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Now
In an article concerned with the rapid
urbanization of India and China, a writer for London's Financial
Times (August 5/6, 2006) points out that Bangalore "has
become a byword for a catastrophic failure of urban planning."
Interestingly, he attributes
this lapse to "Indian sentimentalism about the supposed
benefits of village life, and the consequent incompetence in
managing cities" which "contrasts starkly with the
ruthless pragmatism of the central and local authorities in China."
Let us not bring up that bugbear
of the absence of democracy in China just yet, no matter that
the Anglo-Americans are all so keen to bomb us all to "freedom"
these days, China being that fearsome and much envied exception.
More worrying are the writer
quotes from supposed Indian experts. One of them is K.E. Seetharam,
a water and sanitation expert from the Asia Development Bank
in Manila, according to whom "civilizations have always
been urbanised" and "this concept of rural development
is something more recent and in my view doesn't exist."
Is this man truly Indian? Has
he forgotten those school history lessons about the Indo-Gangetic
plain and the role it has played throughout time in sustaining
the economies and cultures of empires from the Mauryan to the
Mughal? Or, seeing as he comes from South India, he might visit
a library and read about the role of the farmers of the Kaveri
and Krishna basins whose taxes helped maintain the splendour
of the Vijayanagar courts.
However, to be fair to Mr.
Seetharam, his view has widespread currency today. And this is
why it is so dangerous. The reasons for the prevalence of the
view are not far to seek. The industrial revolution treated from
the beginning the countryside as a hinterland for mineral resources
or as a sink for its effluents. It made it easy to forget the
fact that industrial workers (often dispossessed peasants) and
their bosses were fed on food that the farmers grew in the villages.
Also, since cities grew around industries, it gave birth to the
illusion that civilisations have always been urban.
Even when civilisations have
been formally urban, as in the cities of the ancient world, like
Athens or Sparta, they have often had, believe it or not, little
to do with commerce or industry (those being of least importance
to Greek citizens and thinkers), unlike our cities today, offshoots
as they are of industrial growth.
We would be well-advised to
suspend our intoxicating amnesia, bred of industrial affluence,
(and effluence) and recall at least a bit of what the countryside
has contributed to human civilisation. From legends and myths
to melodies and dances, human culture anywhere is unimaginable
without the backdrop of rural inspiration.
This is not the place for it,
but here is a sampler, unjust as it necessarily is. Great landscape
art from delicate Chinese woodcuts to Van Gogh's majestic
canvases have been inspired by nature, available only in
the countryside. Beethoven's pastoral is hard to imagine being
inspired by urban industrial noise. Nor can the poems of the
Romantics, whether in India or in Europe.
Thomas Jefferson's dream of
a free American republic was peopled with farmers. Gandhi championed
the idea of village republics for a reason. Rabindranath Tagore
set up Shantiniketan in the countryside when he could as easily
have done so in Kolkata. So many of our great bards, from Lalleshwari
to Tukaram, sang to the lord in the jungles and the meadows.
Our tragedy today is that William
Blake's warnings about the "dark, Satanic mills" of
London went unheeded by Western culture. Independent India, which
has never decolonized culturally, followed suit.
The concept of rural development
does not exist? Would the Prime Minister be willing to repeat
that in front of a meeting of villagers anywhere in India before
the next elections, apprising them of the latest wisdom of our
policy experts?
Even more chilling, the Financial
Times article goes on to argue that the mismanagement of
Indian cities is to be blamed upon the fact that Indian politicians
are "obsessed with the problem of rural poverty" and
thus drag resources away from urban development! "One reason
for this illogical approach is politics: India is a democracy.
For historical reasonsthe countryside is over-represented in
the political system and power rests with the state government,
not with the cities."
So the lament is that, alas,
for "historical reasons", India is a democracy and
the villagers carry too many votes. Talk about doublespeak in
the mainstream of the Western media!
The FT writer seeks
further explanation for the state of Indian cities from someone
much more influential than Mr. Seetharam. Nandan Nilekani is
the CEO of Infosys, one of India's software flagships. He represents
Indian business interests at the World Economic Forum meetings
in Davos every year. He is approached by all the Western media
outlets whenever representative views from Indian corporate circles
are wanted.
Listen to what he says: There
is "a disconnect", he points out, "between the
economic power and the political power." Bangalore with
only 10% of the population of Karnataka state contributes 60%
of the state's GDP. However, it has only 7% of the state assembly
seats.
So what is to be done? Here
might be a foretaste of things to come: "In China you don't
have that problemIndia is the only example of urbanisation (on
this scale) happening with universal adult franchise."
So the moral of the story is
that urbanisation shouldn't happen with universal adult franchise.
When the West urbanized it did not have universal suffrage. China
continues to urbanize only because there is no democracy. Nilekani's
diagnosis of the problem is accurate. The problem lies with its
one-eyed superficiality, drawn as it is from the premises of
industrial growth, predatory on the countryside.
Shall we take the Chinese route
to industrial greatness and do away with the nuisance of democracy
which, in any case, has nothing to do with capitalist success
and does plenty to put brakes on it? That, at this stage of history,
might prove to be politically explosive in India (no thanks to
the West that we are democratic). What the increasingly political
corporate elite will want to experiment with is a set of constitutional
amendments that fiscally empower cities at the cost of the countryside,
correcting in favour of urban India the disconnect that Nilekani
mentions. This cannot happen without deep-rooted changes in the
very structure of Indian government and politics. Jurists would
be able to tell us more though there are surely many corporate
fantasists dreaming of globally networked, autonomous post-modern
city-states!
Let us be clear. Nilekani is arguing, in effect, for a "dollar
democracy", where one rupee will count for one vote, rather
than one person. Does anyone see how gigantic a retrograde step
this would be in human affairs? It means setting aside all the
mammoth political and cultural efforts ranging across the centuries
and the continents that have gone into enfranchising the historically
powerless. In the long historical argument between town and country,
the metro now wishes to intervene with decisive finality. It
is a dangerous trend, whether it is observed in India, China
or elsewhere.
In the US they have achieved
a dollar democracy without major constitutional amendments. However,
it is easier to brainwash and fool a well-fed electorate which
can take out loans to buy vacation homes and BMWs. Achieving
the same political feat in India is not going to be easy at all.
That, in fact, is the reason why during the past 17 years, in
the six general elections the country has had, the incumbent
party has not been returned to office even once, a fact unmatched
by any world democracy.
What people like the writer
of the FT article, Seethram, Nilekani and so many others,
for whom they are the spokespersons, would ideally like to see
is India grow as "smoothly" as China (or 19th century
Dickensian Britain), with the nuisance of things like "democracy"
and "rural development" out of the way. Indian cities,
their slums duly demolished and put out of sight of visiting
investors in air-conditioned cars, will then wear the gloss of
Singapore or even London, starved rural underbellies not in view.
But alas, you cannot hide 300
or 400 million starving mouths, and the insistently unjust social
reality of India will break through into one or another rear-view
mirror, disturbing the fantasies of financiers' wives and girlfriends.
Time to recall William Blake
once more: "When nations grow old, art grows cold and commerce
sits on every tree."
Aseem Shrivastava is an independent writer. He can be
reached at aseem62@yahoo.com.
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