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Journalism of Courage
It is more economic than ethnic in Assam. The BJP-led government, caught between mandir and Modi, does not understand a simple thing like this. When the applicants number 72 lakh for a few vacancies in the railways, the response is not to raise 47 more battalions of the CRPF but to find avenues for employment. Still the Vajpayee government is so smug and so absorbed in its self-created feel-good image that it has not woken up to face the fact: a society with at least one-third without any work and another one-third without any regular or full employment can never be stable, whatever the number of policemen you employ or draconian laws you enact.
When there is very little to go around, people beg, borrow, steal or hurt to get a bit of that very little. Many considerations like the son-of-the-soil come into play. Violence grows. Faith in the system or the society lessens still more. Employment should have been the main issue in the assembly polls held in five states. Instead, the campaign was in the name of religion, caste or language. This was no diversity that the country represents but sheer chauvinism, regionalism and communalism.
Against this background, the killing of Biharis and burning of their hamlets and houses is not difficult to analyse. Assam has a grievance that despite the abundance of natural resources it has remained poor. It also feels crowded and let down that the agreement between New Delhi and the All Assam Students Union (AASU) to turn out “foreigners” has not been implemented at all. Not even one alien has been turned out or struck off the electoral rolls. The employment prospects in state are also nil. It is easy to arouse people in such circumstances.
But why the crowd picked on the Biharis? I rang up AASU leaders who protected many Bihari families to get the answer. They were not able to say why. But when I heard the Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra deputy chief minister trotting out the son-of-the-soil theory, I knew what had happened in Assam. I still do not know how long one must stay in a state to become its “son”. The Biharis attacked in Assam had been there for more than three generations. Many have not seen Bihar even.
After the states Reorganisation Commission had grouped the different territories into linguistic states it gave a warning against India becoming prey to parochialism and regional chauvinism. It specially drew attention to the son-of-the-soil thesis propounded for recruitment to services in states. The Commission laid down that the candidates from any part of India could apply for a job without prior knowledge of the regional language. He or she could learn the language after recruitment. That was some 48 years ago. I do not think any state has followed what was then considered a commitment for unity. The knowledge of regional language has become a compulsory qualification for jobs.
Globalisation or, whatever name you give it, has forced lakhs of people out of job. Hundreds of farmers in the countryside have committed suicide and thousands of small production units have closed down. And no avenues of employment are open to the youth. The government has frozen recruitment and the private sector has increasingly introduced high technology to lessen the labour force. Where do people turn to? Every state faces the problem of absorbing lakhs of people. The exchequers are empty because, apart from the wasteful expenditure by the rulers, the states have exhausted their funds in meeting the enhanced salaries under the Fifth Pay Commission. The Centre, which is better placed, spends more and more on guns and less and less on society’s welfare.
The country may well be achieving a growth rate of more than six per cent. What does the growth mean? Who are gaining from it? The new brand of economists, former employees of the World Bank and the IMF, have been telling us to wait. For how long? Once again you see that those who have had the best of everything are collecting most of what has accrued. What do others do?
It is encouraging to see nearly 40 per cent of India’s population participating in state elections. It reaffirms our faith in democracy. It shows how deeply has the system got entrenched to ensure people’s right to elect their own government freely. Still, democracy is a means to an end, not the end itself. The end is the emancipation of people from hunger, want and insecurity. We talk of good of India. Is this something different from the good of people living in it? If the common man is sacrificed for certain economic reforms or West-dictated formulae, is that the right objective to have? In fact, real social progress is dependent on how far the individual has been able to overcome his needs.
I have no dogma to sell, neither of disinvestments nor of low tariffs. I do not know what more is in the government’s satchel in the name of liberalisation. My touchstone is how far any political or social system enables the people to raise above their petty self to think in terms of the good of all. But there cannot be any difference over the people’s well being.
I recall Jayaprakash Narayan’s words before his death. He said: Let us all sit together and formulate a new economic policy which would benefit people of India. His reasoning was that the different models we have tried had failed to make life better for the common person. India should pursue its own model, different from all ideologies and dogmas. There was something in this. It is no use following the World Bank or the IMF. Both have a set of ideas which have not succeeded in any developing country. All that has happened is an abrupt rise in consumerism.
The elite is hardly conscious of inequalities because the tug of idealism, which pulled it out of a purposeless life, has lost force. They have become part of the system. Some of them tend to believe that only economic growth matters. They would be happy to an oasis of prosperity in a desert of poverty and destitution. It is a tragedy that the ruling BJP still pitches its claim on the basis of such development.
