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Daily Indifference
by Neeta Deshpande, 31 October 2008
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Reservoirs Of Indifference
Our existence is so comfortably shielded from the realities of poverty, that
the unbridgeable distance between the two affords little scope for any real
engagement...
While volunteering in a village school near Lucknow some years ago, the
straight words of a little boy revealed one of life’s lessons to me. I was
filling in for the schoolmaster for a few weeks, teaching children of all ages
to read and write. Bored of regurgitating the alphabet one summer morning, I
thought I would encourage the kids to bathe under the hand pump near the school
instead. My suggestion was promptly ignored, and the children exploited the
situation to disperse early. But when I persisted on the days which followed, I
was soon granted many wonderful photo opportunities: the children would play in
the water lying flat on their stomachs, pretending to swim, crying ‘Machli,
Machli!’ On the first of such days, after I had convinced Hariya – a young boy
of eight or nine – to take a bath, I casually asked him: "Don’t you want to
bring a change of clothes from home?" Hariya’s answer remains with me to this
day. "Garib aadmi hai na
didiji. Ek hi kapda hai."
The uncertainty and fear in Hariya’s eyes while attempting to read simple text,
forced me to realize how little we understand the haunting despair of the
majority of our countrymen, striving against overwhelming odds in search of
survival, dignity and hope. On our part, we have managed to silence the voices
of empathy in our heads, to an extent that the poor are mere irritants that we
must somehow live with. The reservoirs of indifference towards the
disadvantaged that we carry within us manifest themselves in various ways in
our everyday lives. Our existence is so comfortably shielded from the realities
of poverty, that the unbridgeable distance between the two affords little scope
for any real engagement. So we have employers who routinely complain about
their maids taking that day off, not once realizing that they don’t allow their
servants a holiday on the weekends, leave alone annual leave. We have families
enjoying dinners in restaurants, all
the while peremptorily ordering the waiters around, but tipping them with petty
change. We hear casual remarks from travellers on trains, that the frail old
woman begging in their compartment does so in order to shirk work. Not once do
we pause to think that the withered woman in her sixties is perhaps incapable
of physical labour, the only work she can possibly find, if at all she does.
Not for a moment does it occur to us that in this country of a billion people,
work is hard to come by. We merely shrug our shoulders and tell the beggar to
move on, a reflex that comes to us so easily, habitually, almost naturally,
that it prevents any possible sympathy from arising in our minds and hearts.
Every day, we come across developments in our midst which affect the poor in
grave, unjust ways that are beyond the scope of our imagination. One hopes that
we might pay attention to such injustice, that we might even do something about
it, if only, we register it in our minds. In Bangalore where I live, in the
first five weeks of the inauguration of the swank international airport, one
person was killed every two days while crossing the airport highway which runs
right through their lives. With motorists cruising at never-before speeds up to
150 kmph, this highway - which might be the most amazing thing that ever
happened to driving enthusiasts – has become a death trap for pedestrians who
have to dart across. Residents of the area, school children and vendors have no
choice but to cross the highway, though the possibility of a fatal accident
lurks every moment. Did the thought of building underpasses or skywalks for
pedestrians not even cross the
minds of the planners? And shouldn’t we, as travellers on such highways who
enjoy the convenience and pleasure they provide us, share responsibility for
the blood that they spill? Aren’t we to blame, that we somehow, always manage
to look the other way?
One of the most disturbing experiences I’ve had of this callous insensitivity
which has become a regular feature of our society, came my way on a tour of
Kevadia Colony in Gujarat. Here, the houses and agricultural lands of six
Adivasi villages were acquired in 1961, to build infrastructure for the
construction of that icon of development in modern India: the Sardar Sarovar
dam. Despite being uprooted almost half a century ago, the residents of these
villages are not even recognized as project-affected, and thus not entitled to
resettlement. In a show of extraordinary defiance, the people have refused to
part with their homes and lands. They continue to protest non-violently by
staying put in their houses, even after the land on which they stand has been
acquired by the government. If they didn’t, they’d have nowhere to go.
And now, as if to rub salt into their wounds, the government has set in motion
a fresh wave of displacement in Kevadia. Plans are in place for a spectacular
tourism project on the very lands which were originally acquired for a ‘public
purpose’. A luxury hotel located on the cusp of the colony, whose construction
was preceded by an attempt to forcibly evict half a dozen tribal families using
a sizeable police force, is already welcoming guests. Its advertisement reads:
Chill. Still. Tranquil. Unfortunately for the hoteliers, tribal huts disrupt
the magnificent view of the river, and the Adivasis themselves interfere with
their tranquility.
On a recent visit, a friend and I decided to visit this hotel. A manager
promptly welcomed us, and gave us the information we asked for. The land had
been leased out to the company by the government. Rooms would cost Rs. 4000 a
night. A swimming pool was under construction. Further in the conversation,
when my friend revealed that she used to be an activist in the movement which
is fighting for the rights of the uprooted people, the manager changed his tack.
"But we are hiring the locals", he averred optimistically. "We are training
them. Our motto is to ensure that they move forward with us." This when the
land on which the hotel stands itself belongs to the very people who will sweep
and mop it, water its gardens and make beds for its guests. Needless to say,
the numbers that can potentially be hired for the tourism project fall
ridiculously short of those uprooted
"And what are you training the local people for?" we asked. "For cleaning,
gardening and making beds. Also cooking." Here, he paused, then almost as an
afterthought, added: "But there is a problem with hiring locals." "And what
might that be?" we asked, not knowing what to expect. "Well, you see, these
local Adivasis, they can be trained to meet our needs", he explained, "except
for one task, for which we must hire outsiders."
"You see", he concluded with a straight face. "They can’t cook Chinese!"
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