Devendra Kothari PhD
Population and Development Analyst
Forum for Population Action, Jaipur
Happy
69th Independence Day!
History stands testimony to the fact that as the clock
struck the midnight hour on 15th August 1947, India’s first Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru spoke of India’s ‘Tryst with destiny’. And that was the end of
era of subordination/subjugation and the beginning of a beautiful journey of
India’s self discovery with independence. Since then every year new
expectations are being set and new ideals are being formulated but has India
really progressed in the last 68 years? Consider the following two news items
which made headlines just few days before 69th Independence Day, and
answer the question.
On August 7, 2015, in a press conference,
it was announced that an Indian biographical
movie entitled: Manjhi - The
Mountain Man, will be released on August 21, 2015. The film is directed by Ketan Mehta, and it is based on the
life of Dasrath Manjhi, a poor
landless laborer belonged to the lowest of the low in a
caste-ridden society and denied the basics: water supply, electricity, a
toilet, a school and a medical centre. His village Gehlor, located in the
remote Atri block of Gaya District, Bihar, India, nestled in the lap of rocky hills for which
villagers often faced gigantic troubles for crossing small distance between
Atri and Wazirganj, the nearest town to avail health, education and other
services since a 300-foot tall hill – Gehlor Ghati – loomed between them and
civilization.
First, he approached the local government
for help. He
knew his voice would not create any reaction in the deaf ear of the government;
therefore, Dashrath chose to accomplish the
Herculean task alone. Almost five and half decade ago in 1960, he resolved
to end the difficulties of his villagers by shouldering a near impossible task
of slitting a 300-feet-high hill apart to create a one-km passage. He
sold his goats to purchase chisel, rope and a hammer. People used to call him
mad and eccentric. Unfazed by his critics’ discouraging remarks, Dashrath
hammered consistently for 22 long years to shorten the
distance from 65km to 8km between his village and Wazirganj. The
day came in 1982 when he stepped through
a flat passage — about one-km long and 16-feet wide — to his dream, ‘the other
side of the hill’. Manjhi died on 17 August
2007 at the age of 73 and he was given a state funeral by the Government of
Bihar, and his
legacy is visible on Google Maps.
The Mountain Man at work
On August 10, 2015, there was another
fascinating announcement that India-born Sundar Pichai had been named as the Chief Executive
Officer (CEO) of the global
Internet titan, Google, by the company's founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin. After that announcement,
there was a big scramble among media personnel for background information on
the man about whom very little was known on the personal side. Pichai, 43, a Chennai native who
studied at the government schools and later went to IIT Kharagpur and then to
Stanford and Wharton, was from a middle class family.
Sundar Pichai’s elevation is a milestone for Indian-origin CEOs, of
whom there are at least half dozen in Fortune 500 companies, including Satya
Nadella at Microsoft, Indra Nooyi at
Pepsi, Ajit Banga at Mastercard, and Sanjay Mehrotra at SanDisk. First two ranked companies are now headed by
Indians and there is a good chance that the third ranked Berkshire Hathaway too
could be headed by an Indian (Ajit Jain strongly tipped to succeed Warren
Buffett). And most of them are in the
early forties.
No doubt, achievements of person like
Pichais are a cause for celebration that so many Indians have made it to the
very top of some of the world's most valuable companies. At the same time,
however, it should make us pause and ask an obvious question - why is it that
they make their mark in the US and other developed countries but not in the
land of their birth? Clearly, the conditions here are not ripe for the best
entrepreneurial and managerial minds to achieve their full potential. And India remains
at bottom of global indices in terms of ease of doing business, even as within
organizations seniority, age and connections matter for more than merit. Given
our demographics, this is an unsustainable state of affairs. What is needed
today is a mass-scale politics of equality that is committed to merit rather
than mediocrity. If meritocracy ruled here instead of mediocrity – punctuated
by a few islands of excellence – India would have boasted a home-grown Google
instead of just a home-grown Google CEO, as noted by the Time of India’s
editorial.[1]
Annually around 750,000 Chinese and 400,000 Indian
students apply to overseas higher education institutions. The United States is clearly the favored destination
among overseas Indian students, with close to 100,000 student-visa-holding
Indians in the United States in 2012/13. It is found that a sizable number of Chinese students as compared to Indian students are returning to China to
pursue their careers in greater numbers than before. Why do most
Indians prefer to stay and work in the US after leaving graduate school, while
many Chinese now prefer to return to China after completing their graduate studies?
Is
there anything Indian policy makers can learn from this? Here the Modi
government needs to play the vital role in creating the enabling environment in
which they can thrive and create value for themselves and millions of others. Therefore,
recognize and promote merit
irrespective of class, caste and creed. Assist everyone to achieve their full
potential. Abolish reservations in any form in time bound manner. Only then
India will produce more, Nadellas, Pitchais, and perhaps Nobel laureates.
Dasrath Manjhi’s
story, on the other hands, is of a man who did not just think. He decided, if those
in power would not help his people, he would, so his people could avail basic
services in time. Now that he has gone, his people are still poor.
There are electricity poles, but no electricity; a tube well, but no water; no
real hospital, no real livelihoods, little education. After all these 68 years
of Independence, their fate has been sealed by another mountain: poverty, the
inability to pay for a doctor, for getting the necessary treatment on time and
even education for their children.
Here, the
system does not help to those who wants to help themselves but in many cases
creates obstacles. Successive governments have promised much on improving
the quality of life, but sadly delivered at best a fraction of the promise
In sum, the
69th Independence Day is a good time to pause, extend our circle of
concern beyond day-to-day events, and reflect upon our nation`s journey over
the past 68 years as a free nation. It appears that
the country still remains in chains. We could not promote the enabling
environment to make daily life seamless and
enjoyable. In India we unendingly, and usually
inconclusively, debate the big things – the macro economy, currency reserves,
manufacturing and services, the roll out of huge social welfare programmes, secularism, socialism, planning, and the right to virtually everything, as argued
by the Kanti Bajpai, an Indian academic-analyst and the former headmaster of The Doon School.[2] But what is
absent is a sense of self-confidence and clarity over the direction we are supposed
to be headed. We rarely talk about and deliver the small things that
quickly make a difference.
Here India can learn from countries like
China, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia. During their initial stage of development,
they focused in making life better by delivering smaller, more municipal things
like primary education, primary health including reproductive health to stabilize
population and sanitation. As such, we need to reassess at the national level
policies which have thus far failed to meet the demand of a rising India. Here one would like to read my recent posts: First Anniversary of the Modi Government: Must meet the expectations of
voters (Part B) at http://kotharionindia.blogspot.in/2015/06/first-anniversary-of-modi-government.html;
Growth with
structural transformation: A development agenda for India at http://kotharionindia.blogspot.in/2015/01/growth-with-structural-transformation.html;
and India: Why population
matters? at http://kotharionindia.blogspot.in/2015/04/india-why-population-matters.html.
