South Asia’s men of straw
By Kuldip NayarSatureday,August 11,2007
AT the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, India awoke 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. Mahatma Gandhi had promised earlier to wipe out every tear from every eye.
Yet, after 60 years of independence, we have not been able to provide clean drinking water to our people, in fact, not even a regular supply of water. And our official admission is that 260 million in the population of one billion are destitute and 390 million are illiterate.
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 one call it 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 was generally in the ratio of 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 that has ceased to care and which is no longer 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. Civil society has lost this in its focus on the growth rate. Even liberal elements have been 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 as lacking in initiative and hence as a suffering lot. The value system has changed and ethical behaviour is absent. Big is as in big building, big dam or big bank balance. Everything has come to revolve around money.
Success is assessed in terms of the assets one has. In this race, where the ends justify the means, the common man has been crushed. There doesn’t seem to be any hope of his coming up. How can this take place when 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 a pittance of their 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 input 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 the 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 of 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 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 a 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. Minorities in most countries are insecure.
All nations in the region swear by democracy but they have lost it in essence. Some have only a semblance of it. Some are regretting its loss and some have a sturdy shell, without substance. Their jingoistic nationalism is their pride. What was common to all these countries is the violation of human rights and an array of draconian laws to chastise critics and opponents.
Protection of rights of individuals is the central edifice in which the concept of democracy is based. But the very right has become a relative term. Rulers use the police and the bureaucracy — now an instrument of tyranny and terror — to suppress the people. They were the ones whose lot Nehru promised to ameliorate.
The most disturbing factor is that these countries spend more on armament 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.
No doubt, the countries in South Asia have made progress. Some fallout of development has trickled below, but very little. The task of building is stupendous. But the rulers are doing the opposite, permitting the speculative builder and greedy landlord to create hideous scars across our countryside. The people did not fail the rulers. The latter failed the people. They still do not know how to govern, how to stay clean and how to fulfill the pledge that economic independence will follow political independence. They have turned out to be men of straw.
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.
The writer is a senior journalist based in New Delhi
http://www.dawn.com/2007/08/11/op.htm