Bull-headed about India

Current Western euphoria over India's growth betrays total ignorance of realities like the 100,000 farmers' suicides.

IF asked to identify the single most distressing recent revelation about India, I would not hesitate to cite a figure that Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar placed before the Rajya Sabha on May 18: no fewer than 100,248 farmers committed suicide between 1993 and 2003, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. This staggering number is more than twice the upper-end estimate made by some of the most trenchant critics of the country's post-1991 agricultural policy, and more generally economic policy.

The figure captures in a shocking and heart-rending way numerous aspects of Indian reality as few statistics do: acute agrarian distress caused by falling returns from agriculture (especially cereal farming), coupled with debt and usurious interest rates, and occasionally, crop failure. It also reveals a grave policy failure at a time when agriculture is running up against both an economic and an ecological barrier, with disastrous rates of topsoil loss, spreading salinity, and erosion of micro-nutrients, together with rising input costs. The causes of the crisis include dependence on energy- and water-intensive farming methods, growing chemicalisation of agriculture, and unsustainable cropping practices (for example., a rice-wheat-rice cycle in Punjab, whose soils cannot support it). However one looks at it, the crisis is grave.

It is hard to think of a parallel in history where such a large number of farmers have resorted to self-destruction in response to even worse crises. The mass-scale suicides speak of distress of frightening proportions. They point to a situation of helplessness and lack of survival possibilities in rural India and, above all, to a social pathology based on certain notions of honour, guilt and responsibility to the family, and punishment for acts not of one's own making. Only extreme desperation can impel people to take their own life. They also betray recurring government failure to take remedial action - even after nearly 18,000 suicides in 2002.

The suicides, then, are a damning commentary on India's recent economic performance and policy and our society and politics. Yet, the suicide story has not received the media attention it deserves. For a media that is bent on doing "sunshine" stories on "flavour-of-the-month" India and celebrating its "emergence" as an "economic superpower", it can at best have limited use.

This is evident today not just in India, but in the West. In my four recent trips abroad, I was struck by headlines unblinkingly describing India as the "back-office of the world" (although all our information technology-related services form a minuscule proportion of the economy and employ less than a quarter-million of our half-billion-strong workforce). Equally noticeable were euphoric reports on India's boom and wide-eyed admiration for our consumerist elite. If the "India Shining" campaign could somehow be re-launched today in North America and much of Western Europe, the BJP would win the election.

For the West today, India is seeing a "New Dawn" (the caption of Time-Asia's latest cover story and the theme of recent prominent features in The Economist and on BBC-World). It is not just bullish, but bull-headed about India. India is often paired with China despite obvious differences. It is credited with a new energy, ability to pull off frenetic growth, and a gigantic capacity to innovate and create everything from microprocessor chips and nanoparticles to pipelines and giant rockets.

China may have the advantage of low wages and long working hours, but India is seen to have skills thanks to a "superior" education system and (grossly exaggerated) accomplishments in science and technology. India's virtues are supposedly further enhanced by democracy and even the rule of law.

This is a complete inversion of the image of India the Western media painted for decades - with poverty, illiteracy, snake-charmers, sadhus and elephants as the main motifs. The new image will inevitably permeate into our media, as ill-informed but favourable opinion from the West generally does. Those who blithely call India a "knowledge society" despite a third of the population being illiterate will rave about such "overdue" recognition. The elite will strut about with even more hubris.

A reality check shows that recent growth has left the lives of most Indians unimproved, while widening income, regional and sectoral disparities. Some numbers bear recalling: declining food security and per capita cereal availability (on annual average, 7 kg lower in the last five years than a decade ago), widespread malnutrition (9 out of 10 pregnant women, and half of all children), rising joblessness (employment growth lags one percentage-point behind addition to job market), persistently high poverty ratios, and a failing healthcare system. Some of this is captured in India's embarrassing rank of 127 in the U.N. Human Development Index (out of a total of 175 nations). Clearly, the prospect for the majority remains bleak, at least under the existing policy regime.

However, even more appalling are India's social and politico-legal scenarios. Casteism and various other forms of identity-based discrimination remain rampant. The worst is systematic discrimination against women, reflected in female foeticide, denial of equal access to food and education in early childhood, virtual absence of adolescence for most girls (married off before they turn 16), biased inheritance laws, bride-burning for dowry, and vicious prejudice against widows. More generally, India is marked by growing illiberalism and intolerance, as the recent campaigns for banning books and films, and the shameful threats against artist M.F. Hussain show.

The anti-OBC (Other Backward Classes) quota agitation is a clear sign that a majority of upper-caste Hindus have not reconciled themselves to the "Forward March of the Backwards", and to greater inclusiveness in education or jobs. A recent 776-strong sample survey for CNN-IBN-Indian Express by A.C. Nielson in five cities shows that ignorance and prejudice mark attitudes to reservations: 52 per cent of those polled have not heard of the Mandal Commission and 39 per cent of the government's decision to reserve 27 per cent of Central higher education seats for OBCs. Only a minority (36 to 42 per cent) are correct about where the decision will apply and whom it will benefit. Only 14 per cent have comprehensive knowledge of the reservations controversy.

Worse, while 57 per cent of those in the total sample back the decision, the supporters' proportion falls to just 38 among the upper castes (although 46 per cent say "it will lead to equal opportunities" so much for their claimed concern for a level playing-field). Clearly, over three-fifths of the savarnas still remain hostile to a caring-and-sharing model of society.

No less distressing is the lack of moral clarity among large sections of the middle classes on issues of justice, fairness, pluralism, secularism and other constitutional values, leave alone compassion for the underprivileged. The Greed Creed promotes just the opposite of this and privileges machismo, aggression, use of unethical means, and ends that militate against the common social interest. The elite has no use for either Gandhi's notion of morality based on religious piety and personal purity, or for modernist Nehruvian public morality. It is in a deep moral crisis and cannot lead its own children, not to speak of society.

India has never been a rule-of-law society, where laws are applied impartially. But the higher judiciary played a role for a couple of decades in extending citizens' rights and making governments more accountable. That role has ended. The judiciary increasingly sees itself as a protector/promoter of neoliberal policies and global capital. It fails to apply the law of the land on diverse issues such as Adivasis' and slum-dwellers' rights, environmental pollution, toxic-waste dumping and equal access to education. Worse, it condones SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) launched by corporate interests.

This has aggravated the crisis of governance, already acute in many States. Indeed, they are now witnessing conditions of, or approaching, state failure, including the total breakdown of law and order and public services, administrative collapse, virtual goonda raj, and spiralling violence. The writ of the state does not run in one-quarter of all districts of India, which are seriously affected by naxalism.

Unable to deal with the naxalite challenge lawfully and by addressing the root causes of the social discontent that spawns it, the state is using dangerously illegal methods such as sponsoring, arming and financing groups like Salwa Judum, which is playing havoc in Chhattisgarh, dividing villages and families, and forcing tribals to attack naxalites with firearms. This is a recipe for disaster and descent into mayhem.

The outcome can be averted only if we shed our complacency and undertake radical course correction.