vagyakartha

The other day, I received yet another of those e-mailed lists that keep turning up like bad pennies. This one cited a long list of reasons why the originator is proud to be an Indian and asked, in gigantic font, “How about you?”. My reflex reaction was admittedly intemperate, albeit necessary, I think.

It is pitiable to rely on lists to augment one’s pride in one’s country of birth. These purveyors of tantalizing, but disputable or flat-out wrong, tidbits from ancient history and irrelevant trivia from today’s gushing headlines, seem to imply that the recipients’ pride in India is in as dire need of bolstering as their own. Why do such lists consist entirely of the deeds of departed Indians – those of misty millennia and those for the exercise of whose capabilities India couldn’t provide opportunities? Pride in India ought to be more fulsome, now tarnished, now burnished.

Should we be proud that Sushruta, the “Father of Surgery”, developed cataract surgery, or ashamed that millions of Indians are blinded by a lack of access to this simple procedure? Should his preceptor Dhanvantari’s Ayurveda make us beam with pride when millions of Indians continue to perish from preventable or curable diseases? Is pride boosted more by 3,000,000 resident Indians newly worth Rs 4 lakhs each, or one non-resident worth more than all of them put together?

The problem arises, I believe, from a lamentably poor knowledge of India, its past and its present. Children are taught Indian history for over five years. Their history books, I have on good authority, are exhaustive and authored by those selected with care by our HRD ministry for their skill in writing excruciatingly tedious tomes. Our children sensibly hit the delete button a nanosecond after their exams.

Our media could help, but doesn’t. Let us return to this later.

There are numerous reasons to be proud. Some can be quantified, but others neither can nor need to be. The feelings engendered by a few, like our march to independence and the principles with which it was led by our Mahatma, may be beyond our capacity to express.

And then there was the other Gandhi. She caused an entire populace to hang its head in shame by confiscating our fundamental rights, abetted by an abject judiciary. We did ourselves proud both by throwing the tyrant out and by inviting her back in when her successors were seen to be a coterie of clowns. That we continue to be a single democratic country, however fractious, chaotic, corrupt and sullied, ought in itself to be a great source of pride. Ramachandra Guha is right.

The emotions that arise when we see our list of human development indicators are vastly different from those sought by the list I received.

Shockingly, we feed our rural citizens less well than we used to - since 1973, their daily intake of calories has fallen by almost 10%, that of proteins by over 8%. About half our young children are malnourished. India’s infant mortality rate is 58 per thousand live births (child mortality is almost 90). The rates in MP, Orissa, Rajasthan and UP are worse than that in the Congo. Yet, Kerala boasts a rate of 14, just double that of the USA. We can rectify this situation.

If our treatment of children, our future, is deplorable, that of women is unpardonable. Practically every statistic relating to them is inflammatory. An incredible 95% of adolescent girls are anaemic. Some 120,000 die each year during maternity. Untold thousands are abused, raped, murdered or burnt to death, way too often for giving birth to a girl. We fail to educate them adequately, thereby ensuring their dependence on the men of their households. The picture is bad all over India, but awful in rural India.

Some definitions are necessary now. India defines an urban area as one with at least 5,000 people and a density of at least 1,000 per square mile. The World Bank and the UN define two levels of poverty: “extreme poverty” is that at which a person can afford the minimum essential calorific intake, “moderate poverty” is that at which minimum essentials other than food can be afforded. For India, these translate into average monthly per capita expenditures of about Rs 360 and Rs 720. The single poverty line defined by the Indian government is almost identical to the UN’s “extreme poverty” level. India does not define “moderate” poverty, for reasons that will shortly be obvious.

We have an excellent ministerial department called the National Sample Survey Organisation. Few Indians have heard of it. Pity. The NSSO conducts exhaustive and rigorously designed national surveys addressing such fundamental issues as consumer expenditures, education, nutrition, employment, housing, etc.

These free reports are available at http://mospi.nic.in/mospi_nsso_rept_pubn.htm.

The following are derived from the surveys conducted during 2004-05 (their enormity forces NSSO reports to be slightly outdated).

Over 240 million Indians live under conditions of “extreme” poverty – they can’t afford to feed themselves adequately. Over 790 million Indians are either moderately or extremely poor. That’s some 150 million more Indians than existed when that Grinch Who Stole Liberty campaigned under the garibi hatao (eradicate poverty) slogan. No wonder we don’t define a “moderate poverty” level.

Lest you accuse me of focusing on the dismal side of the distribution, that on the left, let me move to my neighbourhood, the right. It shows that to belong in the top 10% of households, the monthly consumption expenditure of a rural household ought to be least Rs 3,600 and that of an urban one, Rs 6,100. Among rural households, the top 10% are barely above the “moderate poverty” level. Shining indeed!

India’s fundamental economic problem is that we have way too many people whose subsistence depends on agriculture and allied activities. We urgently need to enable them to move to other sectors, without relocating – particularly the women, for women bear the brunt of poverty’s burden. We must educate and train rural Indians. We are failing. Almost 50% of rural women over the age of seven are illiterate. Of girls in the 15 to 19 age bracket, only a third still attend an educational/vocational institution in rural India, 57% in urban India. An abysmal 1.5% of rural males over fourteen have received any kind of formal vocational/professional training. Among females, the percentage is 0.6! For what kind of a future are we preparing our children?

Our politicians must be pushed; for that, we need to be far better informed. There is no dearth of information, but almost all of it is designed for data-hogs. Our media, print and television, should gather this information, analyze it and package it into understandable and appealing formats. This effort, semi-annual or annual, ought not to be a competitive one. It should be collaborative and thoroughly professional, dispassionate, comprehensive, objective and apolitical – the objective is to contribute, not criticize. To illustrate, a sponsored, sixteen page, glossy-magazine style insert (designed for saving) with both quantitative information and essays by appropriately qualified professionals would be a great service to the nation. The publication could be made more interesting by adding articles citing historical parallels and achievements, for example. The TV and web versions should be child’s play for our media professionals.

Such knowledge may lead to action. Such action will enhance pride in India.