India’s poverty and riches – A look from outside by an insider.
These days, one of the questions that is becoming increasingly difficult for me to answer is, “Where do you come from?” When people ask me “Where do you come from?” I keep wondering if I should be saying …
- I come from London, where I am living since last September (2008)?
- Or do I come from East Africa, where I have lived 16 years since 1992 – six in Kenya and 10 in Tanzania?
- Or should I be saying, I come from India, where I was born, and spent the first 25 years of my life?
As a Roman Catholic missionary, having lived with Africans in Africa, and with Europeans in Europe, I know I am slowly losing my Indian-ness: I find difficult to eat spicy food; to me, Indian movies seem too long and sentimental, and watching them a waste of time; I have no time to listen to Indian music; Cricket does not interest me at all. However, watching a movie like the Slumdog Millionaire in a London cinema seem very odd to me. On the one hand, I felt ashamed to be an Indian and wanted to protest that this is not the India I know. On the other hand, I knew in my heart I am part of the drama that that movie was trying to portray.
Yes, I am an outsider. But in my heart I am still an Indian. I have visited almost 20 countries in the world. When I am in any of the developed countries, I always ask myself, why can’t India be like that? Why can’t India’s trains and buses have doors that will close? Why can’t India’s roads have a better finish and be clean? When will the congestions in the Indian roads be eased? Why can’t Indians stop using the railway tracks as their toilets? Why can’t India’s queues at its numerous counters be reduced– at the immigration desk in the airport, at the ticket booking kiosk at the railway station? When will India score high in the development index – that includes, per capita income, access to medicine, literacy, life expectancy? (India is ranked 132 in the Human Development Index report of 2008.)
I would like to share with you some of my unscientific, very personal thoughts on development in India.
We boast of age-old achievements of India. Indus valley civilization – the forerunner of the present Indian nation state – flourished 4500 years ago. From 427 BCE to 1197 CE, there was in India one of the world’s universities – Nalanda in Bihar. Though Babylonians are said to be the first to have used zero (0) as a symbol, by 9th century CE Indians were using zero as a number like other nine, thus providing the possibility to represent any number in digits. Even before this, by 3rd century BCE, the Indian writer Pingala had used the binary numbers, which are the basis for any digital technology. Even before the conquest of Alexander the great, Maurya kingdom (3rd century BCE) comprised of the whole of South Asia. By the 9th century CE, the Chola kingdom of south India had extended not only its trade influence but also political and cultural influence on most parts of the South East Indian Ocean up to Java and Sumatra. Why couldn’t Indian kings maintain that power?
India had great mathematicians and astronomers like Aryabhatta (476-550), and Bhaskara I & II (7th and 12th centuries respectively). In many ways, industrial revolution should have taken place either in India or in China. But the present world order is dictated by the industrial revolution and information revolution that basically happened in Europe and America. What led to the Eurocentric world that we live in? Why India was not the epicentre of industrial revolution? Why India became susceptible to foreign domination? I would like to point out to only a few reasons, which I think, could have contributed to the present status of India (20th and 21st century) in the world. This list, which is not exhaustive, has reasons that were part of the disadvantageous situation within India, and factors that were part of the advantage that Europe had. Some of these are merely hypothetical, it would be interesting to take up scholarly studies on these issues.
1. The Caste system is basically a rigid structured distribution of labour. Knowledge, including all the scientific and mathematical findings, remained the sole property of the high caste. And the Kshatriya (rulers) came to these gurus to be educated in the gurukulas. But theoretical scientific knowledge was not shared with the commoner, who worked in the fields, because they found themselves in the lower strata of the caste stratification. Therefore scientific theory could not be converted to technology. For instance, theory of pendulum is knowledge but when it is translated into a clock, the latter is technology. This process needs practical sense, and often theoreticians do not contribute to technology. So in India knowledge remained abstract due to lack of accessibility. There were indeed indigenous technologies – in agriculture and textile, but this showed very little growth through the centuries, again due to lack of timely application scientific theories.
2. The political situation of India was very much fragmented when European traders initially established trading companies in India beginning in 1600. The Moghul empire was the largest. The Europeans took advantage of the fragmentation and turned one Indian king against another, as the Dutch, French, Portuguese and the British fought for territorial control among themselves.
3. One reason that led to the European domination of the world was the simplicity of the Latin script and the invention of the printing press (in 1440 by Gutenberg in Germany). The use of printing blocks and paper was already available in China, but the Chinese characters were too complex for the comfortable use of the movable type press. Whereas most European languages (with the exception of the Cyrillic script of East Europe) use Latin script that basically has 26 to 60 characters. Therefore the printing press became an overnight success in Europe. This made them take scientific books from Arabia and the East and make them their own. Remember, prior to the invention of printing press, authorship and copyright of written texts were not regulated. Copernicus’ major work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, 1543), is said to have formulas and illustrations copied from Arabic scholars. The complicated Arab, Chinese and Indian scripts contributed to their belated recognition in the print media. (For instance, with the use of movable type the Holy Quran was first printed in Venice in 1537. The Arab Muslims rejected this print because of the numerous errors!) Domination of printing by Europe resulted in monopolising human knowledge; it also led to acceleration in the cumulative growth of human knowledge. From both these processes Europe gained tremendous advantage over other literary cultures.
4. Continental Europe has a coastline of 24,000 miles (38,000 km). Besides, Mediterranean sea being a ‘closed’ sea provides a conducive ambient for shipping. Europeans became natural seafarers. On this score, Sub-Saharan Africa was completely cut off due to its lack of natural harbours. While Asian nations did have flourishing shipping industry, this was somehow very primitive and stagnant. European merchants invested in the technological development of accessories necessary for shipping: cartography, compass, telescope, standardisation of measures including time, etc. (Greenwich in UK is a good example this). The invention of steam engine was a boon to shipping industry. With the ship they could conquer the world. They also took advantage of the new found land (‘discovered’ in 1592 by Christopher Columbus) in trading goods and slaves!
What is the way forward for India?
1. Mechanisation, I believe, will contribute to efficiency and the abolition of caste system. Let us take garbage collection as an example. In my home village one of the problems is garbage. It is being collected twice a week, yet my village has garbage littered all over. Perhaps there are 4 people now employed who actually managed to collect only about 30 to 40 of the total garbage. If these 4 people were provided with some modern equipment (as it is done in developed countries) for garbage collection then they might improve their efficiency and collect perhaps 80% of the garbage. While this still needs additional staff, the production of machines and tools will promote another chain of industry and employment. While this improves the overall cleanliness and hygiene, use of equipment will contribute to the abolition of caste system. At present garbage collection is perhaps done by people of low caste, it this work is mechanised and proper tools are provided, anyone could opt to be employed in this sector.
2. We need to pay attention to physical wellbeing.
2a. One important priority for India is cleanliness and hygiene. I have travelled around 10 countries of Africa, over a period of 16 years. I have hardly seen anyone go to the toilet in public. Indians still have to go a long way in the improvement of toilet habits, public hygiene and cleanliness. Order and cleanliness not only saves our spending on medical care, it makes us feel proud, creating a sense of belonging. This sense of belonging motivates us to work hard. Hard work naturally contributes to development.
2b. We need to improve our food habits. Our women cook the whole day and we eat too quickly. In most households it is rice everyday. (When Vijay Amirtharaj lost the quarter finals of Wimbledon observers said his defeat is not due to lack of skill but due to lack of stamina!) I tend to think that rice cultivation is an environmental liability – over use of underground water. In some parts of the world, there are varieties of banana for instance that do not need too much caring, and yet could be cooked and eaten as staple food.
3. Infrastructure including housing:
3a. As Chennai is still struggling to begin its work on the first underground metro line, can you imagine the in the City of London 15 underground lines crisscross. These 15 lines are well connected to city bus service, overground railway, and national railway grid. As economists say, if the communication network is the nervous system of the country, transport system is the circulatory of the country. Mass transit systems are an urgent need in major cities and towns of India. Can the Indian roads have better finish – reducing irregular surface, cutting corners and crowding shopping complexes along national highways.
3b. Opinions in British newspapers following that infamous film, Slumdog millionaire reported that over 600 million Indians live in slums. I am not too sure of the truth value of such a statement; however, we do know that India suffers from a lack of systematic plan for housing. In Kanyakumari district, for instance, after the tsunami of 2004 there has been a lot of effort to improve housing for fishermen. But they are done in such a way they will eventually develop into slums.
4. Education and Research: This includes improvement of school enrolment rate, and avoiding the temptation to overload our children with information. My impression is that traditionally, the Indian educational system seems to prepare candidates who can compete with students at the global level at the level of higher education. Currently I feel there is an overloading of the shoulders of children literally with the weight of books, and their heads with information. Our education should be skills based – I mean skills in acquiring and handling information. UNESCO document of 1996 (“Learning: the treasure within”) spoke of four pillars of education in the 21st century: Learning to know; Learning to do; Learning to be; and learning to live together. As regards research, I shall speak of my own area of specialisation: social sciences. Researches carried out in the 2nd most populous country and the world 7th largest country hardly feature in academic peer-reviewed journals. Is it due to lack of funding? Is it lack of methods? Is it prevalence of corruption in our institutes of higher learning? I do not know. But I do know that research at different levels is what will help us plan our development.
In conclusion, I might dare to say that Indian underdevelopment is a mentality. It is not the lack of resources. Not finishing the road works is a mentality. Not collecting the building materials lying all over the place is a mentality. Not painting our rusty buses and trains is a mentality. Not keeping our environment clean is a mentality. Not following traffic rules is a mentality (An American recently visiting India called it, a “Beep-Beep country”!). Being comfortable with disorder is a mentality. You might say education is the key. But how many educated drivers obey traffic rules? But how do we change mentality? Besides education, I think, media has to play an important role. It is this change of mentality that will bring development.