half a century, India as a free nation, George Mathews of Institute of Social Sciences wrote “On August 15, 1947, some 347 million Indians set out on a voyage of rediscovery and renewal. It was a movement of a people yearning for a freer and better life. Where have they and their children arrived half a century later?” Yes, what is the meaningful answer to this ringing question through the prism of the ordinary citizen?
“The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us but as long as there are tears and suffering so long our work will not be over”, Nehru’s emotional invocation to Indians had continued on that historic day. Looking back over the last 63 years of our break from the colonial yoke, what kind of canvas that we are looking at?
Yes, country has seen tremendous growth especially since the last 20 years in multiple areas, yet there is a huge yawning gap in different areas. It is an inexorable story of failure of our redistributive justice of all our 10 already completed 5 years development plans.
We need to recognise, despite double digit growth of recent past, the absolute number of poor, below the poverty line, is over 500 million. In 1947 it was 300 million, or almost 85% of the then population, the number now is added by another 200 million. It is true that many of those in the above 85% have seen better days and continued to prosper, but a very good chunk remained poor and addition to the BPL rank continued unabated.
Despite tremendous increase in the physical infrastructure in elementary education, not very far from 50% of population and about 2/3rd of women are illiterate. While mid-day meals have helped in increasing the number of school intake of children, it didn’t sustain beyond primary school, only to be found as child labourer, in some farms, roadside eateries, and some low paying industries in sub-human conditions.
Thousands of health centres were set up by the government. But the proportion of people actually using them is not even 25%. After 10 developmental plans, over 500 million people are without safe drinking water. Over 600 million are without toilets. Lack of affordable housing is another huge problem that persisted.
India has made globally recognisable achievements on many fronts. It is steadily growing in its clout as a regional power. Morgan Stanley has even predicted that, we will surpass China in growth within the next 5 years. Yet why do we have these gargantuan problems defying management and solutions?
Look at some smaller countries of the far-east and China. They all began like us only. They left us far behind in human development index. Unlike our political masters and their elite babus, the men at the helm in those countries showed more practical concern for the human well being. Without fanfare, those countries went about pursuing primary health care, basic education and economic sustenance to all their people. Our well meaning laws simply didn’t work for the ‘aam aadmi’. There is this huge gap between the manager and the managed and the gap continued its yawning distance, year after year. For the man on the street everything became so distant, he became irrelevant in the larger canvass. The classic example of our granaries overflowing with open storage of grain rotting in rain water and people going hungry and dying of starvation is a sad commentary on our monumental failure even after 6 decades of being masters of our own fate.
“Socio-economic system continues to generate poverty. The political structure is either unconcerned or helpless about it. State remains removed from the people. Due to lack of regular interaction with people, the elected representatives depend on political brokers, contractors and criminals for their public image and on the civil servants for their performance. Trained in the ethos of another era, these civil servants excel in maintaining a status loaded against the people. They continued to be masters in disguise with the politician often eating out of their hands.”
“The multi-dimensional failure of social policy and state planning in respect of human development explains India’s inability to stabilise its already high population. High fertility is seen by the poor as the available option against child mortality and low individual earning capacity” wrote George Mathews commenting on the evolution of Indian state.
Directive Principles of State Policy had enshrined in the Constitution that, “The state shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of the Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years”. That was 60 years ago, in Jan. 1950, and we are in 2010. It was only in April 2010, that parliament enacted the Right to Education (RTE) as a fundamental right, after over 60 years of declaring its avowed objective of empowering ordinary Indians.
But A. Subramanian, of Save the Children, writes “Terminal 3 in New Delhi (international airport) took just 37 months to go from conception to reality. It took 63 years to enact right to education bill and it is stalled because of lack of funds”. He asks a very relevant question “Have we got our priorities wrong?” Absolutely. It is indeed deeply disturbing that our priorities have always been wonky. We have always barked up the wrong tree.
“This country’s revenue mostly gets spent on development of well to-do areas and therefore the well to do people. The marginalised sections living on the margin and beyond, in their rural hibernation are the ones left out in the lurch to fend for themselves. They become one day inane statistics of national development plans, under the column death-due to starvation. They get sunk into the abyss more and more. For them there is no redemption. They end up selling their babies, their kidneys, their blood, all for the population, who are the affording class. Oh poor Bharath Maatha! Again here too, when they sell their priceless possessions, they are paid pittance, so that the middleman, and woman included, who are the well heeled in a ‘civilised society’, make their money for their ‘living in style’ with their Black Berrys and limousines. Are we a spiritually bankrupt nation!” We had written this eight years ago in these columns, and ground condition has not changed. If any, it has only worsened in some areas. Similar bankruptsy is palpably visible when it comes to addressing rampart malnutrition among children.
While it is quite understandable that you need to have upgraded airports and to host Common Wealth Games to bolster the global image of the country, can we push under the carpet the basic demands of a huge section of the population, their need for safe drinking water, health centres within the reachable radius, primary schools in the vicinity, quality food at reasonable price, without the unpleasant shocks of galloping inflation, which should not only provide calories but also nutrition. Of course the problems of India with its burgeoning population is not as easy as it can be argued. However what is sadly missing is not the lack of resources, but the lack of will to do it.
For example look at the formation of Prime Ministers ‘Connect on Nutrition’ formed over 2 years ago. They have not met even once, despite the serious problem witnessed in Delhi itself with over 40% of children below 5 years of age reportedly being underweight and are with stunted growth. According to unofficial estimates some two million children die of preventable diseases, and some 40 million children are found working in hazardous and ill paid jobs.
While the government prides itself in world class air terminals and conducting hugely wasteful Common Wealth Games, it’s a matter of shame that every government for all the 63 years only paid lip service to address the issue of malnutrition among children and the problems of child labour.
Yes, there are good intentions too in the form of NREGS, trying to empower the marginalisd, especially rural women folks. Yes we do have a Prime Minister who is transparently honest and who does not promote anything or anybody in particular. But he has not been able to transmit his own commitment to other ministerial colleagues and the babudom in general. There are any number of questionable actions by the coterie politics and veiled interest trying to promote interest of individuals and groups and derailing the delivery system. How can that stop is a question disturbing many in the country. Is there a way out? May be there is.
Some years ago, one of our great thinkers in the public domain, Justice V K Krishna Iyer had expressed his deep concern at the shoddy governance. He wrote “In India, a socialist, secular, democratic republic is over a billion strong, and is perhaps the world’s first in ancient heritage, second in primitive poverty, third in contemporary crimes, twelfth in total wealth. In the context of institutions and the developmental dynamics desiderated by modern technology, India can be a Kohinoor diamond and can be rich in resources if creatively catalysed. Yet is a frustrated fraction of mankind because of environmental, colonial, corrupt and stultifying contradictions. Our creative statesmen can transform the country, if they wished to. Feudalism, capitalism and Marxism co-exist in a Bharath, which is plunged in widespread socialist injustice. Perestroika and glasnost, and a do or die struggle for systemic transformation, are the militant urgency of the hour.”
Indeed the provoking thoughts of Justice Iyer reflects the unease in growth. We need to address it, address it quickly, consciously, transparently and from many fronts. In a panel discussion on CNN IBN, the other day a panelist insisted, it is the lack of political will that is hampering our growth. Shouldn’t we recollect the completion of Terminal 3 at New Delhi International Airport on war footing, just to be on time for Common Wealth Games? Selective urgency is our national malaise and that is our governance problem. Quoting the latest Nuclear Liability Bill, how the UPA government reached out to opposition BJP to get the bill passed, only because there was an apparent urgency. President Obama is expected in Nov. 2010, and he has to be conveyed this agreement on the liability of reactor suppliers to India for nuclear power generation. Panelist wondered why doesn’t Obama comes very often, so that we can get more laws passed. Indeed, if all can get to-gether in the over-all interest of the country, action and therefore the development, is always possible.
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