By Kollengode S Venkataraman — Written in July 1997 India’s 50th Independence Day
Fifty years is close to the time span of two generations, So the consequences of the decisions/ non decisions of earlier years. During this year, like the blind men of Hindustan variously describing an elephant by the parts they touched, blinkered men of modern India will roll out anecdotal evidence for showcasing India ‘s progress. Probably they are right, partially in any case. There are many demographic groups in India. Apart from caste, religion, and language-based groups, new ones have emerged blurring the earlier ones — anglicized urban India, non-anglicized urban India, rural educated India, rural propertied India, for example. In the fifty years since independence, whether India progressed or not depends on which India we see and which yardsticks we use for measuring progress.
While pockets of India have progressed way beyond anyone’s expectations, in their wake came urban squalor, rural poverty under social landscape littered with vast areas of neglect. When confronting what went wrong, everyone in India blames everyone else. But it’s futile to point the fingers at any one Indian group — Politicians, bureaucrats, educated middle class, the enterprising class or the landed gentry — for the spectacle. But if you club them together to the exclusion of others having limited or no access to education, resources, and influence, what we see is fifty years of opportunities missed, priorities misplaced, and resources and time squandered. Let us look at a few examples.
Illiteracy: For a society that boasts of great works of literature in every living, dying, and dead language, it is sad that Free India did not address the illiteracy problem on a national war footing. For this, we need not compare India with European or other Asian societies to see the correlation between literacy and other societal indicators. All we have to do is simply look at the state of Kerala with its 32 million people. More or less equally divided among Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, the literacy level of Kerala is 90%. Better than the Chinese and comparable to that in the US. In Kerala, the infant mortality, population growth rate, mortality among women during pregnancy and childbirth, and the occurrence of malnutrition among infants are the lowest in the nation. Compares well against many other Asian societies. Also, the level of social hygiene in Kerala is better than anywhere else in the nation.
Also note that there is no correlation between commonly used economic measures, the per capita GDP. (gross domestic product) and the other societal yardstick. That is, increased economic activity alone does not guarantee progress, and that by itself is not as effective as a higher literacy rate for improving social conditions. The desirable situation is a combination of high literacy and increased economic activity.
Kerala — a Social Laboratory: In a country of close to one billion people, Kerala with its 32,000,000 population, is a laboratory to study what is achievable if society puts its hearts, minds, and resources for a set of socially responsible objectives. How in the world India reconciles the information age and the high level of illiteracy is beyond anyone’s imagination.
Look at the contradiction this way. Every major religion native to India, Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism and the Sikh religion, says, Avidya, which can be translated to mean the lack of discriminating Intellect, the absence of knowledge or skills, ignorance, or the basic level of literacy, as a root cause for all problems. Yet as a society, India, after becoming free, made no attempt to address this basic problem with any seriousness, targeting the poor. Literacy of Indian population makes every other problem — Public health, population growth, for example — a far bigger challenge than it needs to be.
In this context, it is worth noting educated married couples in India have smaller families whether they are Hindus, Muslims, Catholics, high caste, low caste, without the need for taxpayer-funded propaganda on family planning.
Overcrowding of cities. After independence, when the drive for economic growth was everywhere in the country, both educated and uneducated people moved in large numbers from villages to urban centers. India made no attempt to slow down this migration while at the same time paying lip service to Mohandas Gandhi’s idea that villages are the heart and soul of India.
With Oxford and Cambridge educated elite among the political leadership and civil service, India did not learn from the urban blight of Europe and the US after the Industrial Revolution to avoid the social and public health problems of overcrowding in cities. Instead India looked at overcrowding, multi-storied housing, urban slums, traffic jams, and air pollution as the price the country has to pay for progress. India is not unique in this. Mexico City, Cairo, the Philippines and Manila also did the same thing with the same disastrous consequences.
That India, with its overarching central planning machinery, did not develop secondary and tertiary towns by providing economic incentives and infrastructure such as roads, schools, healthcare, and communications. This is one of the biggest missed opportunities, having enormous social, economic, and public health consequences.
Lack of basic public health amenities in cities.
In urban homes: Take drinking water in any large city in India today. The quality of water supply is so bad that nobody in India drinks water without boiling. Assuming that a family of five people requires about ten litres of drinking water per day, you can estimate that each family in urban India spends annually close to ₹400 for the fifty kilograms of liquefied petroleum gas for boiling water for drinking alone. This is in addition to the time working men and women — mostly women — spend simply to boil the water. On another level, a large volume of LPG — a scarce natural resource that has other productive uses — is wasted simply to boil water and then cool it.
In urban slums, being able to drink boiled water is a luxury. These men, women, and children drink unprotected water laden with bacteria, becoming vulnerable to hosts of diseases, some of which permanently incapacitated children for the rest of their lives, even making them a burden on society. Thus, not having safe drinking water billows into a public health and social problem. With frustration directed at decision makers and compassion towards the poor in the Third World economy, Nicholas Kristoff of New York Times. January 9, 1997, highlighted this problem under the title For the Third World, Water is Still A Deadly Drink.
Overwhelming corruption. Few years ago, a consortium of international organizations published a report on corruption in many countries. Its main thrust should surprise nobody in India. Or who deals with India. India, the report said, is one of the most corrupt societies. Not surprisingly, in India’s company are Italy, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, China and Indonesia. Taiwan, Malaysia, and South Korea fared better.
Social acceptance of corruption: Even though corruption is pervasive in India, not many complain about it publicly, except during election time when everyone calls everyone else corrupt. The reason is simple. Indian society has made everyone a beneficiary, benefactor, and victim of corruption, all at the same time. This it does by forcing everyone to practice in graft, either by making people give money to get something done, or receive tangible and intangible favors for doing something for someone. In the wake of widespread corruption have come increased lawlessness and violence reminiscent of the days of the Wild West. The Indian judicial system with three million civil and criminal cases pending nationwide, has lost ordinary citizens’ confidence long time ago.
What is overlooked is the heavy social cost of corruption in terms of lack of personal accountability, literally being able to get away with murder, or the poor quality and high cost of goods and services. And the people at the bottom of the social totem pole pay for this through poor living conditions and taxes. India is one of the few countries where the poor directly and indirectly subsidise the rich lifestyle — much of it ill-gotten — of the wealthy, the powerful, or the influential without even being aware of it.
These and other such pointers nullify whatever progress India has made in the last fifty years in communications, transportation, science and technology, and other fields. What is then good in India? Honestly, many things. For a discussion on this, follow here. Thank you. ∎