India is indeed booming. A very visible effect of this is the unprecedented amount of construction going on in the cities – office buildings, shopping complexes, residential complexes, schools, colleges, hotels, restaurants. People are pouring in from rural areas to work at construction sites and take up the thousands of other unskilled jobs that have opened up in the cities. As a friend of mine teaching in a small village observed, every family in that area was connected to the economy of Bangalore city four hours away, often with members migrating there for work.
The conditions the migrants live in when they migrate for work is abysmal. They live in very temporary shelters, typically creating a slum area next to the construction site. The area has no access to schools and if children accompany their parents to the city they often go with their parents to the work-site and play there, among the sharp stones and dust. Sometimes there might be access to a nearby government school, but admission to the school requires a transfer certificate (T.C.) which the parents might not have obtained from the school in the village they had left behind, either because they did not know or because of other reasons. If the child does get admitted the child is put in the age appropriate class. This could be the middle of the school year with the child having lost weeks or months of school already. And the village schools with their various challenges would not really have ensured that the children know what they are expected to know at this class. With students pouring in to city government schools from various villages the city government school has a real challenge teaching classes with students at multiple stages of learning and where the teacher student ratio is 1:40 or 1:50. What would be necessary would really be 10 different classes within the large class, a luxury not possible at the government school.
What is odd with this picture? Almost everything. The striking fact is that the poor, while contributing to the construction boom with their labor, do not appear to be benefiting from the boom. They get wages which are not a living wage. The wages might be a bit more than what they can get in their villages, but it does not provide for anything other than the very basic essentials; it does not even provide for decent shelter, let alone children’s education. That is the other striking fact about all this – neither the construction companies nor the government have done anything to ensure the wages the laborers get is a living wage. The wages are not enough to ensure that their children will have the same opportunities that the children of the users of the new buildings, the office-goers, the shoppers, and the apartment dwellers, will have. The construction companies benefit from the fact that the supply of unskilled labor is large, keeping wages down. The government lawmakers have not made laws to ensure fair wages, just saying that the economic boom will trickle down. Trickle down when? After the current generation of laborers’ children become laborers when they grow up? A living wage today, to take advantage of the economic boom, should include access to quality education for children, enabling them to participate in the new economy. Only then does the portrayed economic growth take one step towards benefiting all. Neither the market nor the government is taking steps towards this, and till they do so, it is up to non-governmental organizations to do what they can.
A January 17, 2008 New York Times article (link below) largely discusses and criticizes the Indian government's response to the growing gap in education between the have's and the have-not's but the author also notes that attitudes towards education are shifting, as the country shifts from an agrarian-based to industrial and skilled-labor based economy. “'Education is a long-term investment,' said Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and the government’s top policy czar."
This fundamental change in perception is important to Asha's success as a catalyst for socioeconomic progress. For example:
-More children are in school in India than ever before
-The demand for labor to create "new roads, phones and televisions," the desires of an industrializing economy, further fuels a new expectation of schools to achieve these goals
-There is evidence to support the contention that the children of a literate woman will perform better at school
-College-educated individuals receive better pay raises than illiterate individuals
-Public spending on education is about 4% of GDP
-Educational spending includes free lunches
The irony is that as India develops so quickly and offers new opportunities to the growing middle and upper classes, the poor are at an even greater risk of being left behind. They cannot afford to forgo a day's worth of labor or income in order to send their children to school even if, in the long run, an education will help them to earn a better living. This is why the changing economy coupled with a changed attitude towards education is so important--it facilitates a need for new initiatives. India doesn't just want an educated citizenry, she needs an educated citizenry for the welfare of the nation.
And while the government is taking various steps using a top-down approach, Asha addresses the problem from a different angle--grassroots efforts. By supporting local schools and programs that cater to the underprivileged and uneducated, Asha offers a real chance for India's children to partake of the country's new opportunities and increasing national wealth by addressing the issue from the bottom up. Helping to empower children, as well as their local communities also works to ensure that the next generation of youths also seek out education.
India is quite a young country. But with national attitudes on education changing, along with grassroots efforts to make a visible, lasting impact on the education of the underprivileged, all levels of India's society can share in her wealth.
-----
New York Times Article:
Education Push Yields Little for India’s Poor By SOMINI SENGUPTA Published: January 17, 2008
I had the opportunity to visit several projects in rural Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala during 2002-2005. My upbringing was typical urban middle class and exposure to rural India prior to that was mostly either theoretical or through the eyes of others (through books, newspaper articles and reports of visits by other volunteers). I used to visit my grand parents' places (which could be classified as semi-rural) as a kid, but over the years those had tapered down and the recollections were not as vivid anymore. So this was a period of discovery for me.
The first thing that struck me during visits to villages were the sheer number of men who were sitting around in groups in the middle of the day - presumably doing nothing. Casual observer could be excused if they assumed that these men were just idling away their time, but if you scratched the surface, you came to know what lay at the heart of this phenomenon. Most of these men were unskilled, agricultural laborers. and the strong seasonal nature of agricultural work meant that they went through long stretches of time without work.
It was not as if the land owners were doing a whole lot better. Over the years, agriculture itself had become more and more unremunerative..The costs of inputs in terms of seeds, fertilizers and pesticides had soared while the price that small and marginal farmers could command for their produce failed to keep pace. The shrinking forest cover, depletion of ground water resources and village tanks, erratic or inadequate irrigation facilities didnt help matters. Some tried alternate avenues like converting their fields to shrimp farms, which promised much to begin with, but left the land fallow and useless once infections started taking a toll on the shrimp. Many were either selling off lands they own or finding themselves unable to provide employment to others. The more desperate among them (and there were many) took the drastic steps of taking their lives.
The influx of manufactured goods from the towns and cities was steadily eroding the demand for locally produced goods and crafts, and with that, dried up the livelihood opportunities that were previously available in those areas.
For all the idle men folk who stayed behind in the villages, there were many more who had migrated to nearby towns and cities where they joined the swelling ranks of construction workers for the building boom that urban India was going through. Sometimes, the women and children also joined them in this migration. For the children, especially, getting uprooted from their homes, and going to an alien place represents a tremendous change which many struggle to cope with. How many of them will have a chance to go to school in the new locales, and how well their learning will their be? How do all the children who are left behind in the villages in the care of their grand parents, as their parents migrated to cities in search of work, cope?
Visiting the schools, another thing that struck me was the sheer difference in physiques between the kids there, and middle class kids in the cities. Most children in class X seemed closer in physique to class VII middle class urban kids. The malnutrition that these kids (and their parents too, for that matter) are subject to is staggering. It has a direct effect on how well they do in their studies. Speaking to them, their marked lack of self-esteem also came through. The crippling poverty on the one hand, and an education system which fails to recognize and value any of the unique aspects of their rural upbringing, contributes to this.
Under the circumstances, schemes like the Mid Day Meal program are an absolute must in ensuring students have a reason to come to school, and also in ensuring that they get at least one meal a day. The effectiveness of this program hasnt been great in many places, unfortunately.
The National Rural Employment Guarantee program, which has been implemented in many districts of the country now, also ensures that the devastating crisis that our rural areas are going through is, atleast, contained to some extent. It guarantees 100 days of manual "unskilled" work to a rural family (the word "unskilled" is an insult in some sense to the dignity of labor. The work is backbreaking and tough enough that most of the educated folks like myself would either run away from after a few days or will not be able to do half as well ad these people).
The Panchayati Raj act, which devolved more financial and implementation power to the grassroots, is another initiative that holds out much promise, though the implementation again falls short often times.
Amidst much despondency, the innocence the children still retained, in the face of such odds, was the silver lining during these visits. When asked, many still talk about their dreams of doing better in life and becoming teachers, doctors or engineers. A democracy is supposed to provide equality of opportunity to each of its citizens to realize their dreams. But many of them get to the starting line of life's race at a severe disadvantage compared to the others, and in the blink of an eye, life passes them by.
Efforts by organizations such as Asha makes sure that atleast some of these kids get their due in life. This recognition is what keeps me going as a volunteer.
No one gave us a chance. No one thought we will preserve democracy all these 61 years, barring a 2-year aberration during the emergency years. Statistically, India's democracy is a major outlier. Given its low levels of income and literacy, and its high levels of social conflict, India was "predicted as [a] dictatorship during the entire period" of a study conducted recently on analyzing the relationship between democracy and development in 135 countries. Statistically countries go through dictatorship and authoritarian regimes through their poverty eras, before becoming democratic, and it was found that "the odds against democracy in India were extremely high". The forces that divide India are many, caste, religion, language, class, to name a few -- with gender a uniform discriminative axis across each divisive force. Enough has been written about these divisive elements. What are the forces that keep India together? What are these elements that have helped us transcend or contain the cleaving forces of caste and culture?
In the general elections of 2004, 400 million voters exercised their right. Back in 1952, in the first general elections 46% of India turned out to vote in what was world-wide termed as the "biggest gamble in history". Over the years this has increased and since the late 1960s, three in five eligible Indians have voted come election day. The corresponding percentages in local assembly elections have been even higher. India is probably the only democracy where the voter turn out of the marginalized classes are higher than that of the privileged groups. So, is the right to choose, freely and fairly, a uniting factor for all Indians? You only have to take a gentle look behind this process, and the picture is less than rosy. Most political parties are family firms. Most politicians are corrupt, and many come from a criminal background. Many institutions central to the functioning of a democracy, including a justiciable code of laws and their fair enforcement, have declined precipitously since their days of inception. The percentage of truly independent minded civil-servants has declined, as has the percentage of completely fair-minded judges.
Typically most nationalist movements (in the western world and otherwise) have been glued by a common language or a common religion. By contrast, the Indian nation does not privilege a single language or faith. There are sufficient examples to see the success of minorities in India through the system. It may not be far fetched to say that the unity of the Indian nation and pluralism of language and religion are inseparable. Yet, once again, the contradictions are not hard to see. From the original Jan Sangh slogans of "Hindi, Hindu, Hindustani", to Delhi in 1984, to Godhra and Gujarat of 2002, the minorities have suffered grievous loss of life and property. And in further keeping with the contradictions, for the most part, the minorities appear to retain faith in the democratic and secular ideals of the Indian constitution.
Was the fact that English survived as a language in India a uniting factor? It is easily arguable that large parts of India dont speak or understand English. Yet, it was English that was chosen as the language of governance at various levels, and is easily the language of the pan-Indian elite. The percentage of folks bound by English is not trivial, and as the historian Sarvepalli Gopal writes, "the knowledge of English is the passport for employment at higher levels in all fields". Javed Akhtar, a noted Hindi and Urdu poet once remarked with great insight -- "Apart from all the geographical states, there is one more state in this country, and that is Hindi cinema". Bollywood has undoubtedly been an enormous contributer to the national unity as well.
The question then to ask is, is India a proper or a sham democracy? Can electoral rights, pluralism of language and religion, a foreign language (English), and Bollywood keep India together? Building democracy in a poor society was always going to be hard. Nurturing and rearing secularism in a just-divided country was even harder. And in these 61 years we have come a long way in fulfilling these dreams. There are many holes that need to be plugged. Holes so large, that they threaten to flood the boat. And yet, India stands afloat today, mostly proud. Today, outside of the political and economic sphere of India, there are many discussing the true meaning of individual freedoms. Many who are pointing out the chinks in our armour. For a liberal democracy, India treats individual freedoms of its citizens with great disdain. But a new generation of young India is discussing this. In small groups, in small pockets, and making little changes. For those who wish to see it, the pattern is obvious. A hundred years ago, the idea of political freedom in India was a matter of debate in the parlors of the educated elite. In small groups, in small pockets, and making little changes. Happy 61!
|
|
