India vs. Bharat- a real life example

Yeah yeah….we all have read heard and discussed about it with our peers endlessly about it. We have been bombarded with the prestigious news magazines ranging from The Economist to The India Today about it. No brownie points for guessing……the Great India vs. Rural divide…..or the Great rift between haves and have nots….or simply put….The Great Indian dream vs the Nightmare!
Travelling to my ancestral village Madinpur yesterday, I came across a family which is quite close to us, more in a family friend kind of way to my forefathers. Madinpur was still a good hour drive away (travelling in an overloaded bus, which has service only once a day from nearest rail head- Pathankot, my native place)and we needed to rest a bit after a rickety ride. After the formalities, the usual chat session began, and I couldn’t help notice a girl around 12 yrs age doing most of the household chores. I casually asked the mother about her schooling, and her face stooped lower than current sensex levels. She told me in a part complaining, part dejected tone that getting a quality education for child is getting prohibitively expensive. They were actually thinking of getting her married in a couple of years, and so have to teach her household chores. I was perhaps prepared for such kind of reply after reading about the plight of rural and deprived Indian hinterland. But actually witnessing is really different from reading and forgetting from the B school books.
We left their house and boarded a shared auto rickshaw en route to Madinpur. The road started getting bumpier, dustier and narrower. On my way, I saw a number of small farms and yes, the ubiquitous Mobile towers on the roofs of many a villagers. With whole nation getting younger and more mouths to feed being born, will these fragmented farms sustain? We too have some land in Madinpur and I asked the caretaker about state of the affairs. His look told more than he chose to say. Dejected at the rapidly falling water levels and bureaucratic inefficiencies pertaining to elimination of middle men from the Grain Mandis has caused the persisting poverty amongst the farmers (usually small ones). Minimum Support price is all fine, but what about the filtering down of the benefits being announced in form of incentives to the production. The infrastructure too is pathetic, and makes it a nightmare for most farmers to transport their produce to the markets. A totally different view from the swanky SEZ/NEPZ of Noida or the IT parks in Delhi! How can a government ignore agriculture so much in favour of another sector? After all, this is our basic requirement. Reading about the rotting grains in the FCI godowns and food grain inflation, coupled with government mulling over buying the food grains at $ 500 from foreign markets when the MSP for wheat is Rs 1000, there seems to be something wrong somewhere! I mean, this is common sense dude! Doesn’t need a rocket science!
Finally we reached Madinpur after 55 mins of backbone breaking ride. I visited my uncle who happens to be a sarpanch there. I asked him about the role of the collector (IAS officer of the district) in development, and got the expected reply- Neglect. But he doesn’t out rightly blasted the system. He told me that the Collector of the region has been over burdened with work. And we all know of the “Well oiled machinery” that our Indian bureaucracy is! So I needed no answers from him. I just rambled off towards the village school to get my cousin, studying in standard 9th. I expected to see a bunch of children clad in shabby dresses, squatting in front of an equally uninspired teacher under a tree and cramming some inaudible words. But it was worse than that. There was no teacher on that day. He was on election duty, so the senior section of the school was closed. I asked my cousin about the internet facility in Madinpur, and got an alien expression in return. He doesn’t know what an e mail is. He is content to play the Chinese hand held bricks game which was presented to him some time back by some relative from Jalandhar. I compared it to my cousin in Mumbai, who chats on Skype to his sister in US, and plays game on PS-3!
That very moment, I witnessed the great Indian Nightmare in the making. Who wont predict a deep resentment in the have nots of the society towards the haves (us!). And this chasm is widening. Government is not putting in enough for the betterment of grass roots education. The fancy numbers ranted off during the pre election pitches are just an eye wash.
And then I wondered about my hypocrisy! It is so much easy for us to publish blogs and articles on the topic we feel strongly about. But what are we doing for the betterment. But hey! Can we really make a big difference? Can we actually go out of our ways, chuck our jobs, and form political parties and work for the grass roots. Can we actually bye pass the golden years of our careers towards the long and tiresome journey. Can we stand being outcaste from our families and society for being lone warrior? Can we imagine our peers getting ahead from us in the Hamster race (some people object to my using Rat race too often!!) Can we expect that political system will change one day from being a union of states to the federal system? Will there be any negative voting to oust the corrupt politicians?
And then I feel…..why not? I sometimes dream of an Indian form of V for Vendetta. But then I ask myself…..do I have the courage to make a difference to my surroundings? Do I have the moral courage to not give in to corruption when there are enticements galore?
India continues to prosper only externally. The country where people don’t get the desired justice for years together, where the naxalism and extremism is rising at the same rate as the increase in FIIs, where instead of abolishing the middlemen and corrupt public distribution system and malpractices in the agriculture marketing initiatives, the ilk of Mayawatis and other cry foul against organized retail, and where we talk of IIMs, IITs and the great demographic dividend at our disposal, but fail to look at the unskilled, unimaginative and pseudo literates being churned out by no other than the National Capital of India’s public schools. Where the basic amenities like healthcare is an elusive dream for millions and where for sure, the next civil war will be over water and/or food grains (the example of farmers near Gurgaon siphoning off the main water canal to their villages on account of Govt apathy seems to be lost on us recently)!
Sometimes I really wonder about this country…..my country…my motherland…India!
Is this why they say in the west that to truly see God in action, see India…coz there is no other way a country of this magnitude of paradoxes might be adding millions of mobile connections each month!