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Perspective
Slum Dogs and
White Tigers
by
Dr. Neria Harish Hebbar
 My
recent visit to India followed my reading of an excellent book by
Aravind Adiga called The White Tiger (winner of Man Booker award
for 2008). It is an account of a poor man from the lower social status,
who was crafty enough to pick himself up with his shoestrings, and
advance his career to become a chauffer for a rich family. Eventually
the only way this uneducated slum dweller mockingly called White Tiger
(bold and rare), could free himself from bondage was to commit a crime.
A similar theme is followed in the new movie Slum Dog Millionaire
(based on the novel Q & A by Vikas Swarup), which I saw on my return
from India.
 Two
brothers, victims of poverty and religious strife in the slums of Mumbai
follow two different paths. The older brother resorts to crime and
becomes a hatchet man for a mob leader, and the younger follows his
survival instincts to find work in legitimate jobs, using his wit and
talent to advance himself. In this film, virtue and vice are pitched
against each other, and of course, virtue wins in the end.
These stories ring true in the filth and the squalor of the slums of
Mumbai today. Many more impoverished lives are quietly lost or wasted,
with their stories untold. When I was in Mumbai, I saw many new
buildings and roads under construction. Monstrous high-rise buildings
are being built everywhere, with slum colonies of workers all around
them, like discarded rags, with open sewers and heaps of garbage.
The vibrant society of Mumbai has not diminished and there are many
changes clearly visible. But some things have not changed over the past
forty years I have been visiting Mumbai. It is the children begging on
street corners and at traffic lights. One can never ignore or get used
to this sight. It is the nadir of human dignity. Young girls with
infants hanging from their hips knocking on air-conditioned car windows.
Naked, skinny dark-skinned boys running the beat amidst stagnant
traffic. Pathetic blind scrawny children singing old movie tunes at
street corners, with their hands extended. Crippled children hobbling on
sticks and makeshift crutches, winding through intersections at traffic
stops. I even witnessed a two year old toddler being taught by its
mother the fine art of begging!
Many of these beggar children are manipulated by adults who run crime
gangs. They deliberately maim the children so that they may earn more
sympathy and collect more alms. Girls are sold into prostitution the
moment they come of age. The atrocious crimes against children have gone
unabated despite all the progress India has made in the economic sector.
Child labor is one of the highest in the world. The parents often have
to depend on the money the children can bring by working or by begging.
The children are the victims of abject poverty with no hope for a decent
future.
India is touted as one of the five largest economies in the world. But
the street children and slum dwellers are still living in the middle of
human waste and garbage, in poor sanitary conditions, urinating and
defecating openly like animals. Surely there are many more poor people
living a hand-to-mouth existence outside the big cities all over India.
But it is the plight of the poor children of city-slums that is
particularly gut wrenching.
The resilient population of Mumbai has bounced back. The devastation of
26/11 terror attacks is still fresh in their minds but they exhibit no
signs of anger or desperation. Indians have this remarkable attribute of
moving on and not brooding over the past. This is not a fatalistic view
but just a resignation that fate plays its hand in many ways. Their
concept of karma plays a great role in their attitude. But there is also
little talk about the destitute poor on their streets. They have been
left to their fate as well. The train of economic progress has left the
station, and there is no turning back. Hope is that everyone will get on
that train, eventually.
In a democracy, there are always obstacles. For every two steps forward,
one has to expect to take a step back. But eventually, there always is
movement in the right direction. I have heard some frustrated people say
that an autocratic government would be a better alternative, so that the
self serving politicians lose their power. But they all know the folly
of such a government because many have experienced the brief experiment
undertaken by Indira Gandhi in the 70�s with the Emergency Rule. Those
were the dark days in the history of India and people do not look at
that period with nostalgia. They would rather �suffer� the consequences
of an �imperfect democracy� than an autocratic rule. Today, thanks to
that infamous action by Indira Gandhi, Indians are unlikely to take
their rights to liberty and equality for granted. The idea of living
freely under democratic rule is firmly etched in their minds and souls.
India is a relatively new democracy. It has not gone through all the
stages of democracy yet. Alexander Tyler (University of Edinborough -
circa 1787) wrote that democracy goes through eight stages and the
process of maturation takes an average of two hundred years.
There are eight stages of democracy, Tyler observed:
From bondage to spiritual
faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back to bondage.
Perhaps India is in the middle of this process of maturation, going from
liberty to abundance. But this is the stage when there could be trouble.
Abundance may lead to complacency and eventually to apathy. When apathy
sets in, the very foundation of democracy could be in danger of
crumbling.
There is a widening gap between the rich and the poor. The middle class
in India has grown exponentially and rivals the populations of entire
nations like the United States and Russia in number. But the status of
the poor has not changed much. The burgeoning population is outpacing
the rate of progress. The opportunist politicians are still on the
prowl. A staggering 25% of the population of poor in the world live in
India. Many Indian children lag behind in nutrition. One estimate by the
United Nations shows that 40% of Indian children are malnourished.
That brings us back to the plight of children in the slums of Mumbai and
Kolkata, or those who sleep on the pavements in Chennai and Bengaluru.
In an authoritative country like China, the slum colonies are simply
mowed down and the poor are sent far away to the country side, never to
be seen again. Thankfully, in a democracy everyone has equal rights. My
faith in democracy and freedom will be reaffirmed only when all the
people are able to taste its benefits and exercise their inalienable
rights in their pursuit of happiness. Rome was not built in a day and
India is still a fledgling democracy. After all, we are only in the
second quarter of Tyler�s cycle of two hundred years of maturation of
democracy. Abundance and prosperity have not reached many segments of
the population.
Until such time, the number of Slum Dogs will not decline, and there
will only be a handful of White Tigers amongst them.
January 25, 2009
Read Also: Slumdog and
After Effects by Pramod Khilery
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