Get Real, India

On the eve 61st Independence Day, of the many greetings I received, there was one remarkable thing that was common to all the messages. Most of the greetings showered praises to the skies on greatness of India. One message read “1600 languages, 30 states, 6400 castes, 6 religions, 1.2 billion people, 1 great country”. True indeed. The other one extolled Indian achievements and read - “India never invaded a country in 10000 years of history, the value of Pie was calculated in 700 B.C” and so on. Some messages resorted to appeal to authority, one eulogized, “If it were not for India where zero was invented, we would have still been in dark ages said Albert Einstein” and quotes opinions from a number of western thinkers and scientists. It is not uncommon nor unnatural to relish and revisit the Indian achievements on a day of national importance but what I see is a sense of supercilious superiority and unwarranted complacency which in a way reeks of low self-esteem.

If we look back, pacifying our egotistical inner selves and examine our achievements in the last 61 years , one is bound to confront the sad reality that, the post-independence generation is one of a failed one, with few exceptions. Let us look at some of them to get things into perspective:

Corruption

According to the annual survey by the Berlin-based organization Transparency International(2), Finland, Denmark, and New Zealand are perceived to be the world's least corrupt countries, and Somalia and Myanmar are perceived to be the most corrupt and India ranks a poorly 78. The index defines corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain and measures the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among a country's public officials and politicians. The scores range from ten (squeaky clean) to zero (highly corrupt). A score of 5.0 is the number Transparency International considers the borderline and India has a score of meagrely 3.5. And for those who think that score is acceptable, these are the list of countries with a better score than India and some of them are African Nations, also like India victims of colonization and apartheid.

Botswana
Macao
Costa Rica
Tunisia
Ghana
Samoa
Namibia
Senegal
Suriname

Children’s welfare

According to Unicef's latest State of the World's Children's report, India has the worst indicators of child malnutrition in South Asia: 48% of under fives in India are stunted, compared to 43% in Bangladesh and 37% in Pakistan. Meanwhile 30% of babies in India are born underweight, compared to 22% in Bangladesh and 19% in Pakistan. Unicef calculates that 40% of all underweight babies in the world are Indian. Put all that in hard numbers and the figures are stark. Fifty million Indian under fives are affected by malnutrition. A quarter of all neo-natal deaths in the world, (2.1 million) occurred in India, says UNICEF Report 2007 .

According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, India has the highest number of street children in the world. There are no exact numbers, but conservative estimates suggest that about 18 million children live and labour in the streets of India’s urban centres. Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta each have an estimated street-children population of over 100,000. The total number of Child labour in India is estimated to be 60 million, equal to the population of UK.

Poverty

Although the poverty has declined in the last few decades, one-thirds of population of India still live below the poverty line as shown in the table below.

Poverty Indicators

Number of rural poor - 250 Million (Almost equal to population of USA)
Poor as % of total rural population, 2000 - 30.2 5
Population living below US$1 a day (%), 1990-2002 - 34.7%
Population living below US$2 a day (%), 1990-2002 - 79.9%
Population living below the national poverty line (%), 1990-2001 - 29%

India accounts for 40 % of the world’s poor (more than in the whole of Africa) and its fiscal deficit is one of the highest in the world. India ranks way down at 96 among 119 developing countries included in the Global Hunger Index (GHI). Ref: IFPRI Country Report on India

Discrimination in Judiciary

India’s subordinate courts have a backlog of over 22 million cases while the 21 high courts and the Supreme Court have 3.5 million pending cases (2006). Every year a million or more cases are added to the arrears. At the current speed, the lower courts may take 124 years for clearing the backlog. There are only 13 judges for every million people.(*)
Dr Jayaprakash Narayan of Loksatta said: "Nobody in India dares to go to a court of law unless one wants to stall some decision by way of a stay order or to harass someone. If you have the misfortune of going to a civil court and if you have the good fortune of getting a verdict delivered during your lifetime, you must be lucky. If you lose the case, you lament in public and if you win the case, you cry in private. It is a tragedy for both, goes the folklore in Andhra Pradesh"

Women Rights

Women to men ratio is feared to reach to dangerous levels by the year 2020 as female foetus killing is rampant. Ten million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either before they were born or immediately after, according to a report. On an average one Indian woman commits suicide every four hours over a dowry dispute. Rape is the fastest growing crime in India. Every hour Indian women face two rapes, two kidnappings, four molestations and seven incidents of cruelty from husbands and relatives [National Crime Records Bureau Report 2006]

Road Accidents

India accounts for about 10 percent of road accident fatalities worldwide and the figures are the highest in the world. Indian roads are poorly constructed, traffic signals, pedestrian pavements and proper signage almost nonexistent. The other reasons are encroachments, lack of parking facility and ill-equipped and untrained traffic police, corruption and poor traffic culture. According to World Bank forecasts India’s death rate is expected to rise until 2042 if no remedial action being taken. The number of road accidents in China dropped by an annual average 10.8 per cent for four consecutive years from 2003, despite continuous growth in the number of privately owned cars*.

Infrastructure

From roads and railways to ports and airports, and from power plants to hydrocarbon infrastructure, India ranks among the lowest in the world in terms of infrastructure availability. With red-tapism and corruption many projects are still on hold and takes considerable amount of time to realize. Recently, a 500m bridge(3) across the Torsha river in West Bengal took 55 years to complete after its first survey in 1953. A report by world bank ranked India 177th in the subcategory of Enforcing Contracts and it added that India's ease of doing business overall rank 120th (out of 178), which, although a substantive improvement over its previous rank of 132nd, still reflects a generally poor business environment. On the infrastructure front, the World bank came down heavily on the country saying "with severe power shortages, congested roads, and poor quality railways and ports, deficient infrastructure is a major binding constraint to trade activity in the country(4)."
One of the prominent Indian industrialist Laxmi Mittal once said that he chose to acquire steel plants abroad than in India as he didn’t want to spend half his life time chasing Babus and Netas.

Social reformers and contributions to science

India, after 1950’s, stopped producing great personalities like Tagore, Tilak, Bose and Gandhi and the social reformers like Rajarammohun Roy, Dayanand Saraswati and Jyotirao Phule are merely confined to high-school history books. Looking back at the Indian Noble laureates , Dr. C.V .Raman and Tagore were the only Indians, who received Noble prizes for their work in pre-independence times. Although, the post-independence India produced four noble laureates, Hargobind Khorana(b.1922),Subramanian Chandrasekhar (b.1910), Amartya Sen(b.1933), all of them born at least a decade before India gained Independence and Mother Teresa(b.1910), was not even born in India. Moreover, all the three post-independent noble laureates were awarded noble prizes for their work predominantly in western universities, unlike Raman and Tagore. In comparison, Hungary, with a population 10 million and after a near devastation in WW II, has produced 8 noble laureates(1) since 1947 compared to 4 that India produced with a population of a billion people.

Conclusion:

I am proud of contributions of ancient India and achievements of Charaka, Susrutha, Aryabhatta to the field of science . Our ancient literature especially that of Kalidasa, Bhartruhari is probably one of the best in the world. Our ancient schools of thought, like, Yoga, Samkhya and Vedanta are sophisticated philosophies that captured the imagination of many and Buddha, the most revered personality in the world was Mother India’s proudest son. But we are committing a serious mistake of driving ahead by only looking at the rear mirror – overtly emphasising our historical achievements and blissfully ignoring the present state of affairs by burying our heads in the sand. China is overtaking us in every field not by vainglorious statements but by actions, and the brilliance and exuberance of the Olympics opening ceremony must have hushed even the extremely optimistic loudmouths, who think India will eventually be a superpower. By the way, China currently bagged 44 gold medals and we have one and it is time we showed some humility and restraint. Unlike our father’s generation which failed us, as I have discussed in my previous blog, our current generation has a greater responsibility than ever, needless to say, ability and the means, to inspire our future generations to work for a better India.

Happy Independence Day to all.
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1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_laureates_by_country
2http://www.infoplease.com/world/statistics/2007-transparency-international-%20%20%20corruption-perceptions.htm
3 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7518043.stm
4http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Restrictive-trade-regime-gets-India-poor-WB-ranking/324548/
* http://escapefromindia.wordpress.com/

India needs a real change

An impecunious woman in her seventies was pondering at the impeccable interiors and arrogant ostentation of the shopping mall situated at the centre of Hyderabad, a cosmopolitan city in Southern India. Having spent impoverished decades begging at the same place, she has witnessed, if not understood, the transformation of India like no other. Cell phones have replaced the aging telephones, and the emerging technologies have transformed the way the Indian institutions work. Despite an unprecedented development in the last decade socially, technologically and economically, little did her position change and even if it did, it plummeted further below the poverty line. Little known Indian firms on a global stage such as Tata and Mittal have made valuable inroads acquiring multi-billion dollar western firms such as Jaguar and Corus steel and in spite of the rusting infrastructure, automobile and aviation sectors are the fastest growing sectors. This dichotomy or rather the stark contrast between the flamboyance of the mall and breakneck speed of expansion on one hand and the hunger and the indigence on the other is more likely to hit a foreigner in the face but for the city dwellers it is a common sight and barely of any consequence to their hectic lives. Besides this poor woman’s ever deteriorating poverty, there are other things that haven’t changed much and are worsening in line with her destitution. The most important one is the caste system and the apologetic attitude of the public towards this crude and primitive social system.

The caste system here that I am referring to has little to do with the Brahminic Varnashrama Dharma system i.e. the division of social structure according to Brahmanas, Kshtriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras as this stratification is a class system as opposed to caste system known as Jatis. The merits and demerits of the class system and is beyond the scope of this article as well as my knowledge domain and the caste system will remain the focal point in this critique. Moreover, my criticism focuses more on people’s attitude towards caste rather than caste system itself but I thought I wouldn’t be doing justice to the criticism without understanding the origins of the Jati(caste) system.

In the course of early Indian history, various tribal, economic, political and social factors led to the consolidation of the existing social ranks which became a traditional, hereditary system of social structuring[1]. It operated through thousands of exclusive, endogamous (practice of marrying within a social group) groups, termed Jāti. People of different Jatis across the spectrum from the upper castes to the lowest of castes, tended to avoid intermarriage, sharing of food and drinks, or even close social interaction with other Jatis. Given the diverse cultures across India with numerous tribes and clans with their own languages and dialects the Jati system has a socio-biological explanation and I think it was a natural outcome of innate xenophobic tendency i.e. (dislike against the genetically dissimilar out-group and nepotistic favoritism towards the genetically similar in-group). In Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, author James Waller argues that all human beings "have an innate, evolution-produced tendency to seek proximity to familiar faces(we could argue in this case castes) because what is unfamiliar is probably dangerous and should be avoided[2]. And this would have made sense and probably was advantageous for the community as a whole and would have fostered close relations among a particular caste. Over the generations this practice was passed down to the younger generations and it is least surprising that the caste system is still widely prevalent in India.

But in the current day India, this caste system blended with a potent mix of money and caste superiority, has transformed from a mere inter-social community to a political instrument with devastating consequences. At its infancy, what was purely an endogamous group has developed into a rigid and fundamentalist ideology which in many cases with muscle and economic power manifested itself into mainstream politics of the state. The disastrous effects of caste politics is eloquently put by Lok Satta Party President Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan –“ political parties are fanning the flames of hatred, engineering riots and fragmenting society on the basis of caste, and undermining the Constitution. While countries around the world strove for unity among peoples, political parties in India were consciously perpetuating and accentuating divisions for narrow political ends[3]”.Besides the caste system’s foray into the political stage, the country is in such a pathetic state that majority of people draw their self-esteem, self-respect and identity just by belonging to a particular caste. Hailing the superiority of caste is part of everyday conversations and children are being raised with a constant brain washing of caste superiority which accounts to nothing less than child abuse. Children grow up into adults with false sense of grandiosity and lack of empathy towards other castes or communities which could result in militant outfits such as Ranvir Sena. The caste system is an anachronistic and a regressive ideology in the 21st century and very little is being done to defeat it.


The idea seems far fetched, but I still think, another disturbing consequence of the caste system is the dowry system. I would not go so far as to claim that the dowry system is the direct by-product of the caste system but would have certainly fuelled this practice. In the male dominated where female infanticides were (and still are) ripe along with restrictions on widow marriages and Sati, endogamy which forms the basic foundation of caste system, would have created a stiff competition for bridegrooms, which in effect would have made the dowry system a common and lucrative practice. But the sad reality is that despite our moral standards have changed, it is utterly disgraceful and shameful that dowry is still rampant and often a customary phenomenon in the present day India. Slavery and apartheid, in today’s world are seen as the vilest of ideas, yet dowry and caste system which are a form of a slavery and apartheid are being practiced by every section of Indian society, rich to poor, lower class to higher class, uneducated to educated families alike.

We have entered into a new era of technology and innovation. We have such an easy access to information and knowledge that in unprecedented in history, and we have more understanding of the world than our ancestors and parents do, yet all we do is follow and rehash old stupid traditions, all in the name of respect to our elders wisdom and keeping up with our culture. I think our current generation has greater responsibility than ever, needless to say, ability and the means to inspire our future generations to free India from the clutches of caste system and the barbaric dowry system. We should tell our children that equality and empathy for others is what makes a man and gives him respect and esteem, but not the inherited caste. Marriages within the same caste should be discouraged if not completely shunned and the arranged marriages should be dumped in the dustbin of history. The oft repeated statement “we as parents know who is a better partner for our children” should be replaced by “we raised our children not to be imbeciles and but to be mature enough to take control of their own lives”. We should learn from Germans, who have defeated Nazism in just over fifty years and from Japanese, who alienated themselves from imperialism and grown into a major economic power from the brink of total destruction. I honestly think we can do the same and clean the caste politics and the social system of India, but do we have the guts to do it?



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1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste
2 http://www.reference.com/search?q=xenophobia
3 http://www.loksatta.org/englishsite/pr/2008/pr_bjy.htm