The Country likes to know - “Whose Country is it anyway’’?

Bhaskar Majumder

Let me talk straight. Based on my moving around the nook and corner of my country that is Bharat since early 1960s till date I have the reasons to understand that it is anti-poor, anti-woman, anti-village, anti-labour, anti-dalit. So what remains who may be seen as blue boys in the eyes of the state or policy-makers? Or, who constitute the state? Before the question is addressed, let me also assert that nation-building requires not one or two (in monopoly-duopoly frame) persons at the peak but participation of all the people – in my understanding all the people who are at the bottom. The reason I say bottom all for they live mostly local and do not ‘’Quit India’’ implying they labour on a daily basis and they come mostly from the village-dalit-women. Let me also assert that economist’s poor and difficult survival of the people at the bottom are different. Let me also assert at the beginning that the Constitution of India pledges right to life of all and hence rejects my idea of the perpetual state of affairs that reflect a development paradigm that is ‘’anti-poor, anti-woman, anti-village, anti-labour, anti-dalit, anti-Adivasi’’. I have full respect for the Constitution of India and more so I have full respect for all the people in India who toil to make it a civilization.

It may seem why abruptly I pose the question. Obviously not for an answer who owns the country by land-water-forests-mountains and all. For these belong to the people, if Kautilya’s Arthashastra makes sense. The reason why I pose the question is because of my failure at the end of my teaching in different institutions and universities in India to make people aware of the universal values. The way the Parliament looks at the problems are essentially consequential that somewhere (read the recent one in Telengana end-November 2019) some rape or rape-cum-murder of a woman occurs and then some hall-gulla (hue and cry) in Parliament to enact new Acts that focus on issues as law and order problems. The issues are much more serious than those myopic observations. The myopic observation perhaps because most of the members, with unfathomable respect for them, come from well off families or delinked from the mass society.

Or, take the case of income-poor indebted farmers in Maharashtra or elsewhere many of who committed suicide in the recent past for crop failure or failure to repay loans. Juxtapose this with Vijoy Mally or the Modis who quit India stealing money from the public Banks.

Or, take the example of the Adivasis who were mostly displaced for ‘development projects’, Odisha is not the one example.

Or, forced migration of different types from villages to towns reflect why and how the slums get formed apart from the drawing of manual labour from villages to towns for real estate private sector or physical infrastructure public sector that reveal labour not only engaged under adverse conditions but also victims of apathy and suspicion in the eyes of the administration and police.

The above list is elastic and no imagination is required to accept that each one shows the adverse inclusion or positive exclusion of the Adivasis, dalits, poor, and women in society-economy.

The initial social arrangement that formed the state-economy moved in a direction that ignored the society – society at the bottom. What were the immediate consequences? Illiteracy-drop out, taboos for women, misogyny, caste-ism or atrocities on Dalits, labour looked down upon, and all that. If these were the outcome in the processes in the fractured society, the next round outcome came to be riots-rape-murder-lynching-honour killing-kidnapping-suicide and all that.

Let me come to the core point now. Why so and what do we do? This is so because of social delinking and institutional delinking what gets reflected in social gap by castes-religion-region. In the Heartland where I am active since the past two decades, for example, there is total silence and in many satiations secrecy, while being asked why so, some respond, ’’Ijjat karte hai’’ (we respect elders). I failed to have proper communication with the students in their twenties and thirties for two reasons: (1) they maintain silence, (2) they have accepted status quo (äisei chaltaa rahega). The elderly persons look Mathadhis. This is obnoxious. At the most very few of the students secretly opine, “Sir, aapne aachha likha’’ (as if it was publication of my Paper!). The Mathadhis did not see/know what happened around him – ‘’sthitodhi’’. But there is no institutional mechanism, including the premier social science research Institute that ever endeavoured to make co-education a case of success by erasing misogyny (but how to erase if it is secret?). Thus, if a society lives in silence-secrecy, the consequences are manifest.       

If education fails to generate social awareness, what may be for those who dropped out early or who were always outside the domain of educational institutions? If one does not miss the look, most of these men in the Heartland that determines the Mainland cannot look eye to eye particularly to the eyes of girls. This is not a question of size of population that of course got fourfold over past 70 years from 360 million in 1951. But accusing demographic disaster leads to nowhere.

I feel humbled to disagree with the current statements of the Parliamentarians in particular and people in general over the latest (end-November, 2019) rape-cum-murder of a girl in her mid-20s because of the following reasons:

• While secretly I shall agree with one MP that the culprits of gang rape of end-November 2019 should be lynched, public lynching cannot be sanctioned by the law or by the Parliament.
• While secretly I shall agree with some MPs for castration of the rapists, that may not solve the problems for processes of alienation or delinking; the latter definitely will give birth to potential offenders.
• While secretly I agree with the younger sister of the victim, I shall not go for it; example of Phulon Devi in the Heartland should not be forgotten.
• While I respect law of the land, law by itself cannot be enforced in a civilization as Bharat is; and whatever is enforced is only short-term.

At this juncture, I abstain from focusing on politics and issues like lynching-misogyny and all that. Let me propose the following knowing full well that these may be sidelined or silenced as if one insane social person proposed it:

• Bring back all children, male and female, to co-educational schools cost-free. Who needs child labour? Not me.
• Respect public institutions of education – from primary level to JNU level.
• Develop course content that teaches gender issues.
• Propagate the relations of Vivekanda-Nivedita and Aurovindo-Maa and Ramakrishna-Sarada, and such other examples among all.
• Translate all novels of Saratchandra who perhaps drew the attention to the fate of women through literature.
• Introduce Rammohun and Vidyasagar in course content to show the steps taken long back for the dignity of women.

There is an infinite sequence what is not to be done. I did not focus on those. A country that fails to love children and fails to love-respect women is doomed to failure. This is a social question. This implies the responsibility of the civil society is more than that of the state. Of course, the civil society needs state support.

I have reasons to believe that the state priority is often different from the priority of the mass society. The legitimization of the functioning of the state is also drawn not from the mass society. This is apart from the fact that the mass society lives in fait accompli and dies as fait accompli. This again requires the civil society that may come forward to link the delinked. A country constituted by the elite will only show “Quit India”. India’s civilization is different from and bigger than the elite.   

Bhaskar Majumder, Professor of Economics, G. B. Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad - 211019

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Dec 5, 2019