I am not sure whether I ought to worry more about the big picture, or the small one. Here is the big picture. When the economy started doing badly (with growth down from close to nine per cent to about five), we were told there is contraction in the global economy.
But with the economy continuing to do badly (with the rupee touching an embarrassing Rs 64 to the US dollar), we are suddenly told our markets and currency are getting spooked because the US and Eurozone economies are looking up. When the world economy does badly, our economy is hit; when it does well, ours tanks. This is the big picture. Because the canvas of the ‘big picture’ is so wide, ordinary people cannot embrace and assimilate the whole within their small minds. Since they are not experts, they lack ‘perspective’, and cannot therefore ever hope to understand the ‘big picture’.
What about the small picture thenIJ I drive to work from Gurgaon to Delhi every morning. I drive past Bijwasan village which ordinarily has a serviceable thoroughfare for traffic to and fro my part of town. There are two or three spots on the stretch that completely break down and collapse every monsoon. Craters form on the road because water accumulates in depressions created due to improper undersurface pretreatment of Macadamised roads (named after a Scottish engineer John loudon Mac Adam, who perfected the road layering technique some 200 years ago!). These depressions hold water, thus loosening the binding of the asphalt. Heavy vehicular movement then is able to dislodge the surfacing, creating a ‘pothole’, which grows with time to assume the dimensions of a crater.
To return to the Bijwasan story. What amazes me year after year as I drive (or is it dive) around (or sometimes ‘into’) these broken stretches is this: All along this length of road runs a broad and deep ‘nullah’ which is almost the size of a mini stream. Why should water accumulate on the road when there is an available reservoir right next to itIJ This is the small picture.
India is hurting because of both the big picture and the small picture. At the level of policy and executive functioning, India seems seized by a deepening paralysis, catatonic and unable to shake off the lethargy. Cynics claim it is not about not being able to act; instead, the mood is the the Government cannot act. Suddenly, Anna Hazare’s mobilisation, concerns about the environment, land acquisition hassles, court injunctions, forest rights, tribal land, etc, seem to have tied the hands of bureaucrats all the way up the chain. Or perhaps that’s the excuse. In truth, the Congress has simply run out of gas. And there is no one around to even push. Our stalled nation is, at best, waiting for 2014 (without too much hope through). It’s one big scary picture that’s facing a country that only a decade back was being touted as the next big thing in the world.
India thrives at its margins. India is also thwarted at the margins. The billion bazaars across the nation keep it alive, with a rich network of trade and commerce working its engines. The guy at the kiosk selling Kolkata rolls, the rickshaw-puller sweating it out along a dusty stretch of road, the innovator helping out farmers preserve water in some back of beyond village, all of them make up the small picture. But India bleeds here too, because the state and the system it owns bind ability and enterprise alike, arresting possibilities of emancipation through individual effort, and instead promising largesse (food/work security) that quietly slips into private pockets lined in khadi.
It seems under the Congress, India has lost the will to think well about itself. Not so long ago you could say the most outrageously optimistic things about India’s future and sound perfectly grounded. Today, it’s the nation that is grounded, and pessimism rules. What we have is continuing profligacy (which is easy when you’re paying from someone else’s pockets) on the one hand, and lack of resolve in addressing issues on the other. The India story today is pretty much like that of the student with just a Rs 10 note in the pocket. She is eager to get rid of it quick, so as not to have to think about it.