Despite India's success story, the nation reels under caste...

The caste system is the bane which will continue to bog us down, as despite we all moving upwardly mobile, yet this contradiction, no matter how much invisible, can be felt at any given moment...

Urban life is happening and hectic. Modernity is very often related to being urban, but are we to be modern Have really we acceded to be modern What is modernity Being Western Of course, being Western is to be modern but unlike Westernisation we have been more westoxicated, to borrow a term from Dipankar Gupta, from his book Mistaken Modernity India Between Worlds, and which for that matter has become our herald for being modern. Human being, it may be known, is thus the only centre of any civilisation, anything is this world, whether be skyscrapers or mankind exploring moon, is cited around human and is a story of human endeavour. The undying and unrelenting spirit has made humans to reach such a pinnacle never before achieved in history. But, humans have also fallen too short of humanity as alongside achievements there is a gnawing list of utmost failures too. Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains is the dictum, which forebodes all calumnies of our achievements.

We are more than a billion people but frankly we all have to sit back and feel in trance to find out if we are really modern We are no more a fledgling democracy but a confident nation marching ahead in terms of development and urbanisation. However, the grey (or black) areas are still too easy to be found. Thankfully, democracy and urbanisation has to an extent, but not quite yet, done away with a ritual of “barter system” that William and Charlote Wiser first identified as “Jajmani system” where the well-to-do-landlord, possibly brahmin, but at any rate born to a dominant jati (caste) of the region, provided annual sustenance-shares of his harvest to his own barber, washerman, blacksmith, sweeper, accountant and astrologer, i.e. grains for services in perpetuity, writes by Stanley Wolpert in Introduction to India.

But, despite the success story of India and its literal rise from “a cow dung to computer” India very civilisationally still reels under caste which does not shies to give us the sobriquet to perhaps be the most divided society in the world. This caste system is the bane which will continue to bog us down, as despite we all moving upwardly mobile, yet this contradiction, no matter how much invisible, can be felt at any given moment. No wonder, in each small/big city or a metropolis, this development and urbanisation is marred by “casteist syndrome” as developed and urbane areas are “higher castes and nouveau-riche” reservoir while the left-over underdeveloped vast mammoth is meant for lower castes and minorities, where there are more police stations then schools!

However, the Mandal Commission politics in 1990s began the movement for upwardness for all the backward and marginalised communities, in our society and thus accordingly “reservation” has become the only war cry for any community across whole of India today. The proverbial Rise of the Plebeians by Christophe Jaffrelot can be a good read on the subject. But, we are right now talking about urbanisation, which thus, shows millions of new two-wheelers and four-wheelers per year and which understandably marks for the new beginning of four-lanes expressways and multiple flyovers across big cities and even small towns in India. No wonder India has become the fifth largest manufacturer of cars in the world. Our ever expanding cities have necessitated the importance of cars, new parks, multiplexes, shopping malls — all have thus attained the luxury mark and are therefore now in new parts of any city in India. The land prices have skyrocketed and in the same corollary the prices of everything affordable.

India since 1947 can be divided into two parts: pre-and-post-1991 Manmohan Singh Economic Reforms and which are still on the go. Until then a government employee or a middle class citizen, would live in a rented house, his children studying in middle-class schools, and on retirement his daughter would marry, half of his fund would then go for land-buying and then a shelter (house) built on it. Thereafter, not even a semblance of “Nehruvian socialism” could be found in our society. Most rapid migration towards cities, no employment avenues in villages, no hospitals and no electricity there too, hence, for survival a movement for the cities was an automatic action. This in-turn disturbed the demography of every city as people with their own diverse backgrounds, cultures, distinct languages and dialect poured into millions, and thus, the “traditions” of cities, where people had lived for centuries got their equilibrium disturbed forever. This is urbanisation in reverse. Today people are akin to living in a Human Zoo, a Desmond Morris book, where there is no cohesiveness for each other and there is a shred of anonymity on every face. The multi-storeyed buildings have made the matters worse as decades would pass without one even having a brush with thy neighbour.

The market logic, an essential ingredient of urbanisation have now made its music be felt, as today as many members in a family, hence, twice as many mobile phones, children included, as many motorcycles or cars. Hardly, there is a middle class family and not having as many watches, not on wrists but on walls, laptops/televisions and even air conditioners. Such is the great Indian bazaar, basking in its glory but all definitely ill-concerned for the millions and millions of poverty stricken who cannot even afford food for twice a day! What to talk of any medicine for them! This overall amnesia of our society smacks of our stone-heartedness, which is nothing but an offshoot of our caste and hypocrisy over our claims for being a welfare state.

Constraints of our urban life, which spell insouciance instead of binding us, despite xenophobic spurt in nationalism by WhatsApp and Twitter freebees is spread all over. Linguistic chauvinism, regionalism, unemployment, migration, communalism, caste-based voting pattern, corruption, apart from malnutrition, pollution, cold and hot weather deaths, hunger deaths and what not; is the other order of urban life.

The inevitable comparison with China has to be in the offing. My sociology professor friend went to China is 2005, got himself photographed on Shanghai railway station where he stood just alone. There was no crowd as people come just five minutes before train arrival. He went 120 km from there into China’s suburbs and found 24 hours supply of warm and cold water apart from electricity. There the inhabitants were putting on leather jackets and their refrigerators had fruits! They also had hot and cold air conditioners too. On inauguration of a public project there was also a completion date simultaneously announced.

A serious rethink is required as we look ahead towards urbanisation in India. We need to first and foremost stop migration towards bigger cities. Enough has already been accommodated in cities. In every city in India, with some exception, there is a jam for hours and a well-to-do-survey can find how many billions of rupees of oil is burnt for no purpose. Apart from the precious hours wasted sweating on roads. We need to develop small industries in small tehsils, at block-levels, provide food and shelter and health cover to every citizen in his/her village. With technology we can provide electricity for at least 18 hours to every village, develop shopping malls, stadiums, colleges, universities, multiplexes and super speciality hospitals, specially near railway stations, bus stations in big/small cities and near airports too. Every housing government or a private body should make it mandatory to build a hospital in its premises just the way recreational facilities/compulsory parking lots are made, all across he country.

These multi-billion projects of flyovers/expressways and metro trains will not win us lives as millions of Indians will forever never have a chance to travel on them but we Indians need right to health, right to education, right to food and right to dignity as our forte as only then we would fathom for a welfare state or else everything is a passé. As for China bashing, our very own PM was found distributing tricycle for handicaps in his constituency Varanasi-Made in China.

The writer is UP state information commissioner