One friend on my BlackBerry Messenger (a space I have succeeded in not crowding yet) has changed his profile picture to one taken against a huge tricolour; another one has put up a fist with a glove proudly displaying the colours of the tiranga . On Monday morning, the first thing I did was to put “ Sarey jahaan sey achcha, Hindustan hamara ”, on my personal status in the same space.
Every time I return from abroad and the aircraft approaches the Chennai airspace for landing, as though in a reflex action, I start humming Mohammed Rafi's lovely song “ Ae watan, ae watan, humko teri kasam, teri raho mei jaan tak luta jayengey ”. Much more than being any great show of patriotic fervour, it's just a burst of happiness at returning to India. Tens of thousands of Indians bitten by the travel bug, as I am, must experience a similar feeling when they return home from a foreign trip.
While on foreign soil, you yearn for news on India and while, increasingly nowadays, an
Of course, it makes you bristle, but there is little you can do about it. But, yes, we have come a long way from April 1999, when I had to read about the Vajpayee government losing the vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha by just one vote on the 21st page of a British daily in London. It was a two-para news item.
Adding to the good feeling that suffuses one's being when India or anything Indian is mentioned, when I opened the Google page to confirm that it was indeed Rafi who sang Ae watan , it felt great to find its logo, in white, perched against the Red Fort (a wee deviation from the actual kesariya colour of the tricolour is acceptable) with some green grass completing the three-colour palette.
Pride and belonging?
But flag-hoisting, returning to the comfort and familiar sounds and smells of your own home after a foreign trip and national pride apart, how many Indians feel the same pride and sense of belonging to this country? Or long to return to a home which is comfortable… or even exists physically as a ‘home', as we, the more privileged, define it?
A truthful answer will draw out huge numbers who feel marginalised, overlooked, discriminated against or totally left out, if not shunned, from India's growth and development story.
Moaning and groaning under the heavy burden of insufficient incomes or unemployment, violence and deprivation, debt and disease, squalor and poverty, illiteracy and the prospects of a bleak, dark future, what do they think of an Independent India? To many of us this may sound like a clichéd question… When will they ever get independence from hunger, disease, deprivation, hopelessness? Nevertheless, it is a very serious rider to the lives of millions of Indians.
Debt trap
Reading Ramesh M. Arunachalam's book titled The journey of Indian micro-finance: Lessons for the future , brought home, yet again, the horror of a wonderful scheme meant to lift millions of poor women out of poverty, having gone terribly wrong.
Over two decades beginning with 1990, I have visited Indian villages and seen for myself the magic that a properly administered microfinance scheme, working through SHGs, can weave in the world of the poor. Children going to private schools, decent food at home, a small concrete or mud house, a TV set, an electric grinder, smiling faces, and grudging respect for the woman of the house, who may be actually wearing some gold jewellery!
But, post-2006, particularly in the last couple of years, an aggressive bid to grow the microfinance sector, coupled with the greed of MFIs, resulted in the pushing of one easy loan after another on women, plunging them into a debt trap.
Worse, it made cheats out of honest women, who were thitherto repaying their loans faithfully. Thanks to a few black sheep the entire microfinance sector was both vitiated and demonised, driving needy women back to the door of the usurious village moneylender.
High interest: 11% vs 120%
As the more privileged among us moan and groan at the interest on our housing loans, availed of to buy fancy apartments, if not villas, in gated communities, creeping up to a “punishing” 11 per cent or so, I am in real danger of losing my cook, who has borrowed sums ranging from Rs 5,000 to Rs 20,000 from various moneylenders near my house in Chennai, paying a horrendous rate of interest between 60 and 120 per cent. If the pressure on her continues, she may not turn up for work one fine day. I have bailed her out several times in the past, and will have to do so once again. Not only is the delicious biryani she makes irresistible to my entire family, there is also no guarantee I will be able to find a suitable replacement. But as in the past, there is no assurance that she will not fall right back into the clutches of the moneylenders or the slumlords who have tasted blood.
Her son-in-law might thrash her daughter in a fit of drunken rage and send her to her mother with a demand for Rs 10,000 or more; or her son will throw up his job and hit the bottle, or….
My phone pings. “Happy Independence day”, says a text message, followed by a smiley, and the rider: “If you're married, ignore this message!”
Makes one wonder how many million Indians, married or otherwise, will also have to ignore this message.
(Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in )