Middling through poverty
– 1970s India. I still remember myself as a kid, holding my
fathers hand , sometimes my mothers, getting past the dread of exams and marks,
but looking forward to that train journey that would cart us from Delhi to
Madras, on that venerable GT express. We
were firmly middle class, my father a government officer, with the Railways,
with the sole treasured perk being that first class pass, 6 times a year to any
corner of India. So from that treasured perch, a compartment with doors to our
little room with four bunk beds that would shut us from the rest of the world,
unless we chose to see it from the window.
That I did, with almost 100% diligence, peering at the gravel below, the
telegraph poles by the track, the flying stations, and the people in the
platforms, squatting on the floors, on trunks, certainly looking a lot poorer
than the dozens in the first class, who were mostly traveling free thanks to
some perk that they enjoyed. India is a
poor country our civics books said with honesty, as almost an eternal fact. Our first TV, a black and white was more than 3
months of pay. A refrigerator was two
months of salary, a kitchen blender was a week’s pay-check. We lived with limited possibilities. Our focus almost completely on furthering
ourselves and ensuring that ends meet.
Yet, pride for the country would surface – sometimes we would draw
inspiration from the past, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Tagore, they were towering figures,
sometimes from the distant past – ah in those Vedic times, we were a wealthy
nation. Someone like Akbar, or a Rana
Pratap Singh would get us to beam too.
The present day sources of pride were few and far between – our defence
forces and the brilliant war – well they attacked us first – but we liberated a
country – our heroes were Sam Maneckshaw, Gen Aurora, and Jacobs . Our little gnats could take down the Sabre
jets. But tight through the 1970s, the
600 million odd Indians were toiling away with the single minded aim of
survival – pride was an icing, a luxury.
Ah we have computers
too, cant be that poor? By the time
I was past my teens I had a ringside view of India’s scientific capabilities –
In IISc we were beaming with pride because we had the first scanning electron
microscope, in a dark room, powerfully airconditioned, with LEDs and a
scrolling screen, with a camera to take the picture of that metal at 10,000X –
we could whisper that we were second to none.
Or go at night, hack away on a typing machine to get the Fortran cards
punched, and submit a deck to the computer room, and go back and look at the
outputs the next day – damn – that typo on the 43rd card – we would
correct it and resubmit it the next day and await the output. About 2000 KM north Delhi was preening itself
for the Asian Games, Indira Gandhi allowed colour TVs, we started watching
Wimbledon live on the black and white TVs, praying that the match would get
over before the 9PM news, or they would defer the news and have us watch Borg
and McEnroe play till they dropped dead.
With a publication under my belt from my thesis and overseas admissions
and aid I was on a flight to the US, with a slight spring in my steps – we have
our microscopes and computers too, we can’t be that poor or backward as a
country, and New Delhi looked quite spiffy.
My first stint in the US was in Raleigh. NC, a town which was idyllic in
its beauty – the streets spic and span; everything was lush green. The supermarkets wonderfully airconditioned –
the cars seemed a couple of notches better than what any of us ever had in
India. 1984 was a year when India sprang
into headlines for all the wrong reasons – the Operation Bluestar which the
western media could never place in perspective – could someone imagine a state
like Connecticut separating from the US, instigated from a neighbor like Canada?
- Punjab was that, developed, prosperous, its people loved and
celebrated – and then Mrs Gandhi’s assassination and the Bhopal’s Union Carbide
disaster. The country looked chaotic,
unorganized, poor and third world. But
we had our soft corners, for those of us in the US, the first trip back home
was a journey to heaven – something that we would start counting down for
months in advance. My trip back – to be
back with the family, to see the streets of Madras, and Delhi, to be on a road
trip to Ooty, to be on the train ride from Madras to Delhi or wherever.
Nostalgia was at its best. Yet when I
rode on a cab from the Bombay Airport to Chembur, through Kalina, and Dharavi,
the starkness of India’s poverty remained etched in my memory. Will we ever get past this? Like Buddha who questioned suffering and the
GINI of his times we did too. We did not
have a formula or a solution to set any of this right. I was back in US, if there was pride in the
country it was that we were a democracy ,found
a unique way to win independence, and were backed by an ancient
civilization wisdom.
The elusive promise
of liberalization? Years
whizzed by in the US. The experiences I
gained laid a fabulous platform for professional growth, But something magical happened in India in
1991. A new leader Narasimha Rao grabbed
the moment, and converted India’s economic crisis into a spring-board for
reform along with Dr.Manmohan Singh an Oxford educated economist – this while
others were whipping up passions around caste and religion, here was a group
that had their sights set forward. We
saw what Japan, Korea, and Taiwan had accomplished by embracing market
economics – was this our magic bullet. I
subscribed to India Today, and read the business section of Times of India
while in the US, looking for signs of India galloping ahead. Yes, there were new car manufacturers,
Contessa? Nissan 118NE – a rust prone Lada with a 1975 Japanese engine, and a
Standard 2000 that looked like an elongated Ford Pinto, and of course the
Maruti. We had many motorbikes and scooters flooding
the market. There were restaurants
galore in major cities serving every cuisines, while resorts mushroomed around
all major cities if we wanted a weekend get away. And there I was back in India for good, with
tons of optimism working for a national lab, and traveling across India for
work and family and soaking it all in. My
friends and cousins said it was only the rich getting richer- the poor were
staying poor. During one of those train
rides, past Dadar, with slums choc-o-block, I wondered whether anything had
changed, and what would it take. My road
trips across south would tell me that abject poverty was no longer seen. The fact remained that while we saw progress it was not enough. Not even after PC’s dream budget of 1996/97. By 1998, we BJP clawing its into power,
mustering enough supporters to survive in 1999.
But the leader Vajpayee seemed a good man, and his cabinet were full of
stalwarts. While Gujarat lurched to the violent right, Vajpayee launched the Golden Quadrilateral, ensuring that the major
metros were linked by 4 laned highways – leap-frogging the elite into modernity
while generating thousands of jobs in rural India. His finance minister, Yashwanth Sinha, had
fiscal discipline in his veins, interest rates plummeted and the country seem
to be on a roll.. So what were we proud
of? I think there was a sense of dignity
and strength with which we dealt with Kargil, it was amazing that a government
with a badge of Hindu Nationalism would pave the way for APJ Abdul Kalam as the
President, Hitting those three figure speeds on a four lane highway felt good,
. Vajpayee campaigned with the India Shining tag line. We had only one breakthrough year of economic
growth – of 8% in those 5 years India’s
car market had barely crossed a million vehicles. More than a decade into liberalization, India
was struggling to make serious dents in poverty, The poor were voting for their wallets, and UPA got elected in 2004.
Amid the din did it
come together? In 2004, the elections brought in a regime
change – Dr, Manmohan Singh was anointed as the Prime Minister, and he brought
in a capable finance minister. But he
was a humble listener. Left leaning
economists and leaders, people like Aruna Roy and Jean Dreaze had his ears too. While continued reforms took care of urban
organized economy, the surpluses from the same were getting ploughed back into
a right to work program – called MNREGA.
The farmers were making better incomes through continued growth in Minimum
Support Price, while better PDS ensured that affordable food grains reached
most. While many questioned what MNREGA
would accomplish, it reset the market rates for manual labour. A poor labourer could earn Rs 500 for six
hours of work loading a cement truck. Manual
labour began to pay. And it had a
cascading effect. Plumbers and
electricians made enough money to have
smart phones, two wheeler sales soared in the villages; Fast moving consumer
goods found volumes in rural India.
India’s 2 wheeler sales grew 300% in a decade after 2002, car
sales zoomed 250% by 2013 from 2004. . Creating policy instruments that gave money
directly in the hands of the poor and aspiring classes had a cascading effect
on the economy. Until the financial
shock world wide in 2008, India managed to do much of this without a surging
deficit. In fact deficit was at its lowest
in 2007. The surplus that India produced
was also ploughed into modernizing its airports (Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai,
and Mumbai) and starting metro construction in several cities. Commentators started talking about eradicating
poverty within a decade, Tata wanted to mass produce a car that could be sold
at a two wheeler price to the masses. If
we wanted to puff our chests in pride, the self effacing Prime Minister was the
very opposite, he went about his business like a shy school boy, If there were corrupt ministers Manmohan
seemed to be quite content looking the other way. After all India always operated like
that? But the din of corruption and
scams was built up by the opposition. A
300% growth in GDP or 250% increase vehicle sales or 140 million Indians
escaping poverty in a little over a
decade barely won respect, while we got worked up over corruption. Real or otherwise. In the mean-while after more than 25 years
the reins of power in the Congress party was formally back in the hands of the Gandhi
family. For a society increasingly used
to meritocracy at work , in sports and more, having a less effective
family scion was at odds. Thanks to the
din of corruption. and seeing the Gandhi family back in the saddle and Hindutva
first, many voted for BJP again. While
those of us looking for pride in India failed to grasp the substantial progress in economy during the Manmohan days, we just got lost in the
din.
Data and the roar
of the lion? If Manmohan Singh
had the voice of a lamb, Modi roared like a lion. Modi had a multipronged
agenda – of making India proud of its Hindu roots, drive a majoritarian rule, reverse Article 370, and
demonstrate economic development through top down, visible projects – a 10
lane expressway, Vande Bharat trains, decked up stations, renewable energy,
digitization (nothing escapes the tax man) – while being free from the tyranny
of small change) and more. Each of these
initiatives were done under the branding of Prime Minster. Almost a decade into
the Namo regime, his branding and name are driven very effectively in social
media by hundreds of peers. The question
is have we cracked the development piece?
Of launching India into the orbit of developed nations? I go back and look at emerging economies of
the 1980s. – like Korea or Taiwan, which
were growing at 8 to 9% annum, producing almost all the goods that the world
wanted, or China between 2003 and 2018, that emerged as the worlds largest car
market, largest producer of steel, of computers, cell phones, solar panels, of
eliminating poverty and slums all together.
A trip last year from Mumbai airport to Navi Mumbai took me past Kalina
towards Sion and New Bombay. The
disparity between the glittering high rises and those on the streets seems as
stark as ever. A full 50 years after
childhood, I find many more affluent traveling in fast day time trains like
Vandi Bharat; but across the platform one may chance on a train that does
improbable destinations such as Alleppey to Darbhanga, or Kanyakumari to
Dirburgarh, or just Mumbai to Kolkatta.
The unreserved coaches are called Deen Dayalu, chances are the coaches
are packed to the brim. They are
prepared to crouch, stand or squat for 30 hours or more to go home, in UP,
Bihar, West Bengal. One would have expected a cleaner government
with a bias for action to drive higher GDP growth. But that is not to be. India’s two wheeler sales reached their peak
of 20 million in 2018 and slide down to 14 million, the same as that in
2014. Indias car sales volume is barely
35% more than the peak seen between 2004 and 2014; the market size is one ffth of China. Consumption of FMCG has continued to see
anaemic growth. The elephant in the room
is how do we address underdevelopment and poverty. The government’s answer seems to be to drive
policies that provide more amenities to the poor – in the form of piped water,
subsidized food grains or very modest cash transfers. But what has not happened is to creation of
policy instruments that increase disposable income for the poor. The per capita income gap between states like UP, Bihar have only
widened in comparison to TN, Karnataka or Telengana, or Maharashtra Unlike left leaning liberal newspapers, Times
of India peddles hope, most of the time.
Its centre page had someone from UP state – that all this Mandir is
good, but was this all distraction?
We have a living heritage: India’s cultural heritage is deep, its temples and forts and palaces remain magnificent; and amenities around them are improving rapidly. India’s music – folk and classical, poems and prose – classical or Kabir, are living traditions. India;s mind boggling nature capital - from snow clad peaks and glaciers to rain forests to montane sholas and grasslands to coastal mangroves. It is everywhere. India’s philosophy, springing from Vedanta, or Buddha, or Guru Nanak are alive and kicking. Abrahamic religions have a sound footing in many parts of the country and they contribute to the nation in a myriad ways. Just look at the cricket team – veritable mosaic of languages, religions, economic strata and see how they gel together.
So that elephant in the room?
So there is only one elephant in the room
I would like to
ask, are we on a trajectory to erase poverty and ensure that 700 million or
more in rural India and the 100 million or more living in crowded urban dwellings,
live a life of dignity, just like a government bureaucrat in RK Puram. Anything else is a distraction. If we stoke the religious divide, or obsess over Hindi, or say Tamil for that matter, we will invite other elephants into the room.
From a heart that is beating with a pinch of pride, a bit of hope, a bit of humility, and some angst.. And may be some nostalgia, because amidst the din the doctor sahab seemed to have gotten this right.
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