It’s imperative for the country to adapt to the challenges ahead and usher in a semblance of good governance
Outraged at the recent drowning of two men in an uncovered manhole in the national capital, the Delhi Government seems to be considering some swift deterrence measures. Have we forgotten the drowning of a Class I student at a school in Vasant Kunj or the tragic end of five-year-old Ankit in his school’s septic tank at KapasheraIJ Illustrative of numerous such mishaps, the media has been bringing home the rampant apathy, in fact, callousness, that characterises simple routine responsibilities of functionaries responsible for proper upkeep of facilities and premises. Imagine a country with pretensions of an emerging world power, where children and elders in particular bear the brunt of drains and sewers left uncovered, electric wires hanging loose, and numerous similar hazards.
Thomas l Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum narrate how simple small weaknesses in everyday avocations of workers are symptomatic of nation's malaise. Their book,That Used To Be Us: What Went Wrong with America — and How It Can Come BackI, laments the country’s apathetic work ethos. For example, the authors describe the two escalators at the Bethesda station near New York which had been under repair for nearly six months. A sign on the closed escalator pompously announcing that the repairs were part of “a massive escalator modernisation project”.
In startling contrast, the authors recall what they saw in China where it took just 32 weeks to build a large world-class convention centre from the ground up, not to talk of, among other achievements, China's ‘bullet trains’ zipping through the countryside, developed at amazing pace. They conclude: “Americans had gone soft. It has become a nation of wusses”.
If the Americans have gone soft, we shudder to think of what has happened to Indians who are known for messing up things and their penchant for jugaad, for somehow putting things together, often oblivious to the essential attributes of safety, quality, productivity, and timeliness. Often our cities grapple with the trauma of roads, bridges and buildings collapsing, burying hapless people underneath, not to mention the likes of Delhi’s Uphaar cinema hall blaze or Kolkata’s AMRI inferno. Come monsoon and Delhi is paralysed by waterlogging year after year, much like monsoon-lashed Mumbai turns into a cesspool with its pot-holed roads and grid-locked traffic. Notwithstanding the crescendo of the Swachch Bharat Abhiyaan, our urban agglomerations continue to be pigsties, where filth and squalour are ubiquitious as are individuals spitting, littering, urinating and defecating.
Foul smell from piles of trash on the streets greets tourists at the world renowned Taj Mahal in Agra. Our hallowed Ganga and Yamuna rivers are now veritable sewage canals. Our roads, broken and cratered in most places, are virtual death traps. Roads laid and carpeted melt away in weeks along with the bitumen; ever sprouting slums grow cheek by jowl with glittering malls and multiplexes; thousands of unauthorised settlements keep springing up. Onslaughts on heritage monuments go on with impunity.
Simple imperatives are ignored: Roads have to be kept clean; drains desilted; garbage cleared; walkways uncluttered; busy market places made orderly, clean and convenient; pavements can’t be overrun by hawkers, squatters, shrines and kiosks.
Usually, multiple state agencies are involved and they keep passing the buck. Those who can make a difference remain wrapped in their privileged citadels. While there is little supervision at actual work sites, the growing scourge of the VIP syndrome insulates those in power from ground realities. Far removed from the humdrum life of the country's teeming millions, our legislators and bureaucrats increasingly draw people's ire because they are so disconnected from the public. The VIP virus afflicting the polity becomes the very antithesis of inclusiveness by which all political satraps swear and make a mockery of the democracy we are proud of.
The rot runs deep; it has thrived for decades. Our multi-layered governance leviathan remains immune; there is no clear accountability, no swift, deterrent punitive action. The political class consumed by competitive populism and entitlements abdicates its primary obligation of raj dharma, harmonising liberty and welfare with fair and firm governance and order.
Human capital is the key for development, for quality of life. It is not only the case of untrained artisans, of inept application and carelessness. A vast number of people have been fed on doctrinaire paralysis of work culture, encouraging sloth. There is a general impression that no matter how heinous a crime one may commit, nothing much will happen; that's how umpteen cases of rape, abduction, extortion, graft, road-mowing, and murder keep happening.
Mancur Olson explains in The Rise and Decline of Nations how the British, after winning World War II, grew comfortable, complacent and rigid, focusing on distribution rather than growth. Their system became sclerotic whereas Germany, almost entirely destroyed by the war, rebuilt not only its physical infrastructure but also revised its antiquated arrangements and institutions — the political system, the guilds, the economy — with a modern frame of mind.
There is a clear categorical imperative for India to tread Germany’s path and adapt itself to the challenges ahead. We can expiate our criminal negligence leading to loss of innocent lives, if we learn the lesson even at this late stage and usher in some semblance of good governance.