Perceptions of Change

The indian reality is something between self-congratulatory euphoria and
desperate pessimism
Aruna Roy

as a young child, kesiya went to the well to fetch water with her mother and
carried a lota in the morning looking for a spot. sixty years later in
devdungri, her grand-daughter does the same. there are nominal changes. the
well may have been replaced by a hand pump, and the lota by a cast off
castrol can. she and her family migrate for work as they did before. her
husband went to gujarat and worked in a mill, her son is in karnataka and
breaks and carries stone.

eighteen years ago, her lovely young daughter-in-law died delivering her
second child, because of poverty, ignorance and superstition. her second
daughter-in-law came for a stiff price. the family's debt burden went up.
the son and daughter-in-law are almost bonded for life to repay the debt.
her granddaughters may or may not go to school - it all depends upon who
migrates when. you could say that development has passed them by. yet, they
are building a new pucca house and there may be a possibility of owning a
mobile. is this progress, or is it a static situation reinforcing endemic
poverty?

as a member of the gram sabha, kesiya is entitled to cast her vote in
elections - but to decide what, elect whom?

is her condition part of the new economic paradigm of consumerism, growth,
private enterprise? all essentials have become costlier. at a time when she
needs increased medical attention, medical costs have skyrocketed. food
intake has deteriorated because of rising prices and a poorer pds. her
occasional intake of dal is now off the menu. sensex and growth rates rise,
but she has lost the quality of life for a quantity that will always be
illusive, for development that is supposed to trickle down. kesiya, like
millions of hardworking, honest, enterprising poor rural women, is worse off
in real terms than their grandmothers were.

naurti is a dalit woman who has spanned the development process and has a
consciousness of such issues from the '50s. she was never sent to school.
but political processes have changed her world. today she recognises her
rights, is an elected ward sarpanch of her panchayat, and a dalit neta in
rajasthan. her house rubs shoulders with that of pyare lal, a local liquor
contractor and many times sarpanch of harmara. she looks him in the eye,
keeps a watch on his acts of omission and commission, and is not scared of
taking him on. she has undauntedly stood up against all kinds of oppression
from sati to untouchability, and non-payment of minimum wages. the historic
1983 supreme court judgment on minimum wages was based entirely on her
mobilisation of workers. in her 50s, she decided to learn computers, and has
become an expert in feeding information and making tables and charts. she is
now a computer tutor for high school girls. her granddaughters will never
have an idea of the kind of socio-economic exclusion their grandmother was
born into.

sixty years after independence, the indian economy is at the centre of
international focus. a growth rate that is the envy of many countries has
become the statistical mantra of policy-makers in the country. a runaway
sensex is a constant source of celebration for financial experts and the
media. our billionaires are displaying amoebic progression on the lists of
the world's richest. their takeovers of large corporations is the focus of
media attention. a series of lists and numbers is supposed to make us feel
good collectively as a nation.

there are other lists and statistics that we don't want to look at: we are
ranked 126th in the world on the human development index. malnutrition and
anaemia levels in our children are worse than those of sub-saharan africa.
our agricultural sector is in its worst crisis ever, with vast numbers of
people leading lives of constant insecurity. farmer suicides have become
such a constant factor that they have even lost their newsworthiness.
despite high infant mortality, maternal deaths in childbirth, lower life
expectancy, and increasing costs of healthcare for the poor, india's health
allocations in percentage terms are also amongst the lowest in the world. in
political terms, large numbers of affected indians are speaking out
collectively, not only in elections and sectoral agitations, but also in the
growing numbers of 'naxalite-affected districts'.

if you can 'lie with statistics', the stories of people's lives are also
obviously subjective. depending on how you look at it, you could say that
everything has changed, or nothing has. as i try to look back at sixty years
of india through the eyes of these two rural women friends in rajasthan, i
understand that even there, the truth lies somewhere in between. the
questions that arise from looking at kesiya and naurti bai relate to 30 per
cent of rural india, and that is a huge chunk of our population. if you use
the reverse paradigm and ask how many in the villages can boast of sons and
daughters who have made it to newer and better professions and more secure
lives, the percentage is really small. kesiya and naurti are women around 60
who are no more than a statistic to our economic planners. they share the
same economic category and no substantial change is visible. it is a closer
scrutiny of their use of socio-political processes that reveals a different
story.

in the big battle against inequalities, everything is definitely not a
dismal record of failures, and there have been substantial areas of change
and success. many of the poor have brought change to their lives, because
they have not bothered to look up at the skies for the drops that might
never trickle down. they have fought sharp political battles against
centuries of ingrained oppression and exclusion, to establish their rights
of dignity and equality.

kesiya has remained on the fringes of modern political systems, and would
probably say that her grandmother was better off than she was. naurti, who
has used the opportunities that modern democratic systems offer to empower
herself, has often forcefully told many of us in public meetings over the
last decade: "it is not true to say that nothing has happened in the last 50
years - for a dalit woman like me much has changed. at the very least, i
have an equal right to ask questions, demand answers, state my dukh and
sukh, and you have to listen." as economic inequalities grow in india,
kesiya's and naurti's are the voices of despair and hope that we need to
take note of in our sixtieth free year.

aruna roy runs the mazdoor kisan shakti sangathana.

Publication : DNA; Section : india; Pg :11; Date : 28/8/07
URL :
http://digital.dnaindia.com/epapermain.aspx?edorsup=Main&queryed=9&querypage=11&boxid=30776144&parentid=46653&eddate=08/23/2007