A country of paradoxes
How do you build a great India on a foundation of moral and ethical turpitude, asks ANTHONY SIMOES
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Sunday, 6 February 2011, the Herald front-page report states: ‘Goa should be the happiest state in the world by 2035; where every Goan will do well, there is harmony, pristine nature and development without destruction, eminent scientist Dr R A Mashelkar said in the inaugural lecture of the D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas at Kala Academy, Panjim on Saturday. Pointing out that innovation and knowledge will drive the present century, he said Goa – owing to its small size, high human development indices, education and widespread knowledge of English – is best suited to be a knowledge economy.’ Dr Mashelkar then went on to describe himself as a dangerous optimist. The real danger is that the younger generation may start taking the notion of India Shining seriously. They may swallow the big lie about India being the financial powerhouse of the 21st century even though they can already see and smell India – the environmental shit-house of the world.
How do you build a great India on a foundation of moral and ethical turpitude? Corruption in every walk of life, even at the highest levels of academia, plagued with more than its fair share of bogus educational qualifications, leaked examination papers and plagiarism. Surely Dr Mashelkar has experienced this first-hand. He would have seen, from close quarters, how rotten-to-the-core are our elites. He wants 1.2 billion Indians to get up each morning and say: My India. What an India that will be. Unfortunately, the idea of India exists as a figment of the imagination of about 300 million people. The other 900 million people wallow in the dirt and the poverty of Bharat.
‘On 8 January 2011 Gokul Singh Gond, of Druminia village, Madhya Pradesh, places his dead daughter Sohagvati on the back of his bicycle and pedals 10 kilometres to the nearest district hospital for an autopsy. On the same day, cricketer Gautam Gambhir was auctioned for 2.1 million dollars for the fourth edition of the IPL, the highest amount of money offered for the services of a cricketer, in the history of the game. If there are two images that could capture the idea of India in the 62nd year of its republic, they are these. On the one hand, India is poised to send its business classes to take over the world when, on the other, it condemns vast sections of its citizens to sub-human existence. The signature of the Indian republic at 61 is the almost seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the worlds of the Gokul Singh Gonds, and the rest. Of course, there was always contempt for the poor by the rich, but the biggest change in the post-liberalisation era is that the have-nots are not looked down upon, but they simply don’t exist!!!’ wrote Nissim Mannathukkaren.
Dr Mashelkar and his ilk will unwittingly misguide thousands upon thousands of youth, because they don’t see the nightmare that is hidden in the dream. So our demographic disaster becomes a demographic dividend. Our students rush to first-world destinations for education, employment, emigration or some a combination of all three. This has spawned an entire industry based on corruption, cheating, fraud… So, our ‘students’ finish up being beaten by hoodlums, or electronically tagged like stray cattle.
This is the generation that will soar and take India to its tryst with destiny, but most curiously and painfully, it will soon dawn on one that this generation’s idea of India is divested from any interest in how majority of Indians live. It does not feel that there is anything obscene in building a $1 billion dollar home in a city, in which four crore people live in slums. For it, the idea of India does not extend beyond the Tatas taking over Jaguar, or the nation doing well in cricket. The angst about the staging of the Commonwealth Games is not seen when millions of tons of grains rot in granaries in a nation where more than 75 per cent of the population live on less than Rs20 per day. The heart that swells up with pride when the rupee got a symbol or when ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ wins an Oscar, goes cold when it actually sees a person from the slum.
Twenty-four year-old Reema Bhardwaj, who was nine months pregnant, died after she was denied admission at a government hospital in Ghaziabad. The baby could not be saved either.
Yet, it remains a country of paradoxes. Despite having the tag of being known as the destination for medical tourism, India has been apathetic, even callous, about the health needs of its’ poor. Despite having cutting-edge medical technology, we appear to have scant regard for life. Reema could probably have been saved with timely treatment and more importantly, some humane behaviour in accordance with the sacred Hippocratic Oath.
One could argue that ideas like secularism is thriving considering that urban India spends more on Christmas than Diwali, and that malls in Delhi heralded-in a white Christmas last year with snow, elves, reindeers and trees studded with 400,000 Swarovski crystals! But real India will take another half a century to see Santa. Till then, the Chamars and Madigas will continue to be lynched alive, for daring to wear sandals or ride a scooter. We are still in denial that something like caste or heinous oppression based on it exists. While the Indian state would do anything to question the equation of casteism, with racism in international fora, the ‘forward’ castes among the generation text are willing to immolate themselves if there is a semblance of threat to the order decreed by Manu!
The Indian Republic is now a senior citizen and so is Dr Mashelkar. Does he care that a few months ago, Beebi Lumada, an Indian ‘house-maid’, was stranded at Muscat airport, having lost her passport. After five days at the airport, she turns delusional and dies of shock. Even when India plans to send a man to the moon, it could not send a man from its own embassy to help a poor woman in distress. The idea of India in the present, is one which curiously does not include most Indians. It is the idea of India, without the Gokul Singh Gonds and the Beebi Lumadas.
The Mashelkars of this world will only make sense when such injustices stop being associated with the idea of India. When the Indian state is not constrained to charge Dr Binayak Sen and Arundhati Roy with sedition. Until then, the Mashelkars and Kakodkars of Goa will continue to live their delusions of grandeur in their ivory towers.
What is the good of knowledge if our youth are reduced to so many programmed, computerised robots?
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Happy Birthday!
By Venita Coelho
Ever since I moved to Goa, I have had my mornings ruined by something I call the ‘Bizarre Birthday Boy Bonanza’. Open your morning paper and you are confronted with page after page filled with ads wishing some leader or the other, a happy birthday. We are informed that ‘his birth was a gift to his parents and the people of Goa’, we are invited to admire his ‘many achievements and astounding dedication to the people of Goa’. In bad verse and in worse prose, his virtues are extolled. The same face stares up at you replicated a dozen times across several pages.
Do the politicians in question actually imagine that the public takes this to be a genuine outpouring of love and affection? Do they think that such orchestrated antics buy them validity? That we believe that all these people madly love them to death and consider their birth a bigger event than the birth of the saviour?
In actual fact, the public is laughing its head off – mostly at the pug-ugly photos of the birthday boy plastered all over the papers. It’s enough to put you off your breakfast. To my mind, even funnier were the over made up and air brushed pictures of a leading politician’s daughter. If you can’t bully them with displays of power, try to seduce them. We were told that she had displayed astounding signs of leadership while in school, that she spent her time bringing succor to the poor and the sick. That, but for the slight difference in age and looks, here was Mother Teresa herself. And they think we actually believe this stuff, written by PR agents with a very loose grasp of the English language.
Let’s take a closer look at the people who have rushed into print to declare their admiration and love of Birthday Boy. Analysing the list will give you a perfect understand of exactly what interests intersect in the base of power and corruption. The list reveals the tangled web of favour trading and political equations – all out in the open, dressed up to attend a birthday party. There is business, big and small, local governance, and the local grass roots gang, also known as ‘loyal supporters’.
The business houses proudly display their names. You will find ‘ship building’, ‘industrial estate’, and plenty of construction companies. If they have gone the distance to buy an ad, you can only imagine how much more money has been contributed in less public domains. Then there are the government servants who should be ashamed to display so clearly that they are mere tools in the hands of the local power man. Yet there they go – long lists of Panchayat members, and even Zilla Members. If the names of your panchayat members appear below reams of badly written praise for a known crook and tainted minister, I would suggest that you never vote for them again.
Then there is, of course, the aam admi. Entire families put down their names in long eager lists. And here lies what is wrong with the state of Goa. The long list is actually a list of the morally corrupt and sycophantic. It is these people – rushing forward to fawn in print – who have brought Goa to the state it is. There can be no corruption without a coterie. One can understand those with business and power equations at stake doing what it takes to defend their interests. But much worse is the moral bankruptcy that expresses open admiration for a man who has got where he has, by underhanded means. When Goan families feel the need to roll over and lick shoes in print, we should worry about the state of Goa.
Corruption is the big issue of the moment in Goa. As this goes into print Goan citizens are coming together to plan a mega march against corruption.
We have already seen what the boiling over of the common man’s discontent can do in Egypt, and we can only hope for a tidal wave like that in Goa. Only a tidal wave can wash away the institutionalised, hardened structure of corruption that holds this state imprisoned.
While politicians must be held accountable and pay the price for what they have done to this state – equally must the ordinary citizen who allowed corruption to thrive, be held accountable. And in the lists of names of those who wish the corrupt a long life and happy days, we will find a starting point. If you recognise any of those names – tell them that they are not celebrating a birthday. They are celebrating the destruction of our state, and they should be ashamed.
