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FIFTH
COLUMN
Villages
of Woes
Can we become an economic superpower if the real
India remains a cesspool of neglect?
By
Tavleen
Singh
Every
now and then I weary of hype and hi-tech and politicians boasting about
India being on the verge of becoming an economic superpower so I take
myself off to what Gandhiji called the "real India" for a reality
check. You need to get away from the salons of Delhi and Mumbai, from
the air-conditioned seminar rooms in which economists and political analysts
expound on the knowledge revolution, from newspapers filled with pictures
of movie stars and models, from MTV and shows like Kaun Banega Crorepati
to remember that they do not reflect India at all. You do not need to
go far.
 On
this trip glimpses of the "real India" became visible as soon
as I crossed the Yamuna on my way to Uttar Pradesh. They came first in
the form of what in Delhi are euphemistically called "resettlement
colonies" but are some of the ugliest shanty towns in the world.
Acres and acres of windowless, brick boxes that families call home and
that would be considered unfit to be used as toilets in most other countries.
No sooner does Uttar Pradesh begin than the road deteriorates into a strip
of dusty tarmac that leads you through featureless, treeless urban settlements
that breathe the pollution coming off the G.T. Road. They would be called
slums elsewhere but we call them towns. Hideous though they may be, they
are far better than rural India. At least, here there is some semblance
of a standard of living.
When you
get to your first village you realise that our economic reforms are nothing
but an illusion, a fantasy, something to be talked about in those salons
and seminar halls. The first village I stopped at was Dhoomanikpur where
they told me I could find the pradhan in the Balmiki quarter.
So I walked
deep into the village through narrow alleys lined with open drains and
covered in excrement-human and animal. The pradhan told me that the village's
biggest problem was the near total absence of electricity. He gave me
a litany of woes-drinking water was sometimes a problem although they
now had hand pumps. The real problem was that our politicians were not
concerned about the poor except when they wanted votes. He did not mention
the squalor nor the fact that there were no civic amenities in the village.
And, it was the same story in every other village.
The people
I met seemed oblivious to the fact that they were living in conditions
that should be considered unfit for animals. They did not realise that
open drains and alleys paved with excrement meant disease, even death.
In one village women told me that cholera was a common occurrence in summer.
They were surprised when I told them that officially cholera had been
abolished-just as officially, rural India should look good since the Central
government spends more than Rs 40,000 crore a year on alleviating poverty.
A joke doing the rounds in Delhi is that if that money was sent directly
to the recipients they would have enough to lift themselves above the
poverty line.
Nobody's
Trying: More seriously, what is the Rural Development Ministry (RDM)
up to? Sometime ago, it was possible even in Uttar Pradesh to find clean,
attractive villages nestled in the shade of mango groves. Where have they
gone? Why do we now have cesspools instead? Officially, there is decentralisation
of funds even at the village level so why can't village headmen (and women)
be trained to keep their villages clean? Why can't they be made to understand
the importance of planting trees? Could it be simply because nobody has
tried?
Could it
be because socialism forbade aesthetics as a bourgeois sin we have failed
to recognise that the cesspools our villages have become cannot breed
a civic society, only violence and social tension?
If the RDM
needs to give us some answers so too does the Urban Development Ministry
(UDM). We have a hyperactive minister in Jagmohan but he appears not to
understand that his job is urban planning, not just demolition. He seems
to spend so much time whirling around Delhi with his bulldozers that he
has not noticed he has a larger canvas to paint on. It is in his hands
to put in place real town planning, to bring professional expertise to
the job so that our towns can have decent public buildings and properly
laid out streets, sewage systems and drainage. If we need a UDM at the
Centre at all, surely this is its job? In any case if somebody does not
start doing it soon you can be sure that we will turn the whole of India
into a vast, environmentally degraded slum.
If nothing
is done immediately, we are never going to become the economic superpower
they tell us we almost already are. In the salons and seminar rooms they
can talk forever about the knowledge revolution but it will remain talk
unless we ensure that the "real India" comes along. My reality
check was a dismal exercise.
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