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Changelessness -

An Indian dimension

Urdu is a very rich language, with richer vocabulary. There is a couple of couplets  in Urdu, which are fairly prevalent in India, although Urdu, per se, is not one of the dominant languages of this country. It is true those who know Hindi can largely understand Urdu, thus, it has near universal appeal across India except parts of South India.

“Kaarvaan Nikhal Gayee Aur Gubhar Dekhte Rehgayaa”, and other “Oopar Sherwaani Aur Andhar Pareyshaani”. Both these couplets convey a certain social dimension with complete relevance, when it comes to be applied to a developing economy like our Mera Bharat Mahan is.

Caravaan has passed, but the dust left behind kept looking at it, probably forlorn wondering at the emptiness of the ethereal stillness. It represents a situation, where lot of people have moved on to greater heights of acquisition, education, wealth and power, leaving behind a huge section of population caught in the time warp like the dust left behind by the march of the developmental caravan. Doesn’t it represent large parts of India, which remained far away from the developmental highways of emerging ‘super power’ called India!

At the stroke of midnight, as the world lay asleep, India awoke to freedom. The 15th Aug. 1947, that ushered India as a politically free nation, inherited to a large extent colonial mindset, especially by the officialdom.

This is only the beginning of changing India’s dimension of changelessness.

On Aug. 15th 1947, some 350 million Indians, unshackled from the colonial yoke of over 100 years, set out on an voyage of rediscovery, unlike Nehru’s Discovery, of India. If Nehru, the first Prime Minister of free India, tried to put in black & white a perspective for a continental audience, what India was, the burden of the average Indian was to rediscover, what is left of it, in the post colonial depredation era.

History of pre-independence era, especially since the year 1600, when Englishmen landed in, the then, Calcutta with commercial interest, informs us that East India Company was opened to promote the English trade and commerce with India. However, they apparently had long term plans to stay put in the country, which they systematically did, as the history testifies, right upto Aug 1947. During this 347 long years, using the trader’s canniness, joining hands with the self serving native chieftains, they plundered the nation’s riches and resources without much of a hindrance. When they left, after almost 31/2 centuries of exploitation – political, economic and social – Britishers had reduced the country bereft of all developmental avenues, except some railway lines and similar transportation infrastructure. Of course, even this railways and some road networks were developed only to serve its colonial commercial interest.

According to government sources, over 90% people, that is, over 300 million, lived either below the poverty line (BPL) or hovering around it. Low income and poverty driven maladies like malnutrition, undernourishment leading to preventable diseases, premature death, besides illiteracy were some of the stark realities of the day. It further informs that, not even one child in three, of primary school age, was in school. Only one adult in seven could read and write. There was only one doctor for every 25000 people in rural India. Over third of rural India was landless labourers. Not a pretty picture for a British Colony, in mid 1947.

Yet looking back over the shoulder, in 2013, some 65+ years down the line, how has been the voyage of rediscovery, of an Indian born into free India on 15th Aug. 1947?!

Yes, India of 2013 is certainly not the same as India of 1947. India has changed, but for whom and for how many?! Yet it has remained without change for millions of Indians.

Here, instead of going into statistical semantics, let us try to see through events and incidents, which are in the form of examples of whatever is happening to India and Indians.

Bartalomio Dentamaro, an Italian traveler, staying in a South Mumbai Hotel, decided, to take an evening stroll in the parking lot of the hotel. There was a wedding reception going on in the hotel premises. Parking was, therefore, full. Strolling the area, looking at the cars parked in the hotel compound, Mr Dentamaro was visibly surprised at the array of limousines therein. From exotic Lamborghini, to handcrafted Masaretti to personalised Rolls Royce to varieties of imported premium  brand four wheelers. What amazed him was, even in up market Monaco, in the Italian neighbourhood he had not seen at one place, so many cars of premium brands parked along side of each other. The sheer opulence and the open display of riches clearly overtook him. He walks upto the reception and tells the hotel staff, all Indians of course, failing to contain his disbelief, “Amigo, who said India is poor. No! India is not poor, India is rich, but Indians are poor”. How true was his observation, way back in 1993! Aren’t we still the same?! India continues to be rich, with millions of millionaires, and some billionaires making it to the ‘Fortune 500’, the elite club of the super rich. But we still have some 400 million Indians living below 2$ a day. The double digit growth story did not bring about the change that did not percolate down, for these millions of our countrymen.

Exactly 100 years ago, in 1912, one Ram Jiyawan, a landless labourer from Nawawa village, some 300kms east of Lucknow towards north western Bihar, was picked up by the British as an indentured labour and forcibly transported to the far away British Guyana in South America. Three generations down the line, Ram Jiyawan’s grandson Mr Bharath Jagdev came to India in search of his roots. The family of two Lonia households had multiplied to 24 households in the intervening ten decades that passed by. India had become a free nation from the British colonial masters since 65 years. But for this community of Lonias, in free India, nothing had changed except the growing number of mouths to be fed. They were still landless labourers working for big land lords, as it was 100 years ago. Eleven development plans of free India left them untouched. All the redistributive exercise brought them no justice in its developmental growth trajectory. Yes, nothing had really changed for that part of Bihar, except Mr Bharath Jagdev, who came calling, from half the globe away, on his ancestral root, was the President of British Guyana. 

The persistent changelessness was so stark, they didn’t have even a set of decent clothes to welcome one of their very own! A few poor men, dressed up for the occasion, provided by the district administration, were presented to the head of a nation as his family. A deeply embarrassed first citizen of British Guyana, probably left in tears, like his grandfather, bewildered at the distance covered by him, in the realization of human potential and the time warp, his Lonia brothers and sisters in India, were caught in. 

Is this one-off story of deprivation?! There are thousands of such stories where things remained unchanged for millions of Indians. Indeed “Kaarwaan Nikhal Gayee Aur Ghubhaar Dekh tey rehgaya”.

Speaking from the ramparts of the Lal Kila, the Red Fort, the first Prime Minister of free India gave a clarion call “Our work shall never to be complete until the last tear is wiped out”. 

But what is our experience, 65 years down the line?

VR Krishna Iyer, wrote brilliantly, some years ago, reflecting the unease in growth. “In India, a socialist, secular, democratic republic, is over a billion strong, and is perhaps the world’s first in its ancient heritage, second in primitive poverty, third in contemporary crimes, twelth in total wealth. In the context of institutions and the developmental dynamics desiderated by modern technology, India can be Kohinoor diamond and can be rich in resources if creatively catalised. 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 Bharat, 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”.

These are provocative thoughts. There is genuine restlessness in the message Justice Iyer was attempting to convey, representing an unhealthy state of affairs.

“Progress” writes Amartya Sen, “is more plausible judged by the reduction of deprivation than by the further enrichment of the opulent”. Surely, Sen as a Nobel Laureate in Economics, clearly knows what he is talking. Indeed, the double digit growth did not change the moribund status of our millions living away from the national highways. Surely it is a case of “Oopar Sherwaani, andar pareyshaani” and the ‘pareyshaani’ runs pretty deep.

Yes, we have changed for sure, but still changelessness persists. ‘India Shining’ came and gone off with shining left only in few pockets. Poverty that existed in 1947, may have continuously come down, even to this day in 2013. But the absolute number of poor has only increased. If in 1947, we had some 300 millions, of the 350 million population representing almost 90%, it is over 400 million in to-day’s 1200 million, about 1/3rd of the population. It could well be that those who were in the 300 million of around the 1940s, may still be there in the 400 million of the 2010s. Poverty, unfortunately, has many facets. Undernourishment, malnutrition, lack of safe drinking water, lack of health care facilities, lack of adequate housing, lack of sanitary facilities, lack of opportunity for education  and therefore opportunity for advancement and empowerment, lack of income and income generating opportunities like employment, etc.

Across India, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, from Kutch to Kolkatta, problem of deprivation of different kinds is visibly seen and felt. Of course, it is abundantly clear that in recent years, say since last 30 years, things have greatly changed for the majority of our population. But those who are badly off are indeed worse off suffering multiple inadequacies.

If the absolute number of poor in India has not reduced over the past 65 years there must be some profound reasons. Experience of China and other smaller nations of the south-east Asia has provided us with lamp-posts to human development index. Unlike our elite babus & their political masters who debate for years what constitutes, Below Poverty Line and that Rs: 600 can take care of a family of 4 for a month, as stated by Sheila Dixit, men at the helm of economic decision making in those countries showed more practical concern for the fundamentals of human well being. Without tom-toming they went about persuing primary health care, basic education and economic sustenance to all their people. These countries have left India far behind in the human development index. Our well meaning laws simply didn’t work therefore failed to deliver. The classic example of granaries being full and people dying of starvation is a sad commentary on our monumental failure to measure up to even minimum expectation in a democratic milieu.

So what has really changed for those who were and are still continuing to remain outside the developmental exercises?

There was this report in the print media “When the policy failed children,” which talks about the government schemes that never reached the target and that doctors and health workers are unaware of these schemes. This was a report of, as late as Dec 20, 2012. It has always been like this at least in those pockets where vulnerable sections live. They were helpless then, and they are helpless even now. 

There was this half page advertisement on 20th Feb 2013 in prominent national dailies (See Box), screaming “Nearly every second child in India is a victim of malnutrition”, and asks to contact Anganwadi workers or ASHA, for more information. Isn’t it a matter of shame that our national government openly admits its monumental failure in tackling malnutrition, which even according to the Ministry of Women and Child Development is the “biggest killer”? How sad and bad that after 65 years, we are where we began in 1947, for good part of Indians.

It is not just the child, whom the governments across India failed, but even women. The recent death of a victim of Delhi gang’s sexual attack which somehow galvanised a national display of anger, against the government’s failure in providing basic security apparatus. Are these stories of women or even girls being physically exploited and violated with violence new?! Its been there all the while. It was EK Nayanar a former CM of Kerala who had observed decades ago, while still holding office of CM, that “rape happens in Kerala everyday”, reacting to a widely reported sexual attack on a 16 year old, known as the infamous Suryanelli case. So what’s new?! This governmental attitude was in display even as late as last month in Jan. 2013. So what has really changed with all this imaginary ‘super power’ status hogwash being mouthed by all and sundry!

Yes, after 65 years, we couldn’t guarantee a modicum of basic governance, an application of rule of law. While most necessities of a civilized living conditions, are not met by the elected government, one aspect they have magnificently succeeded in improving its level, is the all pervading corruption. We are all privy to the knowledge that there is corruption in just about every socio/economic activity. The corruption index has always negatively portrayed India as deeply corrupt. A small report in the Times of India, Mumbai of Feb. 17, 2013, informs that Disproportionate Assets (DPA) of government servants have increased, in just one year, by 6200%. One Nitish Thakur, a deputy collector in Mumbai, was raided the other day and they could seize assets worth Rs. 118 crores. And that is only a tip of the iceberg, if pan-Indian details of sleaze is collated. Of course, this corruption by the officialdom, joined by the political leadership in the national loot, is the biggest cause of India’s changeless status. It was to the credit of Rajiv Gandhi, who, in a moment of deep introspection, credited to have said “only 15 paise in a rupee reach the target and the balance 85 paise gets siphoned off in transit”. He couldn’t have been more right.

Thus, unless this all pervading corruption is shackled, the status of India’s changelessness shall continue to have its uninterrupted run.

Some of the recent print media headlines are reproduced for the issues raised therein crying for national attention:

1) “Only 1 in 7 Nutritional Rehabilitation centre functioning in AP” Dec 18, 2012

2) “Eviction of traditional dwellers in Forest opposed” Dec 18, 2012

3) “Over 650 devotees perform ‘Made Snana” Dec 18, 2012

4) “Parents refuse mid-day meal cooked by SC woman” Dec 18, 2012

5) “Dead Engineer served with show-cause notice” Dec 18, 2012

6) “Odisha elite go on spending spree” Dec 18, 2012

7) “Redrawing India’s disease Map” Dec 19, 2012

8) “Student gets shot for refusing to salute politician” Dec 19, 2012

9) “Top priority for family planning in 12th Five Year Plan” Dec 20, 2012

10) “Danger to women lurks within us” Dec 27, 2012

11) “More than half of SC/ST families in Karnataka do not have toilets” Dec 28, 2012

12) “Adarsh scam reveals deep rooted corruption” Dec 29, 2012

13) “School dropout rise due to poverty” 

Above are some of the reports from two English dailies appearing in less than 2 weeks time. This is fairly representative of the rot that has set in the body politic of the country. The changelessness is not merely because of the rulers but also because of the mindset of the ruled. ‘After all the governments can be only as good as the electorates who voted them to power’. Amen.

J. Shriyan