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India - The Common
Man Continues To Suffer
….60 years of independence,
we have not been able to provide clean drinking water
to our people…..
http://archive.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/world/10145630.html
08/10/2007 11:43 PM | By Kuldip Nayar, Special to Gulf
News
At the stroke of midnight hour on August 15, 1947,
India woke to freedom. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru
assured the nation that "long ago, we made a tryst
with destiny and now the time comes when we shall
redeem our pledge".
The pledge he spelled out meant the ending of poverty,
ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.
Yet, after 60 years of independence, we have not been
able to provide clean drinking water to our people, in
fact, not even regular supply of water.
And our official admission is that 260 million in the
population of one billion are destitute and 390
million illiterate.
The independence has not improved the plight of the
poor in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal
either. The deprivation of the lower half increases as
the region further adopts Western (should it be the
World Bank?) model of development. The growth rate may
be impressive, but it leaves an ordinary person way
behind and helpless. The difference between low and
high salaries would generally be 1:15. It is now
1:500, and even more.
The worst part of this type of development is that it
has squeezed out sympathy and consideration from our
society. It has ceased to care and it is no more
sensitive to the misery of the neglected, the ousted
or the victims of disease or disaster. Funds are
collected out of pity, not because of real feeling.
Not long ago, people talked about the poor. There was
compassion in their approach.
The civil society lost it in its focus on the growth
rate. Even liberal thinking has got ossified into
pragmatism. What was once the Left is today part of
the establishment. Its revolution is confined to
appointments and transfers. On the other hand, vulgar
consumption is rationalised in the name of
entrepreneurship. The poor are seen lacking in the
initiative and hence suffering.
The value system has changed. Even the ethical
behaviour is absent. Big is big building, big dam or
big bank balance. Everything has come to revolve
around money.
No hope
Success is itself assessed in terms of assets you
have. In this race, where ends justify the means, the
common man has been crushed.
There doesn't seem to be any hope of his coming up.
How can it happen when the indiscriminate
privatisation is edging out the small and the weak
from the system? It is going to be more ruthless in
the days to come. The government is withdrawing from
various sectors completely or partially. True, this
lessens its liability. But what about the working
conditions of those who have been thrown to the
wolves? They do not get even the pittance of salary
regularly. The railways are one example.
People in the countryside, still eking out existence
from the shrinking tract of land they possess are
suffering the most.
Their output has gone down and the price of inputs has
gone up. The support price leaves them with
practically no margin. Still they are a proud lot.
Unfortunately, they prefer suicide to the shame of
insolvency. In the last few years, 100,000 farmers
have taken their lives. These are travails of
development, some argue. But why should all the
sacrifice and suffering be the fate of the common man?
He gave his all during the independence movement. What
about those who wallow in luxuries in every regime and
in every clime? Nehru's pledge of dedication by the
nation was not for the betterment of a few.
During the process of transfer of power to India,
Winston Churchill said: "Power will go into the hands
of rascals, rogues and freebooters. Not a bottle of
water, not a loaf of bread shall escape taxation. Only
air will be free and the blood of these hungry
millions will be on the head of Mr Attlee (then Prime
Minister). These are men of straw whom no trace will
be found after a few years." His was a remark of a
defeated imperialist who had lost the profit-making
empire. Yet there is no doubt that leaders in South
East Asia have shrunk in stature.
They are small men who have come to occupy big
positions. They want power not to advance the public
interest but to secure their own personal or party
gratification. In the last few months I have travelled
through all the neighbouring countries. I have found
them far from settled. Even after six decades of
independence, they are in flux.
They are free in name only and they are the ones who
bear the burden the most. Their primary suffering is
because the rule of law does not exist and the police
have been contaminated. The most disturbing factor is
that these countries spend more on armaments than all
the European powers put together. One fighter plane
costs as much as the building of 1,500 schools and 500
health centres.
India is purchasing some 70 fighter jets, apart from
other weapons. Pakistan has a long inventory which the
US is processing in addition to the F16s which have
been delivered. Sri Lanka is feverishly buying big or
small weapons from China after having failed to
procure them from India.
Maybe, Gandhi had a premonition. When the independence
celebrations were at their height on the night of
August 14-15, he was sound asleep in a smashed-up
mansion in a riot-torn Calcutta suburb.
Kuldip Nayar is a former Indian High Commissioner to
the UK and a former Rajya Sabha MP. |
