Development is a word that has been used extensively by many political leaders to their own advantage. I stay in a state where we are served development for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In fact it is savored as fried snack too along with cutting Chai.
Development is a word that I compare to Beauty. It lies in the eyes of the beholder and never the developer. When I move around the state in my car, I take pride in having great roads. But then I go beneath and see tragic stories of development and people who have been displaced due to development of big projects. So in short every development comes at a cost. Now who am I to value this cost as long as I am a beneficiary of this development.
In UP, development has a different meaning. People of this largest Indian state are watching helplessly as the democratically elected Chief Minister is erecting her statues all over. This is more of inferiority complex issue than anything else. Mayawati is asserting herself as someone more powerful and valuable to the state than any other leader. In a state that is horribly divided by caste and religion, this assertion helps her to be a messiah among a set of people who have never tasted development. She wants her Dalit identity to be transformed into a powerful tool that can beat any caste or creed. If it has cost millions to make these statues, there is another blunder that is going on. Election Commission has ordered these statues to be covered. This will cost millions more.
Along the Ahmedabad roads in Gujarat, I walk in the middle of vehicles. Even the most posh areas with western style of development do not have walking paths. So what development are we talking about? And as I go further I see helpless citizens relieving themselves wherever they find space. I tried once to scold a man who took shelter behind a tree to relieve himself. He stopped his activity for a while and asked me if I can find a loo anywhere so that he can pause his current activity and resume if I help him in finding one.
The real disgraces of this development are its side effects. We define development in terms of big road, bigger buildings, bigger malls and not the quality life we should be living. Today how many children walk to school? Development has taken place so suddenly that a section of people have not been able to match with its pace. They felt they have been left out of this development. Their brains worked overtime to find out the reason why this was happening. They got quick answers when CAG mentioned an astronomical figure as the kickback A Raja has taken for telecom spectrum. Their blood boiled as they thought their share of development and progress was snatched from them on a single stroke. As the frustrations grew, entry of anti graft crusaders and civil activists helped it fuel the fire. It gave much needed tonic and everyone joined the bandwagon without realizing what they were protesting for.
The one disgraceful word ‘corruption’ became the rallying point. I watched in shock and dismay as people gathered in thousands to protest against an unknown enemy waging a war against unknown people in unspecified locations. They uniformly gave the name ‘corruption’ to every evil that we are facing today.
People who invented this terminology also brought out solutions and they called it Lokpal. The government, faced with mounting criticism and a silent PM, quickly brought its own version of this. Today, the entire campaign has got fizzled out because the people who were behind this campaign had more to hide than to reveal.
The campaign could not sustain its steam not merely because of the people involved but because the main protagonist – corruption – was nowhere to be seen. After much deliberation, people realized a protest or two cannot remove this evil. They saw their own neighbours and friends – those who feed the corrupt with corruption capsules – were in the forefront of all these protests.
So what has corruption to do with development – the topic which we began this discussion? In fact it has. I will illustrate the correlation. A posh bunglow owner asked one of my lawyer friends to file a stay over a proposed demolition of his parking space- which he admits has been encroached upon. He is of the opinion that since he has used it for the last 15 years without any problem, why this sudden move by the civic body to widen the road and cut the portion where he keeps three of his five cars (the rest two are on roads outside). I was a witness to this conversation between the lawyer and the client. As I always pokes into unnecessary things, I intervened and asked for his pardon if anything that I speak hurts him.
I told him the story of hundreds of thousands of tribal who stayed hundreds of thousands of years at a place where they never bothered to have a document or a panchayat receipt. They believed the land was owned by them and all of a sudden a group of people with well dressed attire on beacon led vehicles comes to their land and asks them to vacate. They refuse but in return are shown court orders which they never understand. They are forcibly vacated and a dam is built in that place. No one knows the whereabouts of those people. The labourers you see around at construction sites could be their second or third generation. People who owned large tracts of land are homeless with no fault of theirs. The fruits of their pain are directly poured into your kitchen tap and named as Narmada Water. You praise political leaders forgetting the sacrifice these people gave. He had no remorse and instead asked me if I was a Maoist or friend of Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar – Gujarat’s sworn enemies.
The lawyer got a stay for him but it lasted a few months. Today all his five cars are parked on the road. Coming back to the main topic of development, I ask myself whether it is my fault not to see the fruits of development to my benefit and instead ponders over things that are not relevant. Or have I chosen a path where I confront everyone and take a stand to what I believe is reasonably correct. Development for me is human development and not a Gurgaon style of development. A nation can mature only with human development. The rest are just byproducts.
From Random Notes – Binu Alex
