Chocked with mindless unplanned and grotesque development, the urban landscape of the country, dotted with RCC jungles, is getting uglier by the day. All the big cities are bursting at their seams; straining to the limit their extremely fragile infrastructure. This prosperity for less than 10% rich, powerful and privileged has robbed the middle-class India off its tranquil, peaceful quality life, infesting it instead with perpetual tension-filled days (and nights) with no respite in sight. The quality of life of educated urban middle-class India is held hostage to the higher and higher standard of living for less than 10% rich, mighty and elite of the country, who corner 90% of its wealth and scarce resources. For the teeming millions living below the poverty line, and the middle class educated urban India, growth is a mean dreaded word which means their ruthless exploitation by the less than 10% rich, mighty and powerful.
The quality of life of the nation as a whole deteriorates if the development is not tempered with equitable distribution of the national wealth and natural resources as they belong to the nation as a whole and, not to the few rich and powerful only, which, unfortunately, has been the case with our country ever since independence. (The country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru- a self-proclaimed Fabian Socialist – in actual practice promoted what may be called ‘ State Capitalism’ in its worst possible form. On the one hand, he, created hundreds of ‘white elephants’ in the form of non-productive, corruption-ridden giant industrial units in the public sector, and network of uneconomic, not even self-supportive, and wasteful autonomous bodies like C.S.I.R etc., besides multiple hugely resource-guzzling ceremonial so-called democratic institutions, and on the other sounded the death knell of the agricultural sector through sheer neglect and indifference to it.
The successive governments at the Centre, as also in several states, not knowing what better to do, enthusiastically and blindly followed all his policies and programmes - right from total neglect of the agricultural sector, small scale irrigation projects and agro-based industries, to his political creed of cultivating, fostering, nurturing and nourishing the minority (read Muslim) vote-bank through an incremental quota/ reservation agenda, which they further fortified by including several other identified targeted groups also in the privileged club of beneficiaries, that generally gets expanded by the inclusion of yet some other community or communities, usually in the run-up of general elections.
The mindless pursuing of these faulty economic policies through all these years by the successive governments at the Centre and the States, has arguably resulted in the worst form of lop-sided development and grotesque urbanisation. This also explains the paradox of as many as five Indians (gracing?) the exclusive, exalted and distinctive club of ten richest persons of the world while more populous China with a decidedly far better, the most vibrating, and fastest growing economy in the world, has not even one there in it. The reason is not far to seek. There the people enjoy a milieu and socio-economic system and mechanism which automatically ensures an equitable distribution of their national wealth and natural resources. The most egalitarian system of governance there completely and effectively outlaws corruption and corrupt practices at the high places. And here we are talking about a yesteryear nation of opium-eaters, which was brought under the Communist rule only in 1948- almost about a year after India gained Independence.
Unlike in India, the poor, unprivileged and the middle-class there is not driven, coerced and cornered to subsidise the five-star life-style of the rich, mighty and powerful through the interplay of free market forces and the State’s economic policies; even though the diabolical materialism has long come to stay as the presiding deity of their economic growth. In our country also the culturally induced old resentment about crass consumerism and diabolical materialism is slowly but surely getting enfeebled by the day.
GDP growth at 7.5% after recession, may sound good, yet is an out and out deceptive perception- it does not explain why the prices of all the essential goods and bare necessities of life have been going through the roof rendering life extremely miserable for the common man. The middle-class educated urban youth is leading the most stressful life with the job-related worries relentlessly compounding his miseries. With pink-slip always hanging over the worried heads, the life of the urban educated youth cannot get more miserable.
This paradoxical irony of the lop-sided development in which the growth rate in the Agricultural sector, in a predominantly agricultural economy, has been steadily nose-diving from zero percent to the negative figure of(-) 2% or more while rising to register a two digit figure for industrial sector is obviously the sure recipe for the rise and rise of Nexalite and Maoist insurgency in the country. The blame for which lies squarely with the government itself for pursuing faulty economic policies.
We should counter these maladies by (1) Reversing this pattern of lop-sided development and concentrating on the Agriculture sector. (2) Introducing farm reforms in a sustained manner and improving irrigation system, (3) Focusing on sustainable development and promoting labour-intensive and green industries, (4) Guaranteeing security of service, regularizing the work timings and regulating the work and employment conditions for those working in private, semi-organised and unorganised sectors and ensuring them the work conditions, at par with those in the government service.
Our mind-set should also change. We must eschew crass consumerism and materialism. If the ancient Indian wisdom and the accumulated experience of millennia are to be believed, happiness lies in minimizing the wants and, not in multiplying them. It consists not in having many things but in needing a few.
-SANJOG MAHESHWARI
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As always very thoughtful. Problem and it's solution. Firstly, we need the government should check into the rapid and unchecked development which is even consuming our farm lands. Define a green belt area where no industrial work can be done and strict the mandate on houses made on personal lands. Introduction of grass area can be the best idea of all. And then check the unruly land mafias and regularize the development area within a city. Lot needs to be done, but will it be done.
ReplyDeleteWell Rajat,Felt nice to hear from you after what seems to me-ages. Thanks for the comments. I am in total agreement with them. As has been aptly said," Mother Nature has enough for everybody's needs, but not enough for anybody's greed." No wonder quite a few of highly educated Indians take to Naxalism. What to do? Govts. pursue their pro-rich policies and agenda. Ad-hocism and opportunism rule the roost. How are you? Appears you have bid adieu to itimes. Most of my blog posts are on that place only. Don't intend to pry into private matters. Rest fine. Take care.
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