Journey and the Indian housewife

Social learning requires a formal introduction before people can interact with one another. The wait is for somebody to fulfil that role, somebody to set the ball rolling, and if not then not has become usual. A problem arises during travel, in the forced proximity, on a journey, with strangers. People’s focus has become reaching destination, period.  They seem always in a hurry, and the anxiety to get somewhere, turns quickly to impatience. They may push and shove others out of their way in the mad rush to be first to the exits on airplanes, trains and even theatre halls. Enjoyment of the journey itself, and relaxed conversations with others is a rarity.

The frequent fliers I have come across wrap themselves in the protective aura of power and prestige emanating from their organizations. It fortifies them through the many thousands of miles of airplane travel regularly covered in self-imposed silence. In the process, they may earn rewards of free mileage, vacations, and so on. But ask them, and they have no recollection of the thousands of people they might have journeyed alongside. One gentleman tells me he generally pops a couple of pills before he gets to the airport, and once ensconced aboard, sleeps right through the cross-continental flights, shutting off all possibilities of interaction. For shorter distances, being engrossed in the laptop or ipad is enough deterrent to any interaction. 

A far older tradition in certain Tibetan monasteries has been to deliberately rip apart these social boundaries. Before the acolyte formally joins the order, he must know himself. The young men are sent out to face the world with little more than a staff and a begging bowl. The intent is to strip the ego, to experience humility and learn adaptability to changing environments. The given task is to follow the meandering route of a holy river from source to delta, downstream by one bank and back upstream by the other – on foot.  Their return, if or when that is, depends upon the individual survival skills in various social environments.

This practice is, of course, hardly known about or followed amongst people outside the monastery. For the householder, the proposition is frightening. Women of good families, especially, prefer to travel with a group of known faces around them to keep the unknown at bay. Long distance train journeys generally mean more hours of forced companionship with people outside the social circle. If perchance the women are traveling alone, their apprehensions mount. What if I get lost is the plaintive refrain irrespective of age, education or employment. Their social dependence needs assurances ten times over that somebody will see them off at one end and somebody will receive them at the other, and prayers for divine protection en route. Obviously, few perceive any journey as new adventures.

I try to settle in early on the train, to avoid the jostling of late arrivals, and observe the unfolding of new, unique human stories. Many of the people I strike up conversations with, look as if they expect the worst from the encounter. I can almost see the wheels of their minds clicking back to childhood warnings against speaking to strangers. It takes them awhile to return to the present and remember that they actually are adults.

 
A well-dressed lady arrives to take the berth across me on this journey. The several men with her are far too respectful to be family. The boss’s wife, I suspect, accompanied by those lower on the pecking order who have discovered their unwritten duty to ensure her wellbeing - and thence their own. I gather they are Railways employees,  and remember stories told of how wives of senior officials and their entourage behave as royalty on board. Should they have links to political heavyweights their attitudes worsen in reflected glory. Yes indeed, horror stories of some sort of mafia in play. The ladies demand exclusive service from the train staff threatening to get them fired for disobedience. They also harass the other passengers that might protest, with threats of getting them dragged off the train... I wonder what is in store for us!

On this day, the men in attendance struggle with large suitcases while she fiddles with her cellphone. After a while they decide leave the luggage where it is, occupying all the space between the berths. In their overt concern for the lady, co-existence with other passengers seems clean forgotten. I pipe up to remind them of it, whilst feeling it an inauspicious opening to my anticipated encounter! The lady starts up at my interjection, and the men look around in surprise at the sound of strident female tones directed at them. Lucky for me, I guess, that they only try harder to manage the luggage!

With their departure, mission accomplished, the lady busies with the phone speaking with some people, or just waiting for some others to respond. I ask what she does for a living. Nothing, she says with an embarrassed look, just a housewife, as if nobody could possibly be interested in this group of creatures. As she gradually overcomes her inhibitions, she confides that because she is unsure about others’ reaction, she speaks only when spoken to. 

Her story resonates with that of millions of women of this country brought up high on sacrifice, and low on self-esteem. She is married off young to forestall other eventualities, and before she can really find her feet, motherhood is upon her, as is the omnipresence of the mother-in-law.  She strives to be an exceptional homemaker, an accomplished cook and the perfect mother. Her husband’s rising career graph means transfers and late working hours, so she cannot expect adult companionship much of the time. Her children are her treasures, closer to her than to their busy father. While on the way to help one settle house in a new place, she worries about those she leaves behind. All the lives conjoint with hers should run smoothly – let her be the recipient of all their travails. 

The tradition in families is for one generation to groom another to take its place on the hierarchy in the exact same way. The strict tutelage of mothers-in-law put new brides into the same mould that they once occupied in the past. The ritualistic training in customs ensures that women of successive ages, the carrier of the culture, eventually dress alike, look alike, act alike and even think alike in a stream of carbon copies. The sisterhood of sameness is their ordained destiny.  Men in the family adopt a hands-off approach to these traditions of the women’s world, while themselves keeping up with the new technology and so on, of modernity. 

The benefit of the husband’s job  allows this housewife to live in a sprawling suburban bungalow with plenty of space and few neighbours. She gets used to being alone with the children, learns to appreciate Nature, and discovers her green thumb. Gardening becomes a passion, the bonsai technique the speciality she perfects over twenty years. The plants are her personal pride and joy and it will be a wrench to leave many of the little masterpieces behind as has happened before, when they must move away to another new posting as the job demands. 
 

   
Many such women of this country tend to internalize the traditional lack of social esteem for their gender and accept their lot as karma. Nobody in the social organization is concerned with the effect of unsought change on the feminine psyche; the ‘housewife’ is expected only to deliver as others desire. In using the archaic term to describe their life roles, the women devalue themselves, and nobody else thinks twice about doing the same. Because the economic complement is missing in their contributions, they are perceived within the family as no more than glorified domestic labour. Fact is they may be worse off, in unpaid service 24/7, at beck and call of husband, children and extended family with almost no returns of credit or genuine appreciation. 

Although they are the home managers, the enablers of others’ power and prestige, they carry forwards centuries of gender inequality on their back. In this day and age as well, they hide their true worth under bushels of conditioned self-deprecation. A parable relates that the elephant could not be the king of the jungle because their large ears prevented their realizing their own size and strength. The lack of esteem in the Indian housewife similarly blinds her to her own creative potential.

The bus class

While I was still in school, my sister, who had entered college, imbibed communist leanings. Quite unaware that this was merely a passing fad for the rising intellectuals of the time, I took as new knowledge her insistence that we too rise above bourgeois sentiments and de-class. Though I hardly knew what the terms meant, I was suitably impressed that unbeknownst, we were doing something unacceptable in our lives!

I might add that in those days, the subject 'moral science' was stressed upon in the convent school I attended. Films like The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur spectacularly underscored the ideals the nuns were at pains to instill in us, where right and wrong were carved in edicts of stone. For me, moreover, they portrayed equality of mankind, clearly upholding the values of the proletariat. Thus I reconciled quite seamlessly in my mind the little I gleaned about religion and communism, and took the learning to heart. 

I looked up to my sister to show us the way forward to change our oppressive ways of living. The obvious symbols of class consciousness, she expanded, were in how one traveled. Within the city, the choices of transport were of bus, taxicab or own car. We would be bourgeoisie to even consider the latter two; hence she chose for us the bus as the most appropriate. Needless to say, she had my wholehearted support, and unquestioning followership. 

There was a logistical problem, however. The class she was getting us to identify with was already filled to capacity and so were the buses, the cheapest mode of distance travel. It began to take us hours to get from point A to point B because buses would be jam-packed when they arrived at the stops we waited at. People would literally be hanging on for dear life; it was so impossible for us to get a foothold, it was better to walk. Yet it seemed to me that we were indeed doing the right thing. In our democratic republic, we walked the talk as it were, against the evils of social hierarchy. 

 

My brother, on the other hand, was totally disgusted. He was afraid his social image would nosedive. In the peer groups he socialized in, the trappings were important. Their dreams included among other things, swanky attention-drawing imported cars. At the time, however, the nationalized policy on vehicular manufacture favoured the Indian make in the effort to bring it up. All others brands were hit with prohibitive taxes for the same reason. One carmaker held monopoly on the family car, and as a result, a general sameness prevailed on the roads of the country. The cars all looked the same, sturdy and ugly, their social status denoted only by colour – taxicabs distinctly yellow-and-black, private cars in other hues.  It was a blow to his esteem, that we did not have a car at our disposal. A taxicab was the wooden spoon, but buses were really the last straw!

Our parents were caught in the middle of their bickering, helpless to take a stand. Their growing up had been far from the working classes we now had to rub shoulders with. The family ancestry had been landowners in undivided India; a reality snatched away from them by the horrors of the Partition that carved up the nation.  Sometimes my mother reminisces about the many prajas (subjects) that lived and worked on their properties, orchards, farmlands and crops, though my father rarely spoke about the past that we had no experience of. Post-Partition, it was a painful rebuilding for many such families that moved perforce to the new India, if not quite destitute, certainly with only a fraction of their erstwhile wealth. With affordability diminished so rapidly, they probably felt de-classed already. It must instead have been shaming to be constantly reminded of being down in fortunes, to be a disappointment to their children one way or another.

So many decades later, my brother has achieved to the fullest his childhood dreams of success. It seems to me that somehow ‘poverty’ has lodged in the mind, and the need for material security grown insatiable. Despite the accumulation of money, numerous properties and cars, he just cannot feel he has enough.  My sister’s perspective has changed drastically. Rather like the dismantled former Soviet Union, she has abandoned her adolescent leanings and fully embraced capitalism as practiced in the West, along with their subtle differentiations of class or race. Both have sworn allegiance to the lands of plenty and shaken the dust of this poverty-stricken democracy quite completely.

 

Much has changed over the years in this country as well, including wider transport choices, but the crowds on buses in India continue. Perhaps I valued the ‘new knowledge’ of my formative years a little too much, because I do still travel on them. 

Friends and acquaintances look askance and question what attraction those sweaty, smelly atmospheres might hold for me. Well, I do get a glimpse of the ordinary India that so often is written off as the amorphous them group, at the other end of the continuum from the respectable us. In fact, despite the invasion of personal space, the tedium and physical discomfort of the journeys, human interactions continue unabated. I have observed amongst the bus class extraordinary acts of kindness, empathy and humour, I am certain money cannot buy nor upward social mobility ensure.

Imagery in being lonely

“I wandered lonely as a cloud/that floats on high o’er hills and vales/when all at once I saw a crowd/a host of golden daffodils…”

Wordsworth, I think it is, who turns the mundane sense of sight into exuberant imagery. I can almost see for myself, the riot of colour in the countryside unblemished by the clutter of housing projects raising ugly fingers to the sky. Who can remain lonely with words so effused with joy! Easy it is to escape the daily demands of tasks, the negativity of co-workers, and ethical conflicts, to float away light and carefree above the humdrum, in communion with Nature, at one with her creations. 

But then, before my inward eye, flashes a different memory. I relive my leaden-footed foreboding all the afternoon my son fails to return or call, my repeated rings to his cellphone going unanswered; my uneasiness turning to anger with the policemen at the door seeking male family members to speak to, and my thinking 'there has to be a mistake' at the sudden mention of death. 

Here too is imagery, but, seared in indescribable pain, it locks in replay for a lifetime where no words can bring solace. I realize that the ‘lonely’ state of being varies with inputs of the emotional mind. I see one as a moment of quiescence awaiting direction, open to new experiences.  Like the eagerness of youth when resonating words, or slivers of wisdom, cut through the mists of confusion to shower light on the way to go forward. The readiness to meet head on all that the future brings unfazed by portents of failure; the undeniable urge to become, to combat challenges and, come hell or high water, to adapt to new reality. But the other state is different yet. A friend comments that our emotions appear to hang like garlands around dates on the calendar. Fact is the dates per se are not important, but associated events are. Snapshots of another place, another time, these past happenings burn into memory, and remembrances trigger the outpourings of emotions. 

I see again the astonishment on faces at the police station as I arrive alone. Nobody seems to want to speak to me, as I demand to see my son. They probably are afraid of women going berserk in the throes of grief, and tell me that since it is late night, it is best to return next day in the company of other relatives.  I refuse to leave my son ‘unidentified’, and eventually, they put the evidence before me - his personal effects. During the long wait for completion of the paperwork, I struggle to comprehend my reality. The other women there, eager to share their problems, look offended at my lack of empathy or response to their venting. I feel a disconnect with the immediate surroundings, in spiraling descent into the murky depths of impotent despair. Even a decade on, I touch my helplessness before the inexorable power of circumstances. 

Finally, against the backdrop of the callousness of the cadaver handlers, and their inquisitive chatter about me, I am confronted by the irrefuteable. I first recognize my son’s toes, the clothes on his body that look as clean as when he left that morning. I half expect him to jump up laughing uproariously at having fooled me silly  – and then I see the blood. The shock returns now as then, at the sight of his face smashed almost beyond recognition from the road accident that killed him, his one whole eye seems to stare into mine, his mouth open in a soundless scream… I wonder if I am delusional or in a momentary burst of light, the vision really does appear of an effulgent presence, before whom there can be no bargaining, and to whom I beg acceptance for my son. When consciousness returns of the dark, dreary environment of the morgue, and I am aware of silently mouthing the gayatri mantra (Sanskrit prayer), while my body seems to bleed profusely inside.

I wonder how other animals deal with such pain. Surely all their behaviours cannot be written off as mere ‘instinctive actions’ – what about the tiger mother battling ferociously to protect her young, elephant herds standing in respectful silence before the bones of their ancestors, the loyal companionships of dogs and other house pets? Relationships obviously matter to them as they do to us. Perhaps we are yet to fathom the depths of their conscious thought or feelings because they communicate differently. Their acceptance of the inevitable is definitely stronger, as is their dignity in moving on from personal tragedy.

My world shattered in an instant and I still grope to find the pieces. I am horrified that I, as parent, have failed in duty to protect, and that I outlive my son. Why did destiny have to ensure my being left behind? In my reasoning, had we left life together, we would hardly have been missed - not for long anyway. Truth is my focus had been on making him independent of me. I would relate as a lesson of life, the story of Flint, the baby gorilla that grew up so dependent on his mother, he just could not survive her death. ‘I won’t be around forever’ I would din into him. My intuition failed me there, because I never once visualized the necessity of my training likewise as well.

Humans mourn loss not so much for those who leave, but for their own voided future. Kubler-Ross theorizes five stages to the grief that must follow – denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance. They have no specific time or order for appearance, they may or may not at all display in individual sorrow, and people may even be stuck in one stage or other.  

I must own to being laden with shades of anger from both within and outside of me. It came as aftershock that many distanced from me, fearing ‘infection’, and some dissected the event in secret joy at having escaped the attention of Yamraj (lord of death). Others of the extended family, especially the elder male relatives, voiced belittlement at not being consulted first, blamed the event on bad victim behaviours, bad parenting and bad fruits of karma. The social response was near unbearable then, and it bothers me that my son is now so easily forgotten. I cling to memories as all I have left of him, while to others he is lost without trace in the sands of time.  

Fact is the social fabric has not evolved with time, but has simply been adulterated. Through centuries of collectivism, community rituals dealt with occasions, both happy and sad, to continually refresh the cultural context giving meaning to life events.  Today, overlays of the individualism learned from other cultures have diminished their importance. Whether residing within the country or abroad, modernity has meant that only remnants of traditions carry forward, often as superstitions. In the electronic world, the social solidarity traditional group activities once generated to coincide individual and collective well-being are no more. Instead the interpersonal bonds have weakened, while fear and uncertainty abound about coping with the unexpected.

Technology is no substitute for the psychological development of people. The over-dependence on rationality to carry the day leaves the emotional mind backward and retarded. Individuals tend to adopt defence mechanisms – anger, judgement, selective memory and so on, to protect against the external. But memories are the internal stressors, reminders of devastation that, because one cannot change, one must endure. A random thought or association triggers feelings of profound loss or failure. That experience of defeat most unexpected is not at all easy to work out of, for alone or in the crowd, one is lonely. Unless the memories and their emotional attachments are put in perspective, they tend to grow unnoticed, and like a bomb buried live, just wait to explode someday.

Women with blue gold

Women, the traditional gatherers, are the seekers of ‘blue gold’ in India. But few stop to think of this activity as a major loss for the country.

So what new adornment is blue gold? It is the drinking water that the privileged generally take for granted. About 2 billion people around the world are dependent on freshwater for their daily use, but increasing rural numbers are being forced into water-stressed conditions. In the dry regions, women and girls walk miles each day to find and collect pots and buckets of ground water, even from polluted ponds or wells, to carry back on their heads.

On this issue especially, the gender inequality is stark in rural India. For women, the designated crisis managers, hauling and storing water becomes a daily chore in addition to managing the home, the livestock, field labour etc, leaving them no respite from drudgery. Girls are socialized early into the process that becomes their work for life. Carrying water loads two or three times a day, or watching over younger siblings is often considered adequate “schooling” for the future. The wastage of resources is in millions of woman-days, which can be translated into the loss of billions of rupees for the country.

Although the proportion of water on the planet is much larger than land, about 97.5 percent is saline, unsuitable for drinking, irrigation, industry etc. Moreover, the bulk of the remaining 2.5 percent freshwater is locked up as glaciers and snow on mountaintops. Less than one-third of this quantity may be in ground water. A UN resolution (July 2010) includes it under human rights, yet the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation is not within the grasp of millions of people living below the poverty line. Their numbers are on the rise. 

  
In India, the water crisis is largely related to modernization. Projects designed to take the country forward have not been completely thought through. The  ‘green revolution’ in food production, like the high-yield paddy crops introduced for all year cultivation in the ’70s, is water-intensive processes that have raised the freshwater requirements of agriculture to 73 percent. Heavy industry, especially the energy sector comprising coal, oil, thermal and nuclear power, account for another 22 percent of consumption.

The developmental projects have interfered with the natural processes. For instance, the state of West Bengal, in the eastern sector, is home to about 8 percent of India’s population. It is not a traditionally dry region. The river Ganges divides the state into two unequal halves – North and South. This mighty waterway, replenished annually by the heavy monsoon rains of the region, has been meeting the needs of populations residing on its banks for centuries. In the present day, however, the northern districts cope with floods during the monsoon season, while the southern districts are prone to drought-like conditions. 

Much of the ‘fault’ here may be attributed to the erection of dams. Fact is other states demand a share of West Bengal's aqua wealth. These dams that were meant to resolve their water problems were constructed at places that have turned out ecologically and economically unsound for this state. In the process of water diversions, new issues were created. West Bengal's reservoirs are not only deprived of their essential inlet requirements, their capacities choke with high levels of silt sedimentation.

Further, corporate and political indifference to the proper treatment of industrial wastes and sewage cause the habitual pollution of precious ground water. In addition, burgeoning populations of the region have led to the consumption needs spiraling upwards. The indiscriminate landfilling of natural ponds and lakes to promote housing complexes, cut off the traditional inlets to recharging the water table, and thus intensify the spread of aridity.

The disruption of the water cycle has in addition, led to increased concentrations of arsenic, fluoride and pesticides leaching into ground water. The usable water now reportedly stands at 40 percent. Although much of West Bengal’s water issues are attributed to the abuse of water resources, their political resolutions do not appear imminent. The public resistance to new energy technologies stems from fears of further industrial inroads on the freshwater requirements.

Changing weather patterns have exacerbated the problem. Feeble pre- and post-monsoon rains fail to adequately replenish ground water. The signs first appeared in wells in blocks of the southern districts of Murshidabad, Medinipur, Burdwan and Hoogly in the 1980s. This drop in the water table became significant over the period 1995-2004, with hand-pump after hand-pump in their thousands falling dry. 

Furthermore, the widespread use of unclean water for domestic, farming and irrigation needs creates health hazards. About 26 million people, not to mention livestock, are estimated to be at risk from drinking contaminated water, especially in the poverty-stricken rural areas. Sadly, some corporate bodies hope to only profit from the problem by making drinking water a saleable commodity.

To top it all, it had been claimed that tapping into the water table causes it to drop down further, so there have been no solutions to look forward to, just a dark and dreary future stretching endlessly. Recent findings, however, bring a ray of hope. Extensive scientific field research conducted more recently refutes the earlier claim. Thus, installing bore-wells to make clean drinking water available all year round would actually ease the suffering of the population groups made to so desperately seek the elusive blue gold. 

With time saved from the daily trudging back and forth, the rural women could play active roles in water management that include longer-term conservation solutions like water harvesting and maintenance of reservoirs. Perhaps girls could even dream of a future of actually going to school, and enjoying their childhood. The more privileged sections of society need to think just a little beyond themselves, to make reality of these impossible dreams.

The minute breadwinner

The incessant pounding disturbs my reverie. I glance out to locate the source of the irritant and my gaze is arrested by the little girl dressed in the traditional attire of a parrot-green ghagra (long skirt) in that must once have been gaudily eye-catching. She is perhaps three feet tall, her hair, glistening with oil, slicked back in tight pigtails. She looks barely past the toddler stage, no more than five years old. It seems incongruous that she sports a pair of dark glasses. Her small hands hold a long green-and-red pole twice her height. I suddenly realize she is tightrope walking.

The noise-makers are probably her parents – the man stands by drumming up business with a semblance of rhythm, while the woman squats down on the sidewalk to hammer out her tensions on a couple of metal plates. Beside them in a wicker basket, lies another baby, seemingly quite at home with the bedlam.

They have crossed bamboo poles about ten feet apart on the concrete road and strung a rope between them more or less horizontal to the ground to rig the makeshift prop. Obviously, the question of safety does not cross their minds – there is no helmet, no safety harness to secure the child, and no safety net below to catch her should she fall. She is entirely on her own, on the ‘platform’ raised six or seven feet above. Amidst the traffic speeding by with blaring horns, she focuses on parading back and forth on the rough jute rope that must hurt her bare feet.

With one misstep she could end up with a fractured skull, broken bones, or worse. My thoughts churn in moral outrage. How dare they thus expose the girl-child to danger? The man and woman could work; it was their bounden duty as parents, wasn’t it, to protect their children? Instead, they live off their earnings. The rest of us should not encourage such behaviour by watching; we should all just walk away and force them to change their exploitative habits, I nod to myself.

But then, I do not turn away. Seriously, what chances of survival does a nomadic family really have? As an offshoot of a gypsy tribe or a circus, they are outcasts of mainstream society. With no money, and no home, they are of the faceless millions living below the poverty line. They have no skills other than what they are doing right now, and no hope of steady employment.

Attracted by sight and sound, a small crowd of curious onlookers also gathers. Passersby stop, like me fascinated by the little aerialist. I smile to think how well this totally illiterate family is able to read crowd psychology. The little girl walks to the end of the rope, turns and sits down for a moment on the fork of the bamboos. In high treble she calls out. The man reaches up to hand her two small metal pots.  Placing them on her head, she stands up to resume her walk.

It dawns that she is gradually increasing the degree of difficulty of her act - first the goggles, now the pots. Her balance is perfect as it must be. She gets to the other end and calls again. This time she is handed a pair of bright pink plastic slippers. She wears them, replaces the pots on her head, adjusts her dark glasses, and sets off once more on her promenade.

In spite of me, I am impressed. This family is not begging, nor are they stealing. They put on display what they know, and the children take quickly to that way of life to survive in harsh reality. The parents passing on their craft to their children early, schools them in street-performer roles. Were I in their place, I wonder whether I could so accept reality, discover my worth and live by it.

Certainly they count on their children to shoulder the family burden, but in a country that cannot boast of social security for all its citizens, can we really be judgemental? Would any of us spare more than a cursory glance if the man or the woman were doing the same balancing act? No, not a chance! Hence, when we ourselves have no alternatives to offer for their survival, can we really brand them guilty of the crime of child exploitation?

How is this worse than the hugely popular reality shows on TV, sponsored by big business houses, that force little children to compete against one another in beauty pageants? They learn to be 'stars', to rely on botox, sunbeds and the streetwalker’s strut to get ahead, rather than hone an honest talent. 

The disciplined courage of this minute breadwinner shames us, who take privileges for granted. The little girl scrambles down from her perch, and while the father packs up the props, she and her mother each pick up a plate and hold them out wordlessly. The onlookers willingly drop therein their appreciations for the performance. I confess I do too – the child’s efforts deserve at least a full meal for the family before they move on.

The bureaucratic inheritance

It often seems to me that, whether or not they are related by blood, people living together begin to resemble one another over time. Perhaps in eating the same foods and breathing the same air, sameness pervades. We might assume that people unconnected by blood or proximity, differ widely. And yet, in similar organizational structures, members begin to look alike, think alike and behave alike although separated geographically. Those that go before must leave behind something lasting in the structure to anchor time, because the sameness prevails over generations.

The bureaucratic structure, for instance, is our colonial legacy. In organizational shape, it is pyramidal, a hierarchy of levels. The flow of authority and information is top down, and bottom up, obedience is norm. The bureaucratic structure is meant to be impersonal, and the process theoretically, is to be rational, logical and impartial in governance. It was introduced into India by British colonizers. But the very nature of colonization superimposes the concept of the alpha male onto the organizational pyramid. In tune with the ascent of man on the evolutionary chart, the higher echelons of the hierarchical structure are considered superior to people on the rungs below.

The colonial bureaucracies overlaid superiority of race onto the caste hierarchy already prevalent in the region. The Indians realized that despite their knowledge and experience, their organizational aspirations were limited because even junior officers of the British civil service would lord it over the local populace.

The bureaucracies enabled imperialism keep a tight rein on their empire spreading overseas. Educated Indians were inducted to clerk for the colonizers, and to liaison between cultures in the sub-continent. They were called the ‘Baboos’ that looked and dressed Indian, but protected the Crown, furthering the imperialistic goals. Rather like the ‘trusties’ of the prison system, wherein certain prisoners elevated fractionally above others, serve to keep them in line. The Baboo culture was likewise despised by either side.

The colonizers used the Baboos to do their dirty work but hardly respected their racial differences, while the rest of the country hated them as stooges of the foreign establishments. The Baboos responded to the negativity by creating their own fiefdoms within the structure. They became the backbone of the system, indispensable to its functioning. On the one hand, they could interpret and translate communications as they wish, and on the other, withhold information and benefits to the public at large.

Indians are good with cultural traditions; we are loath to disturb the continuity with the past. Customs, practices, norms and habits handed down generation to generation are perceived sacrosanct. Despite the complete change in the social environment, bureaucracies in India meticulously preserve their 200-year old colonial traditions. They thus socialize into disrespect for subordinates, while the ordinary public is the common enemy to protect against.

Consequent to the colonial influence, the character of the pyramidal structure transforms to unfriendly, intimidating and prohibitive. Up and down the bureaucratic hierarchy, countenances are as grim and unbending today as they have been during the British Raj. Especially in the public interface, mistrust and impatience radiate. Communications base on anger management - that is, the lack of self-control characterize the hierarchy. Imagine a blend of parent-child behaviours, rigid and willful at the same time. Obviously, manners get lost in the upward mobility, and often also the work ethics.

Fact is technology thrives, but the traditional mindsets remain entrenched. The change with democracy and independence of the nation, is simply that nobody wants to be the low man on the totem pole anymore. As noted Indian entrepreneur Narayan Murti observes:

In India, we tend to look down on people who do jobs that require physical work or involve disciplined execution and accountability.

As a result, the first impression of any bureaucratic setup in India is poor. The ambience carries a general air of neglect. Governmental or government-related organizations in India may have expensive machinery or other goods strewn carelessly along the corridors. They may have the financial resources to fund other organizations. And yet, black cobwebs sway from the ceilings in the buildings, dust settles on every surface, and the stench of bathrooms hangs thick. Heaps of files, spill their contents onto desks, shelves and floor. Spatters of betel nut juice stain wall corners in the stairwell, while potted plants serve as ashtrays.

The dirty, unkempt look is likely also a façade to put off the public. The disorganization may be intentional, because almost hidden from view behind the mountains of paper files, the Baboos of today continue to protect their territory. Emotions otherwise denied, flow down and out in angry outbursts as individuals seek to assert themselves in the new India by demeaning others. The beat postmen express their angst by delaying or losing mail. The staffs in government offices pretend to be too busy to entertain queries or move files along. Railways employees mess with reservations, even on complimentary passes awarded to the elderly freedom fighters of India’s independence.

The lateral relationships within the pyramid are tight, however. These informal connections are assiduously cultivated to form the social buffer zones, safe to download in. Large numbers of employees unionize together. By themselves the unions may be weak, but they forge outside political affiliations, whose patronage strongly back their workplace confrontations. The attraction to employment in the bureaucracy is job permanence. Employees are confident they cannot be fired because of swift retaliatory union strikes; hence irrespective of actual work done, their wages shall be paid at fixed intervals. Further, the lack of conflict on the lateral plane ensures that the organizational boat remains on an even keel, with little competition between peers.

The Diva writes elsewhere:

For many organizations, conflict is bad - by definition - and they go out of their way to prevent it. The word ‘challenge’ itself becomes sensitive because it may question premises and upset comfort zones. However, the elimination of all discord has consequences. The organization may rarely or even never question its assumptions. It may turn off and lose its creative sparks … The ultimate danger is the rise of the mediocre, rewarded for lacking the ‘superstar quality’ to rock the boat.

The point is this carried forward in time existence tends to atrophy faculties of effective decision-making. The bureaucratic runaround is thus born as indecision is passed around, desk to desk. Members of the organization become champions at dithering. With sudden, unexpected changes in the global scenario, they are invariably caught on the wrong foot. Thus, the most recent downslide in the Indian markets has been attributed to faulty decisions and planning. India's much touted economic ascendancy is now falling behind.  

Bureaucratic structures in India need to wake up to the reality of their increasing incompetence with competition. Their people need to challenge outdated assumptions of leadership styles, philosophies and value systems that have become the unquestioned organizational traditions over the last couple of centuries. Unless the dependence on these outmoded systems and processes is changed, the colonial inheritance will ensure that bureaucracies in India remain locked in the mindsets of a different age.

The wild within is male

We advocate openness in social interactions between people because man is not an island. Sociability, we say, is a driving need, along with food, drink, sex and security. We believe globalization shrinks the world into a village, and expect universal brotherhood to spread across borders. Yet when diverse people occupy the same space, rage responses tend to heighten. On the streets or in public gatherings, the offenders are largely male.

This dichotomy of thought and action among human populations may relate to resource availability. It may also be a consequence of social reorganizations, and in the pursuit of power, because whosoever corners the wealth, corners social advantage. If any organization is to succeed as such, it needs rules and penalties for rule-breakers, acknowledged and accepted by all the group members. The implementations of these rules require measures to install a leadership ready to make the hard choices, and to compel followers to acquiesce to the decisions made on their behalf. Else, the larger numbers perpetrate more chaos, increasing group vulnerability. To obtain power in the group and to maintain that power, force becomes the weapon of choice. The organization sanctions controlled aggression to police the detractors of its ideology, and to keep divisive influences at bay.

That sociability is instrumental in group security and the propagation of species is clear in the wild. Aggression on other groups is also a law of the jungle. On the anvil of the food chain, the weak are the first casualties. Humans, naturally so in comparison to other predators, thus have the least likelihood of survival especially against the group aggression of packs and herds. The physical disadvantage is overcome with the powers of the mind, the creation of tools and weapons. The early understanding of the strength in numbers, leads to the organized community living we like to call civilization. Hierarchy and the divisions of labour are created to harmonize social relations that continue in time, often held sacrosanct as traditions.

Needless to say, male domination is the operative tradition in most human cultures. Despite the apparently superior thought processes amongst their populations, the presence of others evokes feelings of competitiveness, frustration, expectations, and so on. Civilized populations have been especially preoccupied with male lineage through millennia. Extrapolating the might is right doctrine of the animal world, many presume to infringe on the rights of other individuals and groups. The history of cultures around the world records innumerable intrigues, assassination plots, battles and wars, wherein the lives of thousands have been sacrificed over genealogical claims.

We commonly assume that all other animals cannot think ahead as the humans do. Their responses are purely instinctive, we say - to attack when hungry or in defence of young. However, because the environment is constantly changing, each species must learn to adapt to change or face extinction. They too must evolve, and perhaps do so to adopt processes to moderate the social organization not unlike the human strategy. Experiments controlling space with other animals confirm that crowding increases irritability, and thence the rage.

Within several higher orders of the animal world, internecine male aggression powers survival not just against environmental adversity, but also of the particular lineage - yes, male. A pride of lions for instance, generally consists of one alpha male and several lionesses as one large family. Male cubs coming of age are ejected by their mothers to find their own destiny. Leadership depends on physical prowess, and the patriarch must continually prove his ability in combat with challengers. Should he be defeated, the victor takes control to form a new family. The lionesses must hide their existing male cubs to keep them alive, because to establish his authority, and while seeding his own family tree, the new leader sets about decimating future threats.

Male hormones like testosterone are implicated in this physiology of aggression. Fact is the male is genetically programmed to fight. The male group of hormones, the androgens, secrete from sex and adrenal glands. They are responsible for the visual splendour of the train of peacock tail feathers or the full-grown lion mane. These displays feed the universal myth of male domination, although they are merely the secondary sexual characteristics of the species. The preening and posturing of the male is needed to outshine other males to attract the females, or else the lineage ends. The failure to scare off the opposition creates stress, prompts fear and rage. Consequently, other hormones from the adrenal glands flood the system, causing the adrenaline rush of instant action.

The explosive testosterone-adrenaline combo fuels violence. Sometimes, the destructive results appear purposeless. The frenzy of rogue elephants, for example, demolishes, maims or kills everything in their path. This masti phenomenon appears to affect young adult males the most. Studies in the African wilds reveal that, male calves orphaned perchance or by human interventions, tend to become anti-social in later years. Separated from their herd early in life, they are forced to fend for themselves in the wild. Essentially, the orphans have been deprived during the formative stages of growing up, of crucial social learning within the herd, and hence their insecurity and lacks of socializing spill over. The senseless violence reflected amongst the human youth around the world may perhaps stem from similar underlying deprivations.

The organization itself is like a living organism; it needs a brain to reason, decision-make and direct. The group’s leadership is this brain that strategizes its activities and deliberates on ways to sustain its longevity. To preserve the harmony between individuals and groups, the community leadership has the heavy duty to delineate the boundaries, and socialize the total organization into them; to reclaim, not destroy, even the socially disruptive. 

An effective process of taming rogue elephants has been the company of trained bigger, older bulls. These more experienced elephants withstand their aggressive onslaughts, and also help bring down their seemingly uncontrollable rages. Perhaps human organizations need to offer their rudderless youth similar opportunities to control the instinctive, unthinking behaviours born of abondonment, fear and rage. Appropriate mentoring in sociability may actually bring the aggressive male out of the lonely wild within, and integrate him into mainstream society.

Under the cover of lies

I heard the other day that a young man of my acquaintance fibs. He is now adult and working with a multinational concern in his campus-recruited first job. Educated at a reputed institution, he is the former frat boy who survived gruelling initiation rites to learn the ropes of organized living. The family is immigrant, which makes the achievements more impressive. Yet, He lies, says his father, matter-of-factly. I question a person's deceiving where he need not and even fabricating rationales to compound the lies - more from curiosity about the motivation behind the pastime, than from a moral high ground.

The saying is: You can fool all people some of the time, you can fool some people all the time, but you cannot fool all people all the time. But these old adages are hardly a deterrent! Lies have become an accepted form of social communication. Its practice is active across all of humanity, and knows no social barriers, age, education and gender. Although the purpose behind the action may vary in each case, do it enough times and lying becomes an end in itself.

For little children, their little untruths are a defence against a world where everybody towers over them. The motivation is fear, of being punished or deprived of rewards, mainly in physiological terms. They may give in easily to the joy of scribbling on walls or table tops, but the spirit is unwilling to take on adverse adult responses. Denial – even with the tell-tale crayon dust under the finger-nails, shows up their powerlessness. The same may be said for the poverty-stricken, the illiterate, the very elderly, and women that have no control over their lives. The lies are their survival technique before intimidating authority. The young man I mention is hardly in the same boat; he is of age, his destiny is in his own hands. Perhaps he has just not been weaned off the childish habit of fibbing.

It may also be that deception is the game he is now hooked on playing. In the age of information, new generations grow more accustomed to shades of grey than to the moralistic black and white of yesteryears. In the childhood of our time, the emphasis at home and in school is on honour, sacrifice and other virtues of righteous living – extensions of social collectivism in part, in part catechism. The story books we love to read transport us to the fantasy world of magical creatures, and each carries a lesson to learn. In school, to pass the class, we have to pass the moral science test. Right and wrong becomes clearly demarcated in the mind. Indeed, pithy proverbs pop out of long term memory at inopportune moments, to create doubt, dilemma, discomfort and the omnipresent burden of guilt. The moral science subject is now obsolete in schools, perhaps to reduce pressures on impressionable minds. The social learning at home too is in abeyance because families have shrunk, and both parents are employed. The books that fascinate the earlier generation have lost their allure. The young are left alone to role-play in the virtual reality that appears at the touch of a button. Fact is they know more about video game plots than they do about human values.

Furthermore, blatant lies have become the weapon of manipulation in today’s world. Lawyers, for instance are said to be liars by profession, scarcely concerned any more with justice. They weave webs of words to twist and turn perceptions of events, projecting as the absolute truth the perspectives of their own clients. In similar vein, the search for political power in any organization requires mastering the art of persuasion whereby a molehill may be made to assume the proportions of a mountain, and vice versa. The point is to bring down opponents wresting from them the reins of power. In corporate industry, the Madoffs, the Lehmans and the Lawsons of the world use their genius with numbers and technology with the same cynical disregard for human values to defraud their victims and even their own organizations of currency notes in the millions. They call it hustling, spinning elaborate cons to dupe the unsuspecting. There is no remorse in scamming the elderly and the financially weak out of their trust and their life savings.

Cynicism permeates the interactions of groups with other groups. There is take rather than give in this predatorial world that transposes going for the jugular from the wild into the organizational process. To use subterfuge to get close to the prey and to then move in swiftly for the kill is an act that plays out regularly in everyday life. People learn to be less disturbed by lies, which in fact interweave into their social masks. These hide their true natures or conceal their vulnerability. The motivation is again fear, but in psychological terms, because nobody wants to lose. To be the winner, the game must be played and played well. The humans tend to forget that their minds have evolved beyond that of the other animals; that they actually need to adapt to the world of other people, rather than to orders on the food chain.

The heroes the young emulate are in virtual reality, sometimes perceived as more real than real life may be. The ploy set up for immediate rewards can turn into the long term habit they wear like a second skin. They may begin to live the lie, believe in the illusion, and be caught up, unable to escape, in the traps they build for others. Like addicts, they seek the next score, the next adrenaline rush, and the next win in the games of their own making. Lies may become the compulsion that pushes people to deny their true self. Peel that cover of lies away and there might be a frightened child within, afraid to grow up, making believe his maturity. 

Image of a homeland

Within three decades of India’s independence, the brain drain raises a furore, as demographic migration to the West becomes a popular trend amongst the educated. In enlightened self-interest, the future generations of India’s freedom fighters willingly choose to break tradition and swear new allegiances. They actively ignore perceptions in the mother country of being mercenary, traitors to the nationalistic ideals of their forefathers. The assumption may be that people choosing to emigrate base their decisions on felt affinity with their destination regions. However, the emotional reactivity that tends to surface later suggests that the choice may have been economic opportunism.

A century or two earlier, while India was a colony, it was routine to forcibly shunt workers to other lands as cheap manual labour. The colonizers then decide to harness the Indian intellect as well, to increase profitability. The “Baboo culture” is thus born - that is, educated Indians, the Baboos, inducted to maintain the system, become the backbone of bureaucratic functioning. Education in India is structured along Western lines, replacing the indigenous universities of its more ancient civilization. Missionary schools spring up all around the country dispensing knowledge and conversions to Christianity. University colleges for higher studies open doors to Western sciences in the presidencies of the north, south, east and west. Obviously, the medium of study is also mainly English.

About the first quarter of the twentieth century, things begin to change politically. Satyagrahis (freedom fighters) burn symbols of Western affluence, clothes, etc., on the streets as demands to end colonial rule gain momentum. Eventually, independence is achieved. But the price of freedom, people realize, is empty coffers. Almost overnight, the erstwhile rich colony is stripped of its wealth. The Partition that carves Pakistan out of undivided India displaces thousands on the grounds of religion. Hindu families in Pakistan and Muslims in the new India are evicted from their respective homelands and pushed across the new borders.  The thousands upon thousands that are forcibly unsettled, that lose their homes, their lands, their families and their very identity in the political machinations, feel that they go from frying pan into fire. Ironically, they preferred to forge bonds with their erstwhile masters, and rage at one another. The traumatic wounds of this separation continue to bleed to this day between neighbours in the sub-continent.

At independence, there are about six hundred kingdoms and princely states in India. It is a momentuous task to bring them under the banner of a secular, democratic republic. Obviously, no consensus can be reached on elevating any one regional tongue over others as the national language, and there are twenty-two of them officially, along with thousands of dialects. English, the once foreign tongue, is the common medium of communication around the country, indianizing according to the grammar and speech patterns of each state. The bureaucratic system also survives social and political turmoil. Even today, the country’s civil administration is sustained by the “baboodom” of yore. It functions as before with paper files and manual entries, is loath to adapt to the modernity of electronic communications, and its incumbents often occupy the same spaces and look very much like their predecessors of that bygone era.

 

The traditional joint family structure that society is built upon disintegrates, post independence. The extended branches of family are now often separated by the new borders. Each splintered segment is compelled to find their own financial stability. The outlook towards women also has to change. For economic reasons, their education links to employment for the first time. Learning from European and Anglo-Indian teachers becomes a matter of course for boys and girls born in the new democracy. In the early days, knowledge dissembled is swallowed unquestioningly. What comes out of the Book is gospel truth – including for instance, nursery tales picturizing the white mother as thinner, prettier and smarter than any other, black, red or yellow!

No surprise then that the children learn to identify more with blonde hair, blue eyes, and the English language than they can with their own shattered roots. The image of the “homeland” also blurs. In the 1970s and ’80s, skilled young adults being westward bound are perhaps the logical conclusion to the childhood aspirations.

Moreover, the leaders of the new India struggle to run the fledgling democracy. The country joins the ranks of penurious developing nations. The people that had sought to become their own masters find they have to seek aid just to get by. Clearly, it will take decades for India to be at par with the leading nations. Getting out to richer pastures makes most economic sense. Besides, the architects of the new democracy failed to include compulsory service to the nation in the constitutional duties for its citizens and hence, the governments watch helplessly as new crops of graduates fly away to bring fame and fortune to their overseas employers. The brain drain leaves a vacuous workforce in the nation that, thinking future, nurtures the cream of its youth through years of subsidized education. The countries that grew fat on the gullibility of Asia and Africa are able to call the shots in the reconstruction of the nations they previously ravaged. They are now the lands of plenty beckoning India’s new intelligentsia.

 

Traditional values in India base on strong family relationships across generations. The family buffers its members against adversity, providing the social security and support the state cannot. Children live with their parents and care for them in old age. These are the just rewards for the many sacrifices they make to raise them to adulthood. But in the new reality, the elderly left behind in India find themselves unable to cope with living alone or in the care of hired help. Bereft of the traditional extended family environment they have grown to expect, their emotional suffering is acute.

The immigrant communities soon find out that their relinquished citizenship does not guarantee integration into the new society in the West. People brought up on collectivistic values gradually realize that multiculturalism in the West is a patchwork of demographic fractions maintaining minimal social interrelationships outside of work. While socializing in distinctly dissimilar cultures is difficult in itself, the immigrants from the Asian sub-continent and Africa also carry the colonized stigma. Consequently, each social group becomes inward-looking, fearing the decimation of their unique cultural identity. Realizing perhaps a little late that money is not everything, their focus shifts to forging strong intra-group bonds. They form a Little India, a Chinatown and so on, to preserve culture through the associations, norms, customs and rituals experienced in childhood. These become the heritage to keep alive in their adopted homelands thousands of miles away from their origins.

First-generation immigrants probably carry a suppressed sense of guilt that they abandon their familial duties for riches. Indeed, they are more strident in their attempts to recreate the way things were back home. They demand obedience and respect from their offspring in the mould of the traditional culture. They dream of establishing continuity with the past they renounced a few decades ago, including the segregation of gender. But often, they are unaware that the homeland itself has evolved beyond that point, while they cling to some obsolete image of it. Children reared in the West are caught between cultures. On the one hand, they imbibe the liberalness of the here-and-now environment they live in. On the other, they are bombarded with parental projections of there-and-then traditions that scarcely match their present experience of life. In a new cycle of change, this dichotomous image of a homeland may seem alien and meaningless to the rebellious young. The older generations thereby perceive their liberal leanings as mercenary, traitors to the cultural ideals of their forefathers...

Talent under the radar

 ‘Underprivileged’, the politically correct term for poverty, sometimes euphemistically covers the lack of mental abilities. And thence in subsequent associations, the poor get equated with inert minds oblivious to progress. In India, the rural districts are larger than cities, and are peopled with many more very low-income groups with far fewer amenities. Overwhelmed by the advancements of the new millennium, they look up to metropolitan cultures in awe, while the latter, truth be told, seldom consider them as other than a statistic of backwardness – but are they really? 

Maslow’s theory places needs in a hierarchy, postulating that higher needs emerge on fulfillment of lower ones. On satisfaction of physiological needs, new needs for security emerge in people’s minds. When security has been dealt with, social needs have to be met; after which, self-esteem become potent. Thereafter, the self-actualizing needs begin to arise. The common assumption grows that as long as lower needs are unfulfilled, higher needs are dormant. By extension, since those surrounded by poverty must barely meet their physiological needs, they must aspire no further.

We decide to visit a rural district in West Bengal, a few hundred miles out of Kolkata to find out. Our city acquaintances enumerate the tourist spots of the region for us – religious icons and cottage industry. We are told where we can absorb the spirituality, and also where items for our drawing rooms would come cheap. The blanket assumption seems to be that the faceless masses have no talents otherwise to positively contribute to society. In fact, in remote pockets of the country, the backwardness of indigenous communities and tribes are kept as such in practices meant to preserve ancient cultures. These populations remain in isolation on reservations cut off from the mainstream, attractions for avid tourists and anthropologists. Small wonder then, that in carrying forward the traditions of the ages, their associated superstitions are also swallowed unquestioningly.

Meanwhile, technological advancements have concentrated in the metros, where competitions of the global marketplace are generally intellect-based. Although the urban numbers are but a fraction of India’s vast population, manpower supply exceeds demand. The prices of skills drive down, which is the basis of the lucrative outsourcing industry. A surfeit of Indian men and women join the virtual reality of business and knowledge processes. They change names and accents to handle services informatics for Western consumers, beaming out advice from a nation devoid of the same organized social system.

At least 25% of India lives below the poverty line mainly in the far-flung regions, where daily subsistence is a challenge. There is a label for this category of people – bpl, i.e., incomes of less than half of one US dollar a day. And ‘they’ are not just individuals, but extended families made up of parents, grandparents and children, dependent on local vegetation and governmental subsidies to survive in the age of information.

Beyond city limits, the surroundings change. There are more open spaces of natural beauty, and more greenery lining the highway, the tree branches meeting overhead to form a natural canopy. Breathing is automatically easier as pollutions of the concrete jungle are left behind, and we pass open fields of agricultural crop and fruit orchards. But the living standards are impoverished, small dwellings tinged with neglect and the sense of time standing still, cheek by jowl with large tracts of land acquired for development by corporate houses, walled off from the humble populace.

At our destination, it is a surprise to actually see a building made of brick and mortar, three storeys high, with further work in progress. We hear that outlying institutions receive governmental grants for building structure, although they must find the funds elsewhere to actually run the school. The institution, for boys only, boasts of eleven hundred names on the rolls, but privately we learn that keeping children in school is their greatest problem. A free mid-day meal is an incentive, but in middle school between classes VI-VIII, attrition is high.

The village boys are expected to follow in the footsteps of their forefathers, preserving occupational traditions. For many of the parents, modern education is a waste of time, and there is more economic worth in an extra pair of hands at work. In much of rural India, even males seeking academic achievements, are in minority. And women, far less able to cross the gender boundaries of the ages, scarcely enter the equation.

Eleven teachers deal with the inmate population of the school, at a ratio of 1:100, with less than half a minute to spare for each individual in class. In educational infrastructure there is but one computer to look at but not touch, one rack of books in the ‘library’, and students are yet to practice using dictionary and thesaurus. The school management we meet is ambitious; their goal is the recognition and grants of higher secondary status. That calls for results in Board examinations. The institutional targets push the faculty to contribute personal resources to provide free books, school uniforms and coaching after-hours to achieve exam readiness in their pupils.

We ask the school authorities for student background information. We learn that the general occupations of the region are: business, farming, small service, cultivation, labour, and labour (bpl). Although the actual economic value of each of these jobs may vary in comparison to the city, it seems safe to assume that “business” and “labour (bpl)” are at the two ends of the economic spectrum, with the former at a higher standard of living, the latter unable to make ends meet.

It seems logical to assume that students’ academic performances link with their economic backgrounds. Indeed, the “business” children do average scores higher than the “labour (bpl)” boys - by about 10-15 percent marks in summative exams. But surprisingly, scions of “small service” that middle the economic ladder, lead both, scoring marks in the ninety percents. So the correlations perceived are incidental, not cause and effect.

A theory builds from studies that control or balance interfering variables. Extrapolations from it make sense if the contexts are the same, else they hardly fit. When the guiding influences on people's lives have diverse sources, or the environment itself is in turmoil, the emergence of new needs may depend instead on intrinsic motivations generated from individual social learning. The dominance or subordination of a particular need is therefore more random and unpredictable than theoretically assumed.

Blessed with fertile lands and climes, India has largely been agrarian over the 5 millennia of its civilization. Rural cultures continue to steep in the ways things have always been and carry on the customs and rituals of ages gone by, juxtaposing ancient worship of the sylvan goddess with overlays of male dominance. They live in closed communities whose leaders assume extra-constitutional authority over their life choices. The political exploitation of this power over people ensures that any form of modernity is slow to arrive among the silent majority, the apparent drag to India’s economic ascendancy in the new millennium.

The changes imposed on the ordinary people of India over the last six decades of independence have been immense: colonial to democratic, agrarian to industrial, joint to nuclear family structure, and manual labour to electronic wizardry among others. In India’s collectivistic society, vacillations continue between traditions and modernity. The Diva writes elsewhere that:

The forces pulling physically and spiritually one way and politically and intellectually another, generate conflicts and tensions over cultural and material issues.

The condition is termed Trishanku in Indian parlance after the mythological king who, in attempting to take his mortal body to heaven, remains suspended in ether for evermore, neither here nor there.

The backwardness of people groups may be a state of mind, a failure of imaginative perceptions and opportunity perhaps, rather than some genetic anomaly. The home environs provide children with purpose in life in formative years. Parents and elders passing on perspectives of the world, attach value to education. For instance, the “business” person, hierarchically at the top of his little organizational pyramid, socializes attitudes and ethics that may differ from one in “small service”. The latter, on the bottom rung in a larger system, is like a small fish in a large pond, and must develop skills to be aware of others, learn diverse survival skills and adapt to changing influences. The outlook to education may hence differ in business, small service and other families.

Often in India, talent is thus suppressed, lost to the nation and humanity, because of faulty perceptions within and between social groups. Rural people are not mentally retarded but de-motivated by lacks of opportunity and resource. Doles are hardly the remedy. Rather, they need educational support to realize their worth, and shine in the larger world of people. The talent to self-actualize exists in people everywhere, whether it is the aptitude to excel in a certain field or discipline, or the ability to rise above average natural ability through sheer diligence; it just needs a trigger to thrive.

Governance still struggles to create the infrastructure for organized social services as in the West; hence in people development, they can do little beyond building a few school structures. It behooves individuals and corporate bodies that are more privileged, to acknowledge the social and gender inequality, engage in citizenship to replenish the macro community and bring worth to minority groups. Perceiving India’s vast underprivileged population as talent under the radar rather than a drag is the first step forward in fulfilling the collective social responsibility.