Why must we imitate?

Speaking generally

By Chanchal Sarkar

IS another election on the cards? I probably express an opinion distasteful to some but I think elections, as they are held in India, are distracting and end up using the country’s resources. Besides, they lead to the same roller-coaster ride again and again.

Just as tennis, football and cricket, elections too are now completely commercialised, with the media taking a good cut, not to speak of the people who fuel the election publicity machines of the parties. Several times while travelling in the countryside when canvassing is in progress, I have found that people have hardly any interest in the poll. Living in hovels with neither electricity nor water, why should they be interested in the glossy election coverage on television.

Dr Khan, the Pakistani atom bomb maker, has said that a nuclear programme is not expensive. His programme, he says, costs less than a large aircraft. He was probably not totting up all the expenses, but if he was anywhere even near the truth then why can’t we devise a cheaper election process?

Why do we do everything by imitation? If the US media goes berserk over an election or over an O.J. Simpson trial or over the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, must we do the same? Over elections we certainly go berserk. One sees well-dressed poll analysts showing hour-by-hour changes, seats won or lost, comments from winning and losing bigwigs and a so-called cerebral analysis by razor-sharp ‘intellectuals’. Just how many people are interested in those inferential games? Few, I suspect, very few. The people of India are left out of their elections. Unfortunately, we do most of the things by imitation and so will not change our pattern of off-track messages to the vast majority of citizens.

Dr Mohammed Yunus

Dr Mohammed Yunus of Bangladesh has won so many international awards that the walls of his room in the Grameen Bank headquarters are covered with framed parchments. And now he is to get the Nehru Prize. By organising small credits for villagers, mostly women, he has enabled most of the rural Bangladeshis to stand on their own feet. He has brought new hope where there was black despair. And all that in a very poor country.

His formula could work in India just as well. A small group of five or six women have to ask for a loan from Grameen Bank and be collective guarantors for the credit asked for a project like poultry work, vegetable farming or for buying a rickshaw. The interest has to be paid and there are penalties for default. Villagers in over 30,000 villages have improved their economic lot. But the practice has not picked up in India except in small pockets. Interestingly, many other Third World countries have tried to make the micro-credit system work and have even set up international associations to get guidance from Dr Yunus and Grameen Bank. We imitate, as I said, about the elections, but not the good things. The transactions of Grameen Bank now run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

Dr Yunus, who was once a professor of economics at Chittagong University, is extremely popular in the Bangladesh countryside. I travelled with him once for three days in a district and he was revered almost like a god. In exchange, he seemed to know by name every single worker in the Grameen Bank branches that we visited. I remember a village fair where he was the chief guest and how the villagers from far and near fussed over him.

Now Grameen Bank has spread its wings. It has taken up rural telecommunications, mechanised fishing and exports. These are developments about which I haven’t had conclusive opinions yet but the original seed of micro-credit has been well and truly broadcast.

Unfeeling politicians

There is a lot of criticism about Mamata Banerjee with which I thoroughly agree. This applies to criticism not about her alone but also about other politicians like Bal Thackeray, Laloo Prasad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav and, of course, doctors of Delhi. People have been narrating their tales of woe, of how they are inconvenienced by the indiscriminate and successive bandhs, rallies and strikes.

One woman talked about her experience when her train was stopped in the middle of nowhere for many hours and there wasn’t a drop of milk for her little daughter. She arrived at her destination at an ungodly hour. Others have written about not being able to take the sick to hospital and of fights and breakages.

Will political parties ever have a convention and agree not to take steps which harm the public? Of course not.

The President, K.R. Narayanan, while on a recent visit to Calcutta, expressed his regret that so many people were put to difficulty when he visited the city. At least it is good to hear an expression of regret even if nothing changes.

Absurd suggestions

I find in the Calcutta papers, some people, including alumni of Visva Bharati, putting forward the claim that Amartya Sen should be the next Acharya of the university. Others have said that he should be the Vice-Chairman of the Planning Commission. Both are absurd suggestions. In the furious infighting in Santiniketan, he would be throttled in no time. As for the Planning Commission, no person can do anything to set right the staggering inequalities and corruption that have adversely affected the Indian economy. And in any case, Amartya Sen’s prestige and responsibilities today are much greater than that of any Planning Commission functionary.