Men of straw

Kuldip Nayar


During the discussion on the Act on independence 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 the prime minister). These are men of straw whom no trace will be found after a few years.”

His remark was that of a defeated imperialist who had lost the profit-making empire. Yet, his prophecy is not entirely wrong. 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.
Some hurl abuses on others to wash off their sins. In the last few months I have travelled through the neighbouring countries. I have found them far from settled. Even after six decades of independence, they are in a flux. The real malady is that the rule of law does not exist and the police and bureaucrats are an instrument of tyranny and terror to suppress people, especially the critics.

Minorities of the entire region are insecure. Still all nations in the region swear by democracy, even though they have lost it in essence. Some have only a semblance of it. Some are under the belief that they will get it back. And some have a sturdy shell, without substance. Their jingo nationalism is their pride. What were common to all these countries are the violation of human rights and an array of draconian laws to chastise those who dare to oppose. 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 for the rulers.

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 allocation for building 1,500 schools and 500 health centres. India is purchasing a large quantity of weapons, costing billions of dollars. Pakistan has a long inventory which the US is processing. Sri Lanka is feverishly buying big or small weapons from China after having failed to procure them from India. If South Asian countries could divert only 10 percent of the money from armaments to economic development, the number of people living below the poverty line would drastically come down.
No doubt, the countries in South East Asia have made progress. Some fallout of development has trickled below, but very little. The task of building is stupendous and the rulers are not up to it. What they are doing is the opposite, permitting the speculative builder and greedy landlord to drive hideous scars across our countryside straggling over our ancient civilisation. People have not failed the rulers. The rulers have. They still do not know how to govern and how to stay clean. Indeed, they have turned out to be men of straw.
After 60 years of independence, we have not been able to provide even clean drinking water to our people, much less a regular supply. Our own admission is that 260 million in the population of one billion are destitute and 390 million illiterate. 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 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. 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 frozen into pragmatism. What was once the Left is today part of the establishment. Its ideology of revolution is confined to appointments and transfers.
On the other hand, vulgar consumption is rationalised in the name of entrepreneurship. The argument is that the poor are lacking the initiative and hence they are 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. The 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.

Where is the hope 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?
The railways’ privatisation is 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, one hundred thousand farmers have taken their life. 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?