There's the Trillion-Dollar India, and Then There Is Bharat
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A JOURNAL OF THE PRESS INSTITUTE OF INDIA ISSN 0042-5303 July-September 2019 Volume 11 Issue 3 Rs 60 There’s the trillion-dollar India, and then there is Bharat As one more Independence Day is about to come by and pass, these (in the story below) are the images around Sakuntala Narasimhan in Bengaluru, the IT capital of India. CONTENTS Education, health, even water for survival, are beyond the • Does the Budget take care of reach of those who are not monied. And this group below the basic needs, weaker sections? / poverty line constitutes a few millions in India Bharat Dogra • Research, analyse, substantiate • Next to my apartment is a vacant plot where a multi-storeyed block with facts, be professional / is coming up. Workers are busy erecting scaffolding and pouring N. Bhaskara Rao concrete and raising pillars. Every morning, these pillars are watered • Print lags behind digital in generously with a hose pipe connected to a borewell outlet, while the gender-based news coverage / contractor stands by and supervises. At the entrance to the site is a Manjira Majumdar small structure put together with tarpaulin and corrugated tin sheets, • Food price volatility wrecking where a family of migrant workers working on the construction lives – havoc on the poor / Vibhuti Patel a husband and wife, with two children under six. They have no toilet, • A struggle that’s been on for 60 no electricity, no water – in fact, the city is reeling under a severe water years, and about press freedom / shortage which is expected to get worse by next month due to erratic Nava Thakuria monsoons. But the concrete pillars get a generous treatment with ample • A brave publisher who fought water. The woman labourer tries to catch a couple of buckets of water on behalf of the people / from the hose pipe (not directly, but from what spills over as the men Mrinal Chatterjee hose down the pillar) and this the family uses for drinking, cooking, • How PR functions as a washing and bathing. responsible profession in the US / And we are talking of ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas and sabka vishwaas’ C.V. Narasimha Reddi (together with all, everybody’s progress, everybody’s trust). The ‘sab’ • Shades of conflict expressed does not include those who are disadvantaged and deprived. Like this well in recent Indian cinema / migrant family. I see photographs of politicians having meetings to Shoma A. Chatterji discuss the ‘drought situation’ in air-conditioned rooms at the legis- • Frustration, controversy aside, lature, with a bottle of branded drinking water at each seat. Some of there was much to savour / the VIPs take a sip, the remaining is tossed out as trash along with the Partab Ramchand plastic bottles. If you are a VIP, neither drought nor floods affect you. • A lineage that harks back to a Hail democracy, hail Bharat that is India. Free, independent, galloping moneylender, and to Tagore / towards becoming one of the fastest growing economies of the world. Madhura Dutta • On the other side of the construction is the road leading to the Indian • A woman’s artistic expression and a symbol of an identity / Institute of Science. The road is lined with bungalows with gardens, Ranjita Biswas where the upper economic strata live. A car is parked at the entrance to many of these bungalows. As I walk towards the institute in the • Remembering Pauline Kael / Vijaya Mulay / Ruma Guha (Continued on page 3) Thakurta / Girish Karnad July-September 2019 VIDURA 1 FROM THE EDITOR As the haves wallow in ‘luxury’, the have-nots continue to suffer s I write this, India’s 72nd well as his endeavour to bring such conditions of service, the misery of Independence Day is just a facilities to the common person, but workers, insecurity of employment, Acouple of days away. That it certainly is a comment about the and rampant exploitation may be a short time in the life of a reality that stares us in the face 72 Vibhuti Patel refers to a World nation but it is nevertheless quite years after Independence. Bank report stating that 33 per cent a distance to measure progress by. And this sentiment is what Sakun- or 400 million of the world’s poor There is no doubt that India has tala Narasimhan echoes when she are in India. An alarming statistic. made progress in various fields, writes about the trillion-dollar More than two-thirds of Indians possibly the most in science and India and a Bharat where dollars live in rural areas and nearly 50 per technology and medical science. are unheard of. Indeed, education, cent of the workforce is employed Today, Mukesh Ambani launched health, even water for survival, are in agriculture. Most cultivators are Jio Fiber, announced the Jio-Mi- beyond the reach of the margina- small, marginal farmers and poor crosoft Cloud partnership and the lised in India, those who lives hinge peasants who own less than three $75 billion deal with Saudi Aramco. around the poverty line – millions. acres of land. There are no other Jio Giga Fiber will be rolled out in Let’s spare a thought for the widow opportunities for them to enhance a few weeks from now, offering (mentioned in Narasimhan’s article) their income. It is very important, free voice calls for life from land- bringing up three daughters, who is therefore, for the decision-makers line phones, high speed broadband unable to procure her entitlement of in the agricultural sector to contain of minimum speed of 100 mbps, ration rice, sugar and dal, though food inflation, Patel says. Farm- free high definition TV and dish she has Aadhar and BPL cards. The ers often resort to distress sale of at minimum monthly subscription poor woman, month after month, their products. It is a monopoly of Rs 700. And, what’s more, from buys her requirements of rice in the market where corporate houses are mid-2020, premium Jio Giga Fiber open market, paying prices that she the price-makers and farmers are customers will also get to watch just cannot afford. the price-takers, she says. Patel is new movies on the same day of its Speaking for the marginalised, convinced that it is the rapid and release, meaning they can watch Bharat Dogra says there should be unpredictable changes in food movies at home the same day they much greater concern for the weaker prices that have wreaked havoc are released in theatres! Unimagi- sections and their basic needs in on factory-labour and product nable once, but reality now. So, this budgetary allocations. Basic needs markets, politics and social stabil- is one side of India. include access to health care ser- ity. She offers suggestions: To deal The other side is, how many people vices. For the bulk of rural people, with urban and rural hunger, com- can afford such luxury? Yes, luxury. the nearest source of health care is munity-managed food banks must When Rs 700 means a lot to them, the community health centre where be created; restaurants can be told even when considered as monthly more than 70 per cent of the posts not to destroy unsold food but to expenditure. After all, food, cloth- of specialists (surgeons, physicians, deposit it in local food banks; and ing and shelter, the basics, matter paediatricians) remain unfilled or farmers should be encouraged to much more than being able to watch vacant, he points out. In another sell their products directly to cus- a movie on the day of its release on article, Dogra cites the many efforts tomers without any interference by television. It is a story of extremes – that have been taken over the years governments. one side that can enjoy Jio Fiber and by trade unions to help workers the other that can only look forward and how such efforts have been a Sashi Nair to its next meal. This is, of course, no source of hope and inspiration even [email protected] comment on the exceptional entre- though they can never be completely preneurship shown by Ambani as successful. He points to the poor 2 VIDURA July-September 2019 Illustration: Arun Ramkumar (Continued from page 1) entitlement of ration rice, sugar reply saying that he was giv- and dal, though she has Aadhar ing instructions to his staff to mornings, each car is being and BPL (below poverty line) investigate the problem. You washed down with either hose cards. The ration shop owner can guess what happened pipes or buckets of water, to doesn’t provide a satisfactory thereafter – the lower level staff remove dust, leaving them explanation and says there is a at the minister’s office phoned shiny. Facing the bungalows large board put up at his shop the ration shop to say a com- are a row of slum dwellings, that gives information. She can- plaint had been sent against small one-room shelters hous- not read. Month after month, him. Now Revathi is scared to ing low-income families (no toi- she buys her requirements of go anywhere near the shop and lets, no water pipes. of course). rice in the open market, pay- is trying to get her name trans- Another example of the well- ing prices that she just cannot ferred to another ration shop off affording to spend water afford. The children cannot go which is further away. “With on washing their cars when the hungry. She asked a memsahib no male in the family, and three city has a massive water short- (lady) to help, the woman went daughters to raise and protect, age, with even borewells run- with Revathi to the ration shop I cannot afford to cross swords ning dry.