Words and action in India

India is a land of appalling poverty and vices. Today, sixty years after independence, the number of people in poverty is a staggering 300 million to 500 million. There are more people living in abject poverty than there were people in India in 1947, when the country became independent.

The explanations for this sorry state of affairs are diverse. Initial conditions having to do with the state of the country when the British left and the exigencies of dealing with wars, defence budgets and terrorism are often proferred as the reasons for this gargantuan economic failure. Others go for facile explanations like socialistic inefficiencies during the first few decades of independent India, conveniently overlooking the fact that almost twenty years after economic liberalization, poverty and the accompanying evils continue unabated, with little or no change in the trend of poverty reduction. Those who believe in cultural factors as being paramount determinants of economic performance will pounce on the fatalistic oputlook of Indians. Or the propensity to keep women and untouchables in an uneducated and unenlightened state. Whatever the major reasons for India's dismal economic state may be, and whatever the proportions in which these different factors contributed to the current sorry mess, the evidence is now overwhelming that when it comes to poverty eradication, there has been a yawning gap between words and actions, between stated intent and actual implementation.

Indian leaders during the British rule differed subatantially in their outlooks about the right way to approach the questions of poverty, untouchability and inequality. Gandhi brought his concept of God into almost every discussion about Indian society, believed in self-sufficiency and expressed his distrust of modern industry. Nehru was explicit about his atheism and believed in big industry.

Gandhi has stated somewhere that he intuitively believes that natural disasters are ways for God to express his anger at man's failings. For example, he has stated that the 1934 Bihar earthquake was a punishment for India's lack of progress in dealing with untouchability. It is interesting to note here that Gandhi has himself come under attack from leaders of India's untouchable classes for his gradualistic approach to the untouchability problem. Moreover, by making such pronouncements, Gandhi was leaving the field open for those in Hindu society who argued, and still argue, that being born an untouchable was itself a punishment for past sins. Gandhi clearly believed in the transmigration of souls. While making this statement about his intuitive belief about natural disasters as a tool of retribution, Gandhi was clearly forgetting that other people might argue that India's subjugation to the British was possibly retribution for past sins, or that untouchability itself was possibly retribution for past sins or that war stemming from human greed was possibly retribution for past sins. Surely, Gandhi must have been aware that the same kind of " intuitive " arguments are very much used by reactionay elements in Hindu society when it comes to untouchability.

By taking Gandhi's " intuitive " argument to its logical conclusion, arguments may be made that God has punished Indians with crushing poverty. And surely, the lack of initiative and action on the part of most Indians about socio-economic issues must, if Gandhi's moral framework is valid, invite further retribution from the same God. It reminds one of facile arguments that give kudos to India for its democratic framework and its avoidance of catastrophic famines, when, in fact, a slow and prolonged holocaust takes place in the form of starvation deaths and deaths from preventable diseases. Gandhi's argument seems even more strange when one takes into account the fact that untouchability was not limited to any specific region in India. The question will surely be asked - What kind of God punishes a region to send a message about a national problem ? Useless theorizing and neglecting " intuitively " correct action is an Indian malaise. No wonder, almost 80 years after Gandhi's statement, all the makings of a retribution-like environment still exist in India. It would be interesting to know what Gandhi would say about today's challenges pertaining to environmental disasters and poverty.