We are approaching yet another Independence Day in three days time—our sixtyseventh. Once again the Prime Minister will deliver his Independence Day address from the ramparts of the Red Fort in the morning of August 15 giving an account of our achievements and our failures, our strengths and our weaknesses against the backdrop of developments across the nation and the world at large and outlining the roadmap for the future.
For several years now this has been a routine affair, a monotonous ritual on the part of the head of the government at the Centre. Gone are the days of August 15, 1947 and the years that immediately followed when the glow of the promises made during the freedom struggle was still bright, beckoning us to move forward towards the cherished goal of the participants in our movement for independence. Today those promises have faded from our memory and we are all just engaged in satisfying our narrow selfish interests without taking into consideration what the national interests demand.
We have recorded major strides in various branches of science and technology in the post-independence era and in such areas as IT our achievements have attracted world attention. Over the past several years we have also been able to demonstrate our capacity to attain high rates of growth as result of which a burgeoning middle-class has developed across the country. Yet what is undeniable is that disparities between the super rich in the metropolises—occupying the highest positions in the top echelons of the corporate and business world—and the common people in the countryside still subjected to backbreaking poverty have grown exponentially during the last twenty years since we uncritically accepted the World Bank-IMF-dictated structural adjustment programme, better known as economic reforms in popular parlance, a step that resulted in the ruling class unveiling the neoliberal economic environment imported from the West. This whole exercise, abandoning the mixed economic framework worked out on the premise of self-reliance through the Nehru-Mahalanobis model of development, has enhanced exploitation of the vulnerable sections of our society while spreading a consumerist culture, again borrowed from the West. We have thus lost our moorings in the international scenario which is increasingly tilting towards unipolarity regardless of the spirited resistance such a trend is encountering from varied forces opposed to this kind of denouement of the global scene.
In such a situation it is but natural that corruption should scale unprecedented heights as it already has and it is pointless to blame the present rulers alone for this state of affairs since the contribution of the Opposition, notably the BJP, to this is no less as the recent events in Karnataka testify. The latest developments in UP and Haryana—the attacks on a young, upright IAS officer tenaciously trying to fight the sand mining mafia and the allegations against the son-in-law of the Congress President levelled by another equally upright IAS officer—also bring out the powerful influence of the politician-businessman nexus that is assuming alarming proportions.
At the same time there is an organised resistance to the corporate takeover of land (for ‘industrialisation' and the resultant ‘development') in the country's tribal heartland, a resistance crafted by the outlawed Communists outside the parliamentary fold going by the name of CPI (Maoist). At a time when the parliamentary Left stands thoroughly discredited for its dismal record in wielding power in different States alongside its brutalisation of the polity, this resistance is doubtless noteworthy even if one wholeheartedly opposes the excessive use of violence by the Maoist leaders to the detriment of mass struggle thus placing them in close proximity to the idealist terrorists of yester-years whose dedication to the cause of freedom notwithstanding, they sought to fight the alien imperialist power through the vehicle of nihilist anarchism, something that led them into a blind alley from which they could not find the way out. Nonetheless there is no gainsaying that the rise in Maoist activities in the tribal belt and beyond is an eloquent commentary on the path of development opted by the ruling circles as this path is also ensuring the Maoists' success in mobilising the poorest of the poor in greater degree than ever before.
The belated decision of the Government of India to grant Statehood to Telangana has opened a Pandora's box with the heightened demands for Statehood for Gorkhaland, Bodoland etc. These are a reflection of the regional aspirations of ethnic groupings and these need to be considered in all seriousness. This warrants the setting up of a second States Reorganisation Commission. But would New Delhi do so? That is a moot question.
The phenomenal rise in atrocities against women, the increasing incidents of rape in particular, is attributable to the neo-liberal atmosphere which breeds consumerism with all its attendant social vices. Yet such is the complexity of the present scenario that few are prepared to wage a concerted struggle against it with the objective of ushering in an exploitation-free society where women get their due respect and dignity. Alongside caste, communal, regional divisions, gender discrimination is also something that needs to be combated with all the strength at one's command.
Unemployment too is on the rise but the authorities are least bothered. They are unable to realise that they are sitting on a powder keg that will explode any moment unless the problem is tackled at its roots at the earliest. But since we have voluntarily accepted the neoliberal paradigm of development that is next to impossible until we make a definite break with the past by evolving a new or alternate paradigm of development suited to the genius of our people.
On January 14, 1948, a day after he began his fast with the purpose of realising a “reunion of hearts of all communities brought about without any outside pressure but from an awakened sense of duty”, Gandhiji spoke at a prayer meeting at New Delhi. In his words:
I remember to have read, I forget now whether in the Delhi Fort or in the Agra Fort, when I visited them in 1896, a verse on one of the gates, which when translated reads thus: ‘If there is paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here,' That fort with all its magnificence at its best, was no paradise in my estimation. But I should love to see that verse with justice inscribed on the gates of Pakistan at all the entrances. In such paradise, whether it is in the Indian Union or in Pakistan, there will be neither paupers, nor beggars, nor high, nor low, neither the millionaire employers, nor the half-starved employees, nor intoxicating drinks or drugs. There will be the same respect for women as vouchsafed to men, and the chastity and the purity of men and women will be jealously guarded. Where every woman, except one's wife, will be treated by men of all religions, as mother, or sister, or daughter, according to her age. Where there will be no untouchability, and where there will be equal respect for all faiths. They will be all proudly, joyously and voluntarily bread labourers. I hope that everyone who listens to me or who reads these lines, will forgive me, if stretched on my bed and basking in the sun, inhaling the life-giving sunshine, I allow myself to indulge in this ecstasy.
And at a time the communal menace is once again raising its ugly head (as seen in the latest events in Jammu's Kishtwar) and the BJP's Prime Minister-in-waiting is resorting to unabashed jingoism in the wake of the fast-deteriorating India-Pakistan relations (following the killing of several of our jawans on the Indians side of the LoC in J&K) and growing tensions with China on the Sino-Indian border, one is reminded of what Jawaharlal Nehru as our first PM had said in Parliament in February 3, 1950 to emphasise the need to combine firmness with a rational approach that did not contemplate going to war at every opportunity.
An hon Member implied that people grow weak because they don't have bloodshot eyes or becuase they don't urge one another to war all the time. That is not only a wrong policy but a policy of despair.
If we can maintain a certain state of mental preparedness only by strong drinks and intoxicating words, we must obviously succumb when we do not have them.
There is no option for us but to return, on this Independence Day, to what those towering figures had taught us years ago especially when the present crop of our leaders have time and again demonstrated their incapacity to even articulate the vision of a new India leave aside translating that vision into reality for the benefit of our nation and its citizens.
Beyond ritualistic protestations those words carry far more significance for us at this stage of our voyage of discovery of the future.
August 12 S.C.