THE NEW BHARAT
Hope and grand ambition course through the great Indian hinterland even amid the enveloping gloom of rural distress. Catch the winning spirit
Heart-warming accounts of human endeavour to beat the odds and create legacies that are transforming India
You can’t take the village out of India. Or me. Most urbanites (I grew up in Bengaluru) have had some experience of Bharat—the other 69 per cent of Indians who live in the hinterland. I have vivid memories of visiting my maternal grandfather in Bhagamandala, in the foothills of Talacauvery in Kodagu where the mighty Cauvery bubbles forth as a tiny spring. From 1965 onwards, I regularly went to Cherangala, his village, to stay with him while he was alive and to pay respects at his grave after he died. We had to go by foot to his house from the bus stop in Bhagamandala. It was a five kilometre walk through lush paddy fields bisected by the gurgling Cauvery, which was more of a stream than a river. The house did not have electricity and we lit kerosene lamps at night. Food was cooked using firewood—the akki (rice) rotis baked on them were delicious. We plucked cashew fruit from the garden, roasted the seeds on burning wood and ate the kernel piping hot. We bathed in a pond surrounded by a thatched enclosure. There were no toilets, we took refuge in the nearby bushes, always watching our backs for snakes and other wildlife. It was only in the early 2000s that change became visible in the village. We did not have to walk to the house any
more, we could use the motorable road that passed right by it. Electricity poles had come up and, when the lights failed, the hum of gensets echoed across the hills. Houses with thatched roofs were replaced by ones using cement, concrete and tiles. When I last visited two years back, my relatives cooked food using LPG cylinders. The houses had attached toilets and bathrooms with water coming from the taps. Everyone had smartphones and stayed in touch on WhatsApp. They kept abreast of cashew, coffee and cardamom prices in India and the world on the internet. The issues they faced, though, were no different from what my grandfather complained about when he was alive. The price at which they sold the surplus paddy they grew remains unremunerative. Rates for coffee, the main plantation crop, continue to fluctuate widely even as finding labour to tend the plants has got costlier. Loss of tree cover and climate change are making agriculture a risky venture, forcing some members of the family to find work in town and supplement the family income.
Welcome to the New Bharat which, like Kodagu, has experienced transformational change along with extreme contradictions since india today magazine came into existence 43 years ago. Even as it prospered, the countryside experienced equal distress, particularly on the farm front. The paradoxes are evident. In these four decades, the Central and state governments have combined their resources to build a record 30 lakh kilometres of black top roads that now connect the 640,867 villages to the nearest town. By last year, virtually 100 per cent of India’s villages had been electrified, and almost 83 per cent of rural households now have electric bulbs lighting up their nights. Under a scheme to provide housing for the needy in villages, 1 crore houses have
Why call it Naya Bharat when it still seems like the old India with all its woes? Because no more are 69 per cent of Indian citizens resigned to their fate or reliant on doles
been built in the past four years, a six-fold annual increase from before. The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has seen over 9 crore toilets being built since 2014 and 5.3 lakh villages have been declared open defecation free. With 5.8 crore new LPG connections given since 2016, cooking gas is fast replacing kerosene stoves and coal- or wood-fired chulhas in kitchens, covering almost 50 per cent of rural households. Mobile phone coverage and usage have reached the poorest of the poor. Joining the white revolution that saw India become the world’s largest producer of milk are the silver (poultry) and blue (fisheries) revolutions. And the number of those living below the poverty line (BPL) in rural India has dropped dramatically, from 50 per cent in 1993-94 to 25.7 per cent today.
Yet, even if the transformation has been nothing short of revolutionary in many areas, on key welfare indicators such as health and education and on the economic front, the situation remains grim. While infant mortality levels have dropped significantly since Independence, they are still at a higher level than in neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh. Almost 35 per cent, or one out of three, children in villages still suffer from malnutrition. In education, while enrolment in primary and secondary levels is near universal, dropout rates for high school are extremely high and only 11.6 per cent pursue an undergraduate course. Even for those enrolled in schools, several studies have exposed how poor the standards of learning are. In agriculture, production levels have reached record levels in foodgrains and pulses, making India self-sufficient in food. But this has triggered a problem of plenty that has seen farmers across the country rise up in strong protest against the low returns. Farmer distress is compounded by the huge slowdown in manufacturing and industry in the country. That has resulted in not enough jobs being generated to absorb the underemployed from agriculture. Agricultural workers now constitute 54 per cent of India’s total work force, but their productivity is only half that of their urban counterparts.
So, to paraphrase Charles Dickens, it is the best of times for village India and also the worst
of times. Why do we still call it Naya Bharat when much of it could still be described as the old India with all its familiar woes? The big difference is that no more are those living in village India willing to resign themselves to their fate. Or depend on doles from the government to lift them out of the abyss. That change is visible, particularly among rural women, who are looking to go beyond being homemakers or work as subsistence farm labourers. In what is possibly the world’s largest selfemployed movement, over 10 crore women have formed 717,689 self-help groups (SHGs) and now collectively engage in a wide spectrum of economic activity that gives them income and, more importantly, an identity of their own. They organise themselves in clusters to leverage small loans from banks to fund the jobs they are engaged in, whether in livestock management or in tailoring. They have a strong record of repaying loans. And they are bringing about a silent but profound revolution.
All across the country, as india today correspondents found, there are inspiring examples of how villagers have worked against debilitating odds to bring about change, not only in their lives but for others as well. Ruma Devi, who features on our front cover, got married at the age of 17 with few skills other than stitching and embroidery. To supplement her income, she formed a self-help group to make handicrafts. When its members found that rather than rely on middlemen, they could directly buy their raw material and sell their finished products, they took a bank loan and expanded their business. Ruma Devi then joined an NGO called Gramin Vikas Evam Chetna Sansthan that trained artisans and rose to become its president. It now operates in 75 villages and has trained over 11,000 artisans. Ruma Devi inspired her team members to diversify into making tops, skirts, dupattas and salwar suits using traditional motifs. Their work caught the attention of top designers who have started purchasing the clothes they make. At 30 years of age, Ruma Devi is an outstanding example of the success of empowered women. In the following pages, we feature many more such heart-warming stories.
The recent rising tide of farmers’ protests is
also an expression of rural self-assertion and awareness. Farmers are now demanding more than band-aid solutions like loan waivers that make them look like villains and benefit only those who can game the system. Their demand is for an INCOME REVOLUTION, not a green, blue or white one. They are not taken in by the promises from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to double farm incomes. They insist on speedy delivery and fundamental reform. They also want “ease of doing agriculture” rather than just seeing all the government’s concessions go to industry. This tragedy could have been averted if agricultural practices had also seen a paradigm shift with the economic reform process that began in 1991. It didn’t happen. Policy-makers continued with the single-minded focus on production and self-sufficiency. They were averse to taking major risks for fear of offending India’s largest vote bank. In contrast, China ushered in major reform so that only 18 per cent of its population now is dependent on agriculture as compared to India’s 43 per cent.
Among India’s follies was the failure to amend the various land acts. As a result, the fragmentation of land holdings has reached critical levels, with a majority of farmers working less than one hectare of land. With no enabling legislation being passed towards easing the land crisis, contract farming, innovative technologies and economies of scale have not taken hold. What was also neglected was agricultural logistics, post-production processing and marketing of products. For instance, the shortfall in cold-chain infrastructure for storage and transport of high-value crops such as fruits and vegetables is anything between 85 and 95 per cent. There were other mistakes. There is a clear need to link agriculture to domestic and industrial consumption and diversify crops based on need. But the mindless focus on foodgrains saw close to
In what is possibly the world’s largest selfemployed movement, over 100 million women have formed 717,689 self-help groups (SHGs) and engage in a wide spectrum of economic activity
50 million tonnes being stored under the Public Distribution System—more than twice the annual food entitlement of all the BPL families in the country. To cite another example, we need only 25 million tonnes of sugarcane for domestic consumption, but we produce 3036 million tonnes. Yet, till July this year, government policy restricted its diversion to nonfood uses like ethanol production. No matter which party comes to power in 2019, one must hope its manifesto will include undertaking major agrarian reforms to end the farmers’ agony.
In the other key areas impacting rural progress, both the Central and state governments have thankfully learnt from past errors. Providing rural housing for the needy is one such. Housing programmes have been around since 1985, but their implementation has been tardy, and corruption rampant. When the NDA government under Narendra Modi came to power, it revamped the programme and renamed it the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana. The size of the houses to be built was increased from 20 square metres to 25 square metres and the grant increased from Rs 70,000 to Rs 1.2 lakh. But what was critical was how corruption was curbed using digital and communications technology. At the time of the payment of the first instalment, the recipient has to upload his photograph along with pictures of the plot of land his house is to come up on. Then, the person has to send photographs of each major stage of construction stipulated to get the next instalment. The subsidy money is transferred directly to the recipient’s bank account, ensuring it is not diverted. This has cut down corruption by local officials from 50 per cent to around 12 per cent. It has also seen a record number of houses being built in the past four years. One fallout: with no slush money coming to them, many of the panchayatlevel officials are not pushing the programme too enthusiastically.
Another welcome development has been the move to integrate the various services under different schemes. So, under the housing scheme, a person can also avail of the subsidy for toilets under Swachh Bharat, get a cooking gas connection under the PM Ujjwala Yojana and an electricity connection under the rural electrification programme. With all money transfers going to bank accounts, the opportunities for corrupt officials to withhold or divert payments has been dramatically reduced. It remains critical to ensure that, having provided these amenities, the quality of service is not compromised. It is not enough to bring electricity poles to a village, there must also be quality supply of power. In subsidised LPG, cooking refills have to be made easily available and not given as a premium.
In the PM Gram Sadak Yojana, an important innovation is that, apart from building the roads, there is a builtin fiveyear maintenance contract the constructor has to abide by. He has no choice then but to ensure that good quality material is used for making the road. Some of the other government schemes have provided amazing results in the past too. When M.G. Ramachandran was chief minister of Tamil Nadu in 1982, he introduced the midday meal scheme. I had written an article about it for the magazine at the time, dismissing it as a populist scheme. But its impact turned out to be revolutionary. Infant mortality rates in the state began to drop significantly a few years after the scheme was introduced. Then the government cleverly extended it to pregnant mothers who came to drop their children to school. They were not only given a meal package but also medicines to ensure a safe pregnancy. It was followed up with postnatal care and benefits. That saw maternal mortality rates drop perceptibly in the state. And to the astonishment of social planners, Tamil Nadu’s total fertility rates began to fall significantly within a decade, reaching levels only achieved by Kerala.
No longer do farmers want a green, white or blue revolution. They want an Income Revolution. Mere promise of doubling farmers’ income won’t suffice
Maternal care has been another success story. When I visited Rajasthan in the 1980s for a health story, only two out of 10 babies born were institutional deliveries. The other eight were delivered at home with the help of the rudimentary equipment used by traditional midwives or dais. Today, eight out of 10 babies in Rajasthan are born under institutional care.
Yet, while these are laudable success stories, it is not enough for governments to be content with providing the basics alone. In the mid1980s, the then prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, launched the rural water mission. The government improved the quality of the handpumps being installed and had them mass produced. It then made provisions for speedy boring of wells and installation of pumps. There were still issues as to how many wells had to be sunk in each village, including separate ones for Dalits and Muslims. But it transformed water availability in rural areas where women had to walk long distances to fetch water. I travelled across several states during the great drought of 1987 and found that the hand pumps provided major relief and enabled the Rajiv government to successfully tackle the crisis. While villagers then were willing to gather around handpumps to collect water, now they are all clamouring for piped water supply to their homes, having seen their urban counterparts enjoy such facilities. Yet, this is not going to be easy to deliver both in terms of costs and availability. The situation calls for innovative solutions and people’s involvement and cooperation to accept and implement them.
There were good reasons why my parents left their respective villages in Kodagu to work for a living in professions other than agriculture. Reasons that continue to send droves of migrants from villages in search of jobs to urban India. For the new Bharat to prosper, there will have to be major reforms in every aspect of the lives of the 83.3 crore who live in it. That remains India’s biggest challenge.