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Opinion    
Back to the Future
India Darshan

What of India? A marg survey[[1]22] of Indian youth attitudes in 31 cities reveals:-

• for 32% money is valued most of all; 

• for 31% self-respect is most important; 

• for 11% social status is most valued;

• for 9% the sense of accomplishment is valued;

• for only 3% honesty is valued most; for only 2% hard work and courage are most valued.

“This is the here-and-now generation,” writes Carole Andrade, “who want to amass wealth, have good times, experiment with sex, be concerned only with comfort without being bothered about the future in real terms.” [[1]23]

A survey by FORE [Foundation for Organizational Research and Education] [[1]24] in six state capitals reveals that since 1983, when earning a lot of money was a low down tenth in priority, it has soared in 1994 to become the obsessive focus as the be-all and end-all. Creativity, security, stability, integrity and being useful to society are of no concern. Such young over-achievers are perceived as high-handed, abrasive, ferociously demanding instant gratification and, if denied, changing jobs frequently. The consumerist blitz launched by the TV and media is blamed for fueling exaggerated ideas of personal worth and the sense that an ever-increasing bank balance or possession of expensive goods can be one’s sole claim to fame or even to acceptance by one’s peers. This is accompanied by an incredible burn-out rate. Yet, we seem to be blind to the implications of the social chasm deepened and the tensions heightened by fresh MBAs getting annual salaries averaging Rs.18.3 lakhs, with a maximum of $225,000 from multi-national firms, while the indicators of rural poverty shoot up by 14 to 43% (1993) following the economic liberalization.[[1]25] Even more interesting is the finding by Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor at Stanford Business School, and Christina Fong that studies by consulting firms and investment banks--who are the major employers of MBAs--indicate that non-MBAs fare just as well in their careers.[[1]26]

It is useful to compare this with the attitude of their American compatriots, as it shows how Indian youth are following role models which are no longer current in the West. The MBA was invented in America in 1908 and commands tremendous dominance in the job market. Listing their reasons for choosing a career, the batch of 1993 in Harvard Business School ranked as most important the job content and level of responsibility followed by company culture and the caliber of colleagues. They preferred a high level of social responsibility. Surprisingly, salary ranked a poor seventh in their list of priorities. And yet, in describing what they detest, these young high-fliers sound quite akin to the Indian M.B.A.s, namely, firms where mediocrity instead of risk-taking higher performance gets rewarded; where it takes too long to get adequate responsibility and rewards; where flexibility regarding when and where to work is inadequate and one gets easily stuck in a dead-end job.[[1]27]

Aspen Institute’s Initiative for Social Innovation through Business (ISIB) conducted a continuing study (1999-2001) to measure attitudes of 2200 MBA students from 13 major international business schools towards business roles and responsibilities and how MBA education affected these. The study came out with six major findings:

• They believe they would provide more balanced leadership than business leaders do currently by giving greater consideration to social and environmental concerns.

• During the 2 years of study they shift their priorities from “customer needs” to “shareholder value”, thus narrowing their sphere of concern from societal to corporate and copying current corporate leaders in privileging shareholders over other stakeholders in making business decisions, but they would prefer a balanced stakeholder approach.

• They will have to make decisions in business that will clash with their values and in such cases most would look for another job instead of comprising to work within a firm whose values clash with their own. They are pessimistic about corporate organizations being receptive to any value-driven change that, as managers, they might attempt and they expect value clashes.

• Actually, the students are not sure what “social responsibility” is. Many think it is creating a happier and more productive work force that is the job of the HR department.

• They would like their course to show them how fulfilling social responsibility is financially beneficial and would prefer that it is part of the core curriculum instead of featuring in the electives.

In Aspen’s dialogues with business leaders and executive education meetings a consistent message has come through: the world needs not only new skills but also an understanding of the interdependence of business needs and societal concerns. The very fact of globalization of the marketplace is dictating a need for “stewardship skills” blurring distinctions between private and public concerns. Business is facing the challenge of solving complex social and environmental problems because of which they require managers able to understand diverse cultural, social and political systems and cope with vastly different infrastructure and resource issues while working in the Third World. Yet, pressures on time drive out the complex processes needed for covering the latter in management education.[[1]28]

A study of 2000 Indian managers found that over 70% of them believed that a majority of them fell into the category of “values weak, skills strong”. The Indian corporate sector is seen today to be facing a five-point crisis of leadership, mobility, focusing, empowerment and vision. Grabbing power for personal ends is as much a trait in Indian business as in American. The vision of J.N. Tata is lost: “The whole of the wealth is held in trust for the people and used exclusively for their benefit. The cycle is thus complete; what came from the people has gone back to the people many times over.”[[1]29]

Chin-NingChu warns, “When a nation begins to disproportionately place value on individuals who can generate the largest sum of money within the shortest time as a measure of success, the nation’s character has to suffer.” She goes on to make a telling point: “What would America be today if,  two hundred years ago, our founding fathers and early settlers had been driven solely by the desire for instant gratification?” [[1]30]

The Indian scene in the context of the changes presaged by globalization presents a disturbing picture. [[1]31] What immediately springs to view is the incidence of violence bred by the consumerist principle underlying the western acquisitive world-view and the murderous competitiveness it spawns. In his 1996 address to the nation on Republic Day eve, the President of India urged overcoming the interconnected evils of communalism, casteism, corruption and criminalization which “are operating in tandem.” The main issues are:

• Corruption is destroying public morale. On the Golden Jubilee of Independence the Prime Minister called from the ramparts of Red Fort to fight this hydra. India’s ranking in corruption by Transparency International has steadily risen from 66th in 1998 to 71st in 2002, making it the 31st most corrupt nation.[[1]32] The Political & Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd’s report of what foreign company executives believe about corruption in Asia reveals that India is getting more corrupt, being the second most corrupt nation after Indonesia, followed by Vietnam, with Singapore remaining the least corrupt since 1997. Corruption in India unfortunately affects ordinary people’s daily lives in basic ways, unlike the massive scandals in the West.[[1]]

• After the hawala and housing allotment exposures leading to resignations of several Union Government Ministers and their indictment by the Supreme Court, the gawala (animal husbandry) and cobbler scandals in Bihar and Assam, the arrest of the Chief Minister of Bihar and a former Chief Minister, the multi-crore telecom, urea, sugar and medical equipment purchase cases, the sensational Tehelka video-tape revelations of corruption in defence purchases, the conviction of the former Prime Minister and the ex-Home Minister of India, successive Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu arresting each other and their retired Chief Secretaries along with the conviction of one Chief Minister and senior bureaucrats, the lurid mythology of corruption has been revealed as only too vividly real.

• There have been at least ten major scams since 1992, leading to the last decade of the century being termed “the scam decade.”[[1]33] This spans the entire spectrum from government to the private sector (the financial securities and stock exchange scams, the conduct of the Chairmen of SAIL, TELCO, ITC and the Indian Bank). In disgust, the Chief Election Commissioner exclaimed: “I have been, since the last four years, searching for one square foot of this country which is made up of dry sand…I am looking for dryness which is not impregnated with corruption…every single institution in this country is centrally eroded by corruption…rub off that statement which says below the three lions Satyameva Jayate and change it to Rishvateva Jayate. What else will be more appropriate?”[[1]34]

• The Vohra Committee Report tabled in Parliament speaks of the mafia network “virtually running a parallel Government, pushing the State apparatus into irrelevance,” of “a politician-bureaucrat-underworld nexus,” (as a case in point, the Report describes the case of Iqbal Mirchi, a petty smuggler of foreign liquor and cigarettes, who has become a billionaire in just four years) and of even the judiciary falling prey to the mafia (the Patna High Court has found at least 70 cases of forged judicial orders involving lawyers and court staff while 3 Punjab High Court judges are involved in the PSC scam of selling government jobs) which has caused “a sense of despair and alienation among the people.”[[1]35]

• The 2002 report by TI, entitled Corruption in South Asia - Insights & Benchmarks from Citizen Feedback Surveys in Five Countries, identifies high levels of corruption encountered by citizens attempting to access seven basic public services. In India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, 100% of respondents that interacted with the police during the past year reported encountering corruption. In Bangladesh, this figure was 84% and in Nepal, 48%. In their experiences with the judiciary, nearly all Indian (100%), Sri Lankan (100%), and Pakistani (96%) households polled reported paying bribes. Judicial corruption was also significant in Bangladesh (75% of users) and Nepal (42 % of users). After the police and judiciary, land administration was identified as the next most corrupt sector across the region, according to the experiences of South Asian households. In Pakistan, 100% of respondents with experience with the land administration authorities reported corruption and in Sri Lanka this figure was 98%. Land administration was somewhat cleaner in Bangladesh (73% of users reported corruption), India (47% of users) and Nepal (17% of users).[[1]]

• The President of India in his speech to the nation on 15th August 2000 condemned the unholy alliance between criminals and politicians. Dr N. Vittal, the Chief Vigilance Commissioner, identified five main players in the field of corruption: the politician (neta), the bureaucrat (babu), the businessman (lala), the NGO (jhola), the criminal (dada). He pinpointed five causes behind corruption flourishing: “(i) scarcity of goods and services, (ii) lack of transparency, (iii) red tape and delay due to obsolete rules and procedures which are time consuming and encourage speed money, (iv) cushions of legal safety which have been laid down by various pronouncements of the courts and CATs on the principle that everybody is innocent till proved guilty. The net result is that the corrupt are able to engage the best lawyers and quibble their way through the system…These five reasons are a mutually reinforcing vicious cycle of corruption.”[136]

• A tremendous rise in all kinds of violence: anti-state, inter-group, intra-familial, mob frenzy. If we shudder at children battering other children and the aged to death in England, the scene is not much better back home. In September 1995 in Orissa 3 boys aged between 10 and 12 murdered a 10 year old playmate. Police have found formal applications from rural youth (some of whom are post- graduates) to Bombay dons declaring their admiration for the gangsters’ style of functioning and begging to be allowed to carve out careers in crime under their guidance. The connection between the mafia and the Bombay film industry has been blown wide open. The National Crime Records Bureau finds that the percentage of ‘heinous’ crimes (murders, rape, theft) in which children are involved rose from 5.8 in 1992 to 6.5% in 1996 while 56% of all crimes are committed by those between 16 and 25 years of age.[[1]37] The Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission has indicted TV for promoting indirectly the psychology of violence and being even more dangerous than AIDS.[[1]38] The Chief Election Commissioner very perceptively pointed out the cause of this outbreak: “Corruption and money power are taking over everywhere. There is a developing loss of faith in the machinery for the redressal of grievance…On anybody’s side there is no accountability… What is the external manifestation of all these ills? It is societal violence. When a society cannot contain any more of its griefs and angers, it erupts in violence.” He goes much farther and indicts the people directly: “The centrality of Indian politics today is cash, criminality and corruption…you are responsible. This country sat and watched every single thing that was central to our existence being destroyed by repeated blows on the body politic and everybody kept quiet saying that this doesn’t concern him.”[[1]39]

• A tacit acceptance of the criminalization of politics and a growing insensitivity to murder, bloodshed, gang-wars, rape, bribery. Daylight shoot-outs have become common in Bombay and the Gujarat riots of 2002 have seen the state government unashamedly turning a blind eye to horrific atrocities despite strictures by the National Human Rights Commission. In Haryana five Dalits were massacred by a crowd celebrating Dussehra for skinning a dead cow, for which they had a licence. The Chief Election Commissioner stated [[1]40] that in Uttar Pradesh 180 out of its 425 M.L.A.s have criminal records; that in the last elections in Bihar 243 candidates had criminal charges against them; and in Calcutta’s 1995 municipal elections a criminal won as an Independent candidate and was wooed by both the major political parties for swinging the balance of power in their favor. One recently elected MP is charged with 57 cases of murder and dacoity and the courts have criticized Government’s move to withdraw criminal cases against such persons as politically and caste motivated. G.V.G Krishnamoorthy, Election Commissioner, in a press note in 1999 on “Sample Profile of Criminalization of Politics” states there are 40 MPs and 700 out of 4072 MLAs involved in criminal cases in 25 States and 2 Union Territories.[141] In an astonishing display of brazen shamelessness and remarkable unanimity, in July 2002 all 21 political parties rejected the Supreme Court’s directive empowering the Election Commission to seek details about a candidates assets, criminal antecedents and educational qualifications.

• The Vohra Committee Report bluntly speaks of narco-terrorist networks prevailing in several states. A meeting of all Chief Secretaries of State Governments with the Cabinet Secretary in November 1996 stressed the need to break the vicious nexus between bureaucracy, crime and politics, significantly avoiding mention of who is to bell the cat. Parliament in its special session to commemorate the 50th year of Independence adopted resolutions against selecting for elections candidates with criminal records. Yet, in successive elections, parties have persisted in putting up candidates with prominent police records. Allied to this is the alarming phenomenon of the criminalization of the elite caused by “rampant, runaway consumerism,” writes Praful Bidwai, “…as a result of neo-liberal economic policies…and the official inclination to see signs of ‘progress’ in greater, unbounded, mindless consumption.” He blames the absence of ethical and humane content in our education which fails to inculcate any values of responsible citizenship, encouraging the decline of society into a Hobbesian state which is nasty, brutish, short. Side by side with the absence of effective internal restraints is the decline of external deterrents with the rule of law itself seeming to waste away.[[1]42]

• Rapid spread of dowry cutting across caste, sect, religion, class, region has increased intra-familial violence enormously. It has particularly infiltrated the higher civil services where dowry up to a crore of rupees is being taken despite the existence of legislation which they are duty-bound to implement.

The UNDP’s latest report ranks India 124th, down from 113rd last year, towards the bottom of the international list. The liberalisation of the economy led to a decline in employment from 2.5% during 1983-94 to 0.98% from 1994-2000.[143] The U.N. Gender Development Index ranks India 103rd among 130 nations in terms of the status given to women (Human Development Report 1996). In terms of the Human Development Index 1998, based on longevity, knowledge and standard of living, India scores 139, far below Sri Lanka (90) and even below Myanmar (131). The gender ratio has shrunk from 945 girls to 1000 boys in 1991 to 927:1000 in 2001, showing the obscurantism that rules so strongly in the country that shuts its eyes to the brutal truth by boasting of worshipping woman as mother and goddess. The Indian family largely practices child marriage; gang-rapes the sathin (social worker) who dares to protest; reviles inter-religious and inter-caste marriages to the extent of murdering defiant couples; demands huge dowries; beats, bullies and burns wives; tolerates bigamy and even celebrates it in political and cinematic stars; resists maintaining abandoned wives; insists on male children; practices female foeticide and infanticide; neglects, under-nourishes and deprives its daughters of education; does not acknowledge the equal right of woman to patrimony and equal wages; abuses aged parents, looking upon them as liabilities.[[1]44].

Dr Mallika Sarabhai [[1]45] paints a scathing portrait of the moral decrepitude of Indian society after the Gujarat 2002 riots:

‘There is a wonderfully pragmatic system in Buddhist Thailand of ensuring one’s entry to heaven. All good deeds have been given points, and by performing them, one adds them up in one’s heaven counter…People go around with little notebooks in their purses or briefcases, toting up points… In today’s India, a similar book would read something like this. Helped in looting minority shops and managed to get free shoes for the whole family— 30 points. Didn’t get my hands dirty by helping a cyclist who was knocked over, therefore protected my family from police nuisance— 15 points. Encouraged my child to feel he belongs by saying the correct slokas/hymns/verses from one holy book while burning one of the others— 40 points. Didn’t raise my head to protest against the rape of a minor girl, thus conforming with the majority— 30 points. One’s route to heaven brightens every day. Global-I-sation has swept our country in a big way. With each passing minute, the circle of people or institutions that we consider our concern, draws closer and closer to the I of global-I-sation. We used to protect our village. But now the village is divided into castes and communities. We used to protect our caste, but that too is now divided into gotras and sub gotras. We used to protect our families; but after all, daughters-in-law don’t really belong to our families. We used to protect our offspring; but then daughters are going to go off to other families anyway, so how do they matter? We used to protect our wives; but frankly wives are replaceable. So that leaves us. Sorry, that leaves me. As we Indians seem to be following Nazism in so many ways just now, in so many hidden and no-so-hidden garbs, perhaps a paraphrasing of my favourite (and blood-chillingly real) German poem wouldn’t be amiss:

“When they came for the Darkies, I didn’t say anything for I wasn’t a Darkie
When they came for the low castes, I didn’t say anything for I wasn’t a low caste
When they came for the maimed, I didn’t say anything for I wasn’t maimed
When they came for the women, I didn’t say anything for I wasn’t a woman
When they came for the minors, I didn’t say anything for I wasn’t a minor
When they came for the weak, I didn’t say anything for I wasn’t weak
And when they came for me, no-one said anything,
For there was no-one left to speak.”

‘Yes, we have become amoral in our blindness. In our self-centeredness. In our destructive belief that the world and life is about I, for I, and that everything can be used, misused and abused as long as it is for the greater glory of I.”

• The traditional family ties and respect for elders has broken down. A 65 years old dalit woman complains that today--she calls it Kaliyugam-- the younger people forcibly stop them from working for upper castes but do not provide them sustenance. Instead, “they beat their parents, wives and sisters indiscriminately (and) instead of finding a job, they take away the money that our young girls earn. They abuse everyone at home in filthy language, despite their higher education.” A 67 years old dalit man stated, “Even before they grow a moustache, they have a concubine. They don’t go for work. If the parents ask them, they beat the parents up. They drink a lot.” As for the girls, a 63 years old dalit man complained, “They wear ‘Jannal’ (window) design blouses and the cloth is also transparent...It is impossible to control the present-day employed women. They argue with their parents; do not respect their brothers; and do not wear decent dresses.” On the other hand, the working dalit woman complains that even younger brothers spy on them and through threats seek to control them because of the belief that keeping one’s sister under control is a proof of manhood.[[1]]

• With the surge of infotainment, satellite TV has ushered in a climate of sexual permissiveness and violence into the living room both in villages and cities through over 50 million TV sets, breeding consumerism (neighbor’s envy, owner’s pride) at a frenetic pace. Advertisers spend about $300 million annually on television to pander to the lowest impulses. Yet, in neighboring China satellite dishes are outlawed and cable is strictly controlled; in Singapore and Malaysia MTV is banned. In India the government TV channel beams MTV at a time when children are back from schools and colleges while parents are still out at work. The report of the Media Advocacy Group, commissioned by the National Commission of Women and the Jamia Millia University, reveals the obsessive focus of satellite TV programs on using sex to sell products regardless of the deleterious impact on our cultural fiber which holds the vast nation together.[[1]46]
  
  Playboy and Spice Network, the two major companies in the cybersex business, have moved into Latin America and Asia, estimating that within the next decade at least half of their television revenues, from pay-per-view shows, will come from abroad. While phone sex-chat services and their advertisements are banned in Germany and some other countries, these are freely publicised in India. [[1]47]

• All this is creating a milieu where goods are bought not because they are needed but because one’s status depends upon what one has, not on what one is. Veteran journalist Sham Lal perceptively points out that the new global order has emptied the idea of the world as one family, vasudhaiva kutumbakam, of all moral sense, purged it of sentimental claptrap about mankind sharing the same existential predicament. It has no use for those (and this includes whole nations) who have nothing to sell or buy. “It turns everyone,” he writes, “be he an artist, a writer, a politician, or a physician, into a salesman or an avid consumer of sales images.”[[1]48] That is why Nani Palkhivala voices a trenchant warning: “Professionals should cultivate their mind—without the sole motive of offering it as a commodity for sale in the market place. No professional is worthy of his profession if he has become an animated cash-register. All great thinkers have emphasized the ‘S’ factor—service to society.” [[1]49] Hence, the gulf between the haves and the have-littles or have-nots is widening sharply, adding yet another tension beyond those of caste, religion, language, region, status already burdening the poor. This bodes ill for social stability. The warnings are evident in the popular uprisings in Philippines (1986), Myanmar (1988), China (1989) where the poor took to the streets. How is it that our intelligentsia remain blind to these lessons of the recent past?

• A distinct teenage culture has developed, intensely subject to peer-group pressures because of the TV blitz. The youth are constantly being bombarded with the message that to be rich is to be happy. This is seriously affecting children who are now refusing to accept one standard of conduct for their parents and a different one where they are concerned. The loss of spirituality has accentuated the burden of peer-pressure and premature adulthood these children have to cope with. Carol Andrade points out:
  
  “Faced with the barrage of media images, reprehensible role models, a drop in societal values that sneer at qualities like honesty and integrity, can parents keep their children safe?…If we are not to suddenly be catapulted into a society of precocious, scheming, ambition driven monsters, parents had better wake up and take a good look at themselves and the values they are perpetrating. On second thoughts, it may already be too late.” [[1]50]
   

• Advocacy of merit is seen as reactionary. Centers of learning are cockpits for caste, regional and linguistic conflict and intrigue. The Supreme Court recently quashed the appointments of 3287 primary school teachers in the districts of Medinipur and Malda in West Bengal because of gross irregularities. Sunanda Sanyal writes, “Unable to deal with corrupt politicians, society demands an impossibility: let our schools impart value-oriented education.” He quotes Rajshekhar Basu, renowned litterateur, who warned soon after Independence, “As it is, our future is doomed unless we reform our character.” Sanyal refers to the great educationist, Dr. Bhabatosh Datta, saying that the problem is not one of listing the values lost, nor one of suggesting what should be done to retrieve them but who is going to do what should be done. [[1]51]
   
  That is why Amrita Pritam, pleading for a change in our system of education, exhorts that the change required “is one of approach of the mind…Too much acquired knowledge, which is what the present system emphasizes, isn’t beneficial ultimately. In fact, it is harmful in the long run. Acquired knowledge makes you clever. What is required instead is inner awareness, which the present system doesn’t provide an environment for.” [[1]52]
  
  T.N.Seshan urges, “India is now rapidly recognizing that you can acquire far more knowledge with far less wisdom. You are teaching your children all kinds of technical things—bits and bytes, flips and flops—but you are not teaching our children fundamental ethical values which are not comparable…are not relative ethics…the fundamental ethics of truth, compassion and humility have gone out…We have forgotten our ancient culture. Now we have only the modern culture of rock and rap and crack and smack and heroin…The fundamental question is to get back to the question, what is happening to basic human values?…The fundamental evil in the world today is that knowledge is outstripping wisdom.”[[1]53]

• Wealth and power (artha) have become sovereign, cutting loose from dharma, the moral realm, and are used to gratify the basest desires (kama). The 1996 international AIDS conference provided the stunning revelation that India has the world’s largest HIV affected population (3 million) and the number is increasing.[[1]54] Nowhere else in the world does religion flourish so pervasively, and yet our values remain a mess. Naturally, one wonders whether that is because of too much religion? [[1]55]

• Spread of stress-related ailments has kept pace with the increase in competitive culture. 

• The recurring phenomenon of students committing suicide during the school-leaving examinations has failed to arouse rethinking about the brutally competitive system. 

• Surveying India in the new millennium, Sainath[[1]56] writes, “Net-Worship is the main feature of the techno-cretinism that dominates the Indian media” and, tragically, those living on the margins of society who would actually benefit from the IT boom are deprived of its benefits. He finds that “policy is shaped less and less by people’s representatives, more and more by technocrats and corporate bosses, Indian and foreign.” He predicts that in the future the state will abdicate control over levels of literacy, equality and poverty in the interests of the elite in society.

• Nani Palkhivala,[[1]57] the eminent jurist, provides an overview of the Indian situation:

  “In the last four years, India has advanced economically and witnessed virtually a rebirth of liberalization. But, politically and socially, we have suffered an equally marked regression.

  “Casteism is in the ascendant and has risen higher than ever before since we became free in 1947. Men far below the national average, in point of character, get elected on considerations of caste and creed, region and language. Casteism is the curse of India, even as tribalism is of Africa. India has been paying the highest price ever paid by any country for democracy…The greatest crime of our government against our people has been the failure to impart education. Politicians have a vested interest in preserving illiterate and unthinking vote banks. According to a report of the World Bank by the turn of the century India will have more illiterates than the rest of the world put together (the 1991 census reports 321 million illiterate people, the largest in any country). Today the people of India associate democracy with guns, goons and gold. One of the most thoughtful remarks of De Tocqueville was that democracy throws mediocrity into power. But the situation becomes intolerable when democracy throws criminals into power…Democracy can become so degraded and depraved (as in the Emergency) that people may yearn for a change. The Indian people may lose their freedom again, or, alternatively, the country may suffer disintegration. It is a sad apprehension of what can happen if the present decline is allowed to continue.”

•  

• Yet, instead of devoting additional resources annually of 0.5 to 1% of the country’s GDP to making the fundamental right to elementary education (so pronounced by the Supreme Court in the Unnikrishnan case in 1993) a reality, the policy makers propose to spend six times as much on increasing salaries in the losing public sector! Their conscience is salved by conferring the Bharat Ratna on Amartya Sen (after he got the Nobel Prize) who has been urging a constitutional amendment to make elementary education a fundamental right.

•  

• Speaking of six fatal mistakes in the past fifty years that have dragged the country down, Palkhivala continues, “The fourth major mistake of our Central and State governments was to completely insulate the people from our ancient culture and keep them totally ignorant of the priceless heritage which has never been equaled by any other country.”

•  

• The novelist Nirmal Verma laments, “In the half-hearted process of trying to become ‘modern’, we have dried up even those life-giving sources which, in the darkest periods of historical crises, kept the flame of hope alive. By slavishly imitating the dazzling ‘models’ of other cultures, we have destroyed our own spiritual habitat, turning ourselves into orphaned refugees in our own native land.”[[1]58]

In 2002 the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC) in its report accused the government of neglecting the people: self-governance having been neglected, the people have no effective say in their social, political and economic destiny and the administrative system has been so designed as to limit the sovereignty of the people to the right to cast votes in elections. Since public servants and institutions pay lip-service to being servants of the people, citizens have lost faith in democracy and “needlessly harsh, lugubrious, unimaginative and indifferent administration” has pushed the poor to the wall. The crises of leadership, said the Commission, have led to creation of extra-legal systems, parallel economies and, as the Vohra Committee recorded, even parallel governments.[[1]59]

The question is: How many among the intelligentsia are alive to this crisis and are willing to act as agents of change for formulating and implementing a turn-around strategy? None among them seems to have been struck with shame that Winston Churchill’s statement, when the Indian Independence Bill was being debated in the House of Commons, has been proved shamefully prophetic. He warned that passing of the bill would mean “to hand over the destiny of hungry millions into the hands of rascals, rogues and freebooters. Not a bottle of water or a loaf of bread will be free and the blood of hungry millions will be on the head of Mr. Clement Attlee. India will be lost to political squabbles… Today we hand over the Government to men of straw of whom no trace will be found in a few years.” [[1]60]

– Pradip Bhattacharya
May 11, 2003

References

References

Back To The Future

–  Westerners on the West 
–  The New World  
–  The First World  
–  The Western Response  
–  The World Situation 
–  The Eastern Scene 
–  Changing Asian Values 
–  India Darshan 
–  Urbanization, Globalization and Consumerism
–  Possible Solutions 
–  Bureaucracy in India  
–  The Counterpoint  
–  India's Heritage  

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