The Rural/Urban Paradox of India (Abridged)
A few weeks ago, I got the chance of having a long and touching conversation with Ashok Manjhi, one construction laborer who works in Ghaziabad, a suburb of New Delhi. He is one of the millions of daily-wage earners who reside in slums in Indian cities. The dynamics of rural poverty and urban migration in India compel me to refrain from making an estimate of their population; it will have changed substantially between now, and reading of this discussion. It changes everyday. Ashok preferred to put it this way, “Sit for a few hours outside the New Delhi Railway Station and you will know how many Biharis (he refers to people originally from Bihar, one of the most backward states of India) get off the train each day.” He is one them; Ashok ran away from his home in Munger district of Bihar “almost fifteen to twenty years ago” and took the train to Delhi. After hearing this, I asked him his age. He told me that he is “about twenty five years old.” His reply forced me to ask what was compelling him to refrain from giving me exact numbers. Ashok replied in a voice softer than normal, “I’m not educated enough to keep track of years, sir.” Ashok doesn’t even know his date of birth. I had planned to talk to him about the living conditions in slums but this took me in a completely different direction –from city to village. Rural India has long been diseased by severe lack of basic infrastructure and support systems and we still have not discovered a cure. Ashok wasn’t fortunate enough to get birth in medical care and have his birth date officially recorded. And he certainly didn’t receive basic education. But Ashok did make an attempt; he started going to school in his village. The school comprised of a blackboard on a wooden stand under a shady tree, a few students –mainly boys, and a single teacher whose appearance at ‘school’ was a rare event. Going to school was occasional; he helped his father on the field otherwise. He was brought up in abject poverty. His father was a landless laborer and their family of six constantly suffered from starvation. On one of his school days, Ashok was beaten by his teacher –for refusing to bring him tea –until he started bleeding. This charged young lad struck the teacher on the head with a stone. The same day, he decided to leave this “swamp.” He couldn’t stand this helpless existence anymore. He took things in his own hands; he took the train.
More than forty two million people in India have a reason, like Ashok, that pushed them to leave home for a city. It constitutes a seventh of urban India. This part of urban population is subjected to a continuum of neglect from the government; an impoverished rural background brings them to urban agglomerations, in search of opportunities. Here, they have no option except living in slum clusters that are “characterized by over crowding, deterioration, unsanitary conditions or absence of facilities or amenities which, because of these conditions or any of them, endanger the[ir] health, safety or morals (UNESCO).” Their plight doesn’t end here; now the sword of eviction hangs over their head. With the aim of urban renewal and new development, to meet the demands of a growing economy, cities have resorted to reckless demolition of slum clusters. Mumbai, the second most populous city in the world, is home to almost 13 million people, half of which occupy a mere 6% of the city’s total land area. Almost 6 million live in slums clusters and another 1 million are on pavements, surrounded by towering condominiums and air-conditioned shopping malls (Adhikari, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay). Even though it is a city where a majority do not have access to planned housing, the state government embarked on a large-scale demolition drive in November 2004 to free up public spaces of ‘encroachment’ for development projects including commercial and entertainment centers for the rich –who are in minority. This came after promises of slum regularization made earlier that year to these people, who quite ironically and apparently are big in numbers but not in power, in the world’s largest democracy. An estimated 92,000 homes were brought down, displacing more than 400,000 slum dwellers between November 2004 and June 2006. Bulldozing was accompanied by use of force against weak slum dwellers. In one of these demolition drives carried out in May 2006, 5000 homes were razed and the rest set on fire, with no or inadequate eviction notification, right in front of police and municipal officials (Kothari, UN Human Rights Commission).
In the past, Indian planners have kept their focus on removing poverty in numbers, more than actual development in rural areas (Handbook of Poverty in India). This approach exposes an immediate concern for lifting people above the poverty line instead of bringing about change in villages. If the poverty alleviation schemes would have been planned for creation of assets and social infrastructure in the rural areas rather than simple reduction of future incidence of poverty in statistical terms, more than 50% of rural India wouldn’t have been ‘capability poor.’ From their beginning in the 1950s, Indian rural initiatives have gone through several phases. And “growth with social justice has been the basic objective of development planning in India since independence (Handbook of Poverty in India).” In the first stage, local development was the main target, to be accomplished through public participation. The second phase of planning attacked exploitative intermediary institutions and landholding systems and initiated land reforms. This was followed by an emphasis on agricultural technology, popularly known as the Indian ‘green revolution.’ These programs were successful in many ways but the ghost of poverty that haunted rural India was still pervasive in the 1970s. So, the government decided to revamp its policies for rural India. Poverty alleviation through direct attack became the new mantra; due to the inefficiencies of previous programs, the central government changed its approach and went into a ‘defensive mode’ for fighting poverty. This approach led to the creation of numerous rural employment and agricultural support programs, specifically designed to extend financial support to rural poor. These were continued and augmented by new programs through the 1980s. In this process, planners definitely have been able to reduce the percentage of poor in the country but the indicators of human development still remain at appallingly low levels (Handbook of Rural Poverty in India).
The National Minimum Program (2004), promulgated by the Government of India, introduced the National Rural Employment Guarantee program that was later enacted by the central legislature. Another program in the long list of ‘poverty-attacking’ government packages and programs, it is ridden with problems of implementation that are common among these programs. The institutional mechanisms are dysfunctional in places where implementation and employment are required (Human Rights Council). In the state of Andhra Pradesh, 2.7 million families are in absolute poverty. Mahbubnagar, an Andhra district with the most number of poor, reports over 230,000 families below the poverty line. The NREGA data for Mahbubnagar shows that 216,000 of these sought employment during 2006-07. It also claims that NREGA paid an average minimum wage of about Rs. 80 (almost $2) per laborer per day. Examining the data in a further detail reveals that only 4086 families (1.9% of all) received up to 100 days of employment (The figure of 100 days was stipulated with the rationale of guaranteed non-agricultural off-season employment.) An overwhelming majority of the families received just 25 days of employment during the same period, earning a meager Rs. 160 (approximately $4) per month from the NREGA (Web Blog). These figures are exhibitions of the decrepit condition of poverty alleviation programs. The current phase of ‘direct attack’ on poverty in Indian planning appears to have lost against poverty by a wide margin. Formulation of programs of this nature and implementation in this manner has proven insufficient in meeting the demands that India’s rural poor.
India has followed a policy of assuring equality and social justice to its poor through direct distribution of commodities and other resources. This has reached a height where jobs and loans are distributed like ‘commodities.’ NREGA was an attempt to ‘pour’ employment opportunities into the rural areas of India. Instead of building the infrastructure where rural communities can sustain and prosper on their own hard work, infrastructure projects are ‘created’ to provide employment opportunities (India Rural Infrastructure Report). In a recent budget, the Government of India waived overdue loans totaling to an estimated $12.5 billion that were owed by 30 million farmers who own less than two hectares of land. It pledged another $2.5 billion to help 10 million more in settling loans (CNN, News Report). This loan waiver has been criticized by economists worldwide. This is not only against the fundamental economic principles but is a violation of the human dignity of poor farmers. The farmer knows that he wasn’t able to pay back his outstanding loan; he doesn’t have the confidence in agriculture, he has to depend on the government. Planning in this mode makes the poor feel poorer. It is not surprising that human dignity and self-respect are talked about in the concept of human development. The basic infrastructure and facilities that can endow the rural poor with the capability of having control over their own lives are non-existent in rural India today. As I said earlier, the demand is for ‘rural development’ for the alleviation of poverty, and not direct intervention for the sake of ‘poverty alleviation.’ How long will the government continue to assist the poor? There has to be a long-term perspective with emphasis on the uplifting of rural society as the main aim so that rural areas can gain economic independence. Only through this course can one expect that the rural poor can ever dream of accruing the potential to elevate to the social and economic status of well-off urbanites. The outcomes of Indian planning have –quite apparently –not exhibited the ‘trickle-down’ effect of resources from cities to villages. On the contrary, the rural-urban divide has widened.
© 2010, Arihant Jain. All rights reserved.