Udaipur -- Where "Bharat Uday" is a funny sarcastic trope

A visit away from the campus was always on the cards with friends. It never came about though, for a variety of reasons. An opportunity was found at last; a class trip ostensibly on a field survey, as part of a research methodology course to Udaipur, Rajasthan. (Aside: This was the 13th state in India that I was visiting, 15 more to go). My pal, Caesar, put it more eloquently: "Srini, here we are, wanting to go out sometime, forced at last to do so, by "State Intervention"". Well, of course, the entire trip was sponsored by the university, and so Caesar was very right indeed. What followed after 4 days of bonding, travelling, investigating, noting down and analysing was a thorough dose of reality-intake; and surely I returned from the trip further wizened and introspective.

Details of the Trip:

We reached Udaipur and camped at a NGO training centre in mofussil 'Bedla' and after a quick briefing, packed our bags to go on a junket to a tribal enclave nearby the tehsil 'Kotda'; our mission to research on the notion of Tribal Self Rule in these areas. Our stay in Kotda & interaction with the officials of administration, governance, legislature and the people themselves gave us a decent picture of the institutions at place at this area. What was sobering was the fact that all HDI indicators for this place were abysmal (Sample: Literacy: 20%) and we got it confirmed from the interaction we had with the tribals themselves. Their living conditions were probably among the worst in India.

People in these tribal villages were staying like animals, I say this with the utmost respect for them. Families averaging 7 per household, living on subsistence farming, forced to work as contract labour, uneducated though willing to be educated, least exposure to the changes in the world (not even electricity has touched their lives yet), the tribals paradoxically were living this life with a contented demeanour!

After a while, I found it increasingly futile to study the efficacy of institutions in a place where individuals were so poorly lacking in enough modern "conscience" of the necessity at all of such institutions. Ergo, I wanted to further go about yet another day of research and what followed, with the graceful consent of my accompanying professor, was a permitted visit to another tribal village with a different team of classmates who were studying Tribal Human Rights. I worked with them in the village, Morella, gleaning enough information to supplement the work of the previous day.

The second village was better off in its facilities and education levels. The issue in question here was Tribal Displacement, that was brought about due to an archaic custom of reparation in a dispute (called Moutana) followed in the tribal village. The displaced tribals were actually though driven away from their homes because of a land dispute and these people had stayed away from their village for nearly 9 years, before intervention by mainstream Naxalite groups in the form of registration of peaceful protest, help in registering voter cards, etc brought the deaf administration to bring these people back to their village.

I checked then upon the work done by the Naxal groups and what action they had in mind for the future, somehow, though I was discomfited by their reference to a more radical strategy, which I felt was going to bring further state oppression on the hapless displaced tribals.

I also had the first hand opportunity to interview an agricultural farmer while ploughing the field alongwith him. Surveys of households were also part of the job. The women were more forthcoming about problems and were more eloquent about the role of politics in their village surprisingly.

In the end, I got enough material to make a decent report of the political institutions, processes and dynamics of contestation, hierarchy in the tribal villages that I had visited. Plus these, we also got enough sobering memories of the depressing socio-economic profiles of the impoverished tribal villagers. All in all, I returned home in a rather sombre mood, mulling over the images that were etched about the conditions of my fellow countrymen in hinterlands, far removed from the brouhaha that is reported so sanguinely by the mainstream press in our country.

Next time, someone tells me that India is shining on my face, I plan to give him/ her a mouthful.

Utsa Patnaik’s Article ( The Death Knell to the pro-reformer in me):

I had attended Prof Utsa Patnaik’s lecture on the agrarian sector’s travails during the times of economic reforms from the early 90s to the present, almost 4 months ago. She had then eloquently talked about how, poverty measures, based on per capita calorie intake of the populace, had shown that, owing to less purchasing power in the rural areas, there was a severe drop in calorie intake. This had resulted in a situation which entailed wide spread hunger and hence the entire episode of widespread farmer suicides in various rural areas in the country. At that time, I wasn’t good enough to understand the linkages between economic reforms, structural macroeconomic policies and spending in the social sector by government. Thankfully, some kind of sporadic but dedicated reading the past few months have educated me to a decent extent and to confirm my understanding, Prof Patnaik herself came up with a well written passionate essay, "Its time for Kumbakarna to wake up", elucidating the exact point mentioned above and exhorting the existing UPA dispensation to work toward ameliorating the fast deteriorating economic conditions of the rural poor.

Prof Zoya Hasan, who teaches Political Science and the erstwhile Chairperson of our department, was also cogent in her exposition of the repercussions of the economic reforms of 1991 in our country. While alluding to the fact that despite some economists saying that the economic reforms of 1991 were inevitable, there existed others who doubted whether we required such measures of opening up the floodgates of the erstwhile semi-closed economy; she also explained how concomitantly the economic reforms brought in dichotomous results: High Growth Rates ranging from 6 to 7% while at the same time exacerbating the disparities in our society.

She went on to quote the Prof Utsa Patnaik findings on the effects on the rural sector; asserted how economic problems faced by the rural poor were one particular reason apart from the Gujarat Riots for the fall of the NDA Government and also talked about in length about the political economy of the 1990s in India. Particular notice was mentioned on the astonishing finding that there was a stockpile of food grains in government godowns despite fall in food grain productivity (for the first time since 1962) during the NDA regime; yet millions of people were starving due to lack of purchasing power (because of the State’s withdrawal from managing the agrarian sector; this in turn being so due to the increased marketization of India’s economy).

She then hopped on to the current hot topic, National Rural Employee Guarantee Act, as to how this act is seen widely as a panacea to the problems of Rural India and how it could act as a much needed tonic to the unemployment problems of our country. Universal NREGA, as opposed to Targetted NREGA, with its side-by-side existence with the Right to Information Act and implementation by Panchayats constituted by the Panchayati Raj doctrine (Third Governance) was what was the need of the hour, several economists concurred, she said. She also mentioned about how certain newspapers took it their brief to scuttle this ambitious plan (the first of its kind in India to serve the interests of its own suffering citizens) by alluding that it was a fiscally imprudent exercise, despite assurance by several eminent economists about its overwhelming feasibility; its clone’s (in Maharashtra) successes, etc.