For a few rupees more



Living in the UK helped in understanding a few things about India. Some of them are related to the history of these two nations, colonialism, economy and lifestyle. I intend writing about them in detail later. Apart from certain clarities that emerged out of the cloudy belief system I had, there were some myths about India too. One about India’s economic growth and its rise as the impeding superpower; I must admit that most of the English people I spoke to really admired India’s rise. They awed at Bollywood and our IT professionals.

I, however, could not share this sentiment wholeheartedly. For the records, I must admit that after coming here, I have become somewhat a Marxist sympathiser. More about this later; my new ideological leanings aside, I have been maintaining that India’s so-called rise and its IT super-power status are highly superficial and bit of scratching of surface will reveal a picture that will be quite demotivating.

Sample this recent news report from The Hindu: The number of farmer suicides in India reached the upwards of 17,000 in 2006, the last year for which we have data. One forth of this took place in Maharashtra, the state that houses the financial capital of India and also where the real-estate prices are the costliest in the world. The government termed the concentrated areas as SEZ, Special Elimination Zones. The abbreviated term ironically and eerily resembles a growth project from the government.

I had written about farmer’s suicide, SEZs, India’s superficial or rather one-sided growths earlier. The total tally of suicides from 1997 amount to around 1.5 lakhs and we must remember that this total is only till 2006 and there are no extraordinary reasons to believe that the numbers would have come down thenceforth.

We still talk about our IT powers. We do not have single world-class software to boast of. We call our cheap-labour advantage as technical superiority. Because of our weak-rupee, we have diaspora income which boasts of our Forex wealth. We have creaking infra-structure which makes us boast of increase in middle-class wealth. As for the rural plight, we don’t even talk about it. We are busier with our Indian movies reaching the UK charts.

The government has announced relief packages, which though sound like too little too late, must have helped to some extent. However, apart from condescendingly announcing some thousands of crores, the policy makers seems to have done quite little to resolve the problem. No initiatives to curb the local money lenders, to strengthen the co-operative societies, to spread awareness or to educate the public about the government’s relief schemes, to help reduce the middlemen eating away the relief funds. We don’t hear about the much. The PM made a courtesy call to one of the affected villages, made a heart-wrenching speech, announced the package and then continued to focus on much bigger problems such as his party’s tussle with the Left.

Meanwhile, as the urban India hails the launch of a new car model, announcement of one more Bollywood star being wax-modeled in London, and laments our capital markets crashing down eight percentage, our rural India takes its another life for debts far fewer than 10,000 rupees (around £120) and leaves behind its semi-literate and unskilled family at the mercy of our indifferent and nonchalant politicians.