Imagining India

"I believe that the most important driver for growth lies in expanding access to resources and opportunity. People everywhere, regardless of their income levels, should have access to health facilities, clean water, bsaic infrastructure, jobs an capital, a reliable social security system and good schools where their children can be educated in the English language."

In such simple terms, Nandan Nilekani explains - in his book Imagining India - what India needs in order to progress and do so in the rapid pace that it can and should. Access to resources and opportunity! I visited this beautiful place called Melghat, way back in 2005, along with two of my good friends. It was one unforgettable trip that was purely inspired by the famous journalist P.Sainath and his articles in The Hindu, on how malnutrition and related deaths were a regular annual feature  in the Amravati district. The sights that we saw in this region still haunt my memory. Villages were pitch black in the evening, as there was no electricity. Not a power cut mind you, there were no Electric lines at all! So people lived by hurricane lamps. The only beautiful image of the following morning was the ethereal sunrise and the sounds of birds chirping happily and the water pump being cranked by women. The adult men folk were busy smoking beedis and the young menfolk were clearing cow dung from the front of their houses.

But as the day progresses, we witnessed defunct classrooms, solar light posts with the panels missing (apparently they were stolen, some of them by the villagers themselves), hospitals that looked like war zones with even very basic amenities missing. The ideas were there. Solar power, mobile hospitals, balwadis to take care of the young ones while the parents went out in search of work and so on. But the implementation was such that women crushed crocin tablets that doctors visiting once a fortnight in mobile hospital vehicles provided, made a paste out of it with water, and applied it to open wounds of children. The implementation was such that the last anyone ever saw a teacher in the school was a month ago. So with basic things hogging one's mind, like how to sell the produce and make enough money to sustain the family to the extent of even saving the kids from dying, where will thoughts leaning toward entrepreneurship  and growth flower? With people spending time in walking 20 kms to the nearby town to sell their produce (buses from the town dont ply to this region during monsoons), where is the time to do something constructive and improve self?

Take the case of more developed regions, abroad or even in parts of India, where all these basic ncessities are taken care of. The only things people need think of is how to improve on the profits, how to provide more to the family, how to enroll children in that cricket academy. The lady worries more about how well her art and craft work would be appreciated in her women's club and less about whether to take her chotu to the hospital for his burning fever or if she should just wait for it to subside on its own and use the money for the night's dinner.

We need to have more of the former kind of situations and less of the latter, if we are to come any point close to justifying our potential as a great nation.

Just some points to ponder on a hot and sultry Saturday afternoon...