More than their due

There was a time when, for almost all NRIs, a trip to India meant a holiday. Today, many Indian students and young professionals in the U.S. are making time for rural India by working with non- governmental organisations. RAJNI BAKSHI writes on a new generation of Indians who are helping to work out equitable alternatives of development which are realistically viable and also true to higher social values.

A YOUNG Indian woman, an engineer working as a management consultant in San Francisco, is learning to spin yarn on a charkha. Shortly before setting out on a visit home she puts out a message on the Internet to collect orders from those who may want a charkha from India. Within 48 hours she receives orders for 20 charkhas.

So what if a few score Indians, out of over one million living in the U.S., want a charkha from India? Perhaps it is just a quaint artifact, or even a "toy," which offers relief from the high- speed, high-tech life. Not quite. Many of these people are engaged in a rather extensive journey which is not limited to alleviating stress.

Their creative quest combines inspiration from traditional sources with a hands-on knowledge of rapid-fire technological change and the urge to build wholesome futures. Young people, like the charkha-learning engineer, are part of a still larger trend of Indians living abroad who want to give not merely money but their time and skills to improving life in India. And yet there is more happening here than hyperbolic declarations of dedication to "Bharat-mata".

India's much lamented "brain-drain" has not quite gone into reverse gear. But a distinct stream does appear to be making a "U" turn to flow India-wards. There is a vital, problem-solving energy at work here and it is not restricted to small welfare schemes in adopted villages. An intense battle of ideas is also taking shape. At stake is not just the future of India but the very definition of development and progress.

The genesis of this restless foment is best captured by a quotation which appears on many pamphlets of groups working on alternative technologies and modes of development. This passage is from a speech that Rabindranath Tagore delivered in China in the early Twenties:

"We have for over a century been dragged by the prosperous West behind its chariot, choked by the dust, deafened by the noise, humbled by our own helplessness, and overwhelmed by the speed. We agreed to acknowledge that this chariot-drive was progress, and that progress was civilisation. If we even ventured to ask, 'Progress towards what, and progress for whom' it was considered to be peculiarly and ridiculously oriental to entertain such doubts about the absoluteness of progress. Of late, a voice has come to us bidding us to take count not only of the scientific perfection of the chariot but of the depth of the ditches lying across its path."

This awareness disturbs and inspires even those who have been expensively trained to run that "chariot". So some, like the physicist Ravi Kuchimanchi, are returning to India to work for the vision inspired by protest movements like the Narmada Bachao Andolan. For, writes Ravi:

"When rivers are silenced

And waters become deep

When there's nowhere to go

And justice sold

We hear the sound of souls

And set our course . . . ."

There was a time when, for almost all NRIs, a trip to India meant visits to relatives, shopping and sightseeing. Today, says Ravi, many Indian students and young professionals in the U.S. are making time for village India. This is partly because of the work of groups like Association for India's Development (AID) which Ravi helped to create in 1991, while working for his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland. Today, AID has chapters in 25 universities all over the U.S. and several volunteers working in different parts of rural and urban India.

Initially AID was just an effort to raise NRI dollars for social service projects in India - such as health, education, vocational training and afforestation. Soon it became equally concerned with the problem of displacement and "development fundamentalism" which insists on mega centralised projects like big dams and nuclear plants as the only means to further progress.

Thus the growing support for protest movements like NBA which are demanding an alternative paradigm of development which will not ask any segment of society to suffer because someone has to "pay the price for progress." AID now has a fellowship programme that supports young NRIs who want to work with movements and non- governmental organisations in India. Many are doing this as all- purpose volunteers. But some have returned to stay and concentrate on working out actual viable, equitable alternatives.

For example, Venkatesh Iyer, a material scientist from Penn State University, has returned to work on the problem of energy. Iyer has joined forces with the veteran engineer-activist K. R. Dattye to evolve a variety of energy systems which could maximise India's bio-mass wealth. The main purpose is to create a dispersed industrial base which will make optimum use of local resources and generate livelihood for all.

R. Sastry, has returned from a job in Silicon Valley to explore how the information technology revolution can be made a tool for social justice and equity. Currently he is moving all over India trying to understand what is happening in different spheres. Meanwhile he is also helping various kinds of activist groups to build data bases and make effective use of computers and the Internet.

Many such professionals with an activist orientation recently met at Khandala to exchange notes with veteran social and political activists of India. The meeting was convened by Jansahayog Trust, a small Bombay-based group, which supports grass roots efforts for creative development.

This was the first time that representatives of many such NRI forums met at one place, to reflect and share plans. Apart from several representatives of AID there were people from Asha, India Literacy Project (ILP) and Rejuvenate India Movement (RIM).

Sindhu Naik, a former software engineer, now works full-time with ILP and RIM. Sindhu's restlessness boiled over in the early Nineties when she found that liberalisation policies were further widening disparities. So she took a break from her software career and did a masters in sociology at the San Jose State University.

There she got involved in the India Literacy Project (ILP) to raise funds for educational projects in India. Sindhu has now returned to live in Bangalore and is busy building an India chapter for ILP. As ILP's work deepens it is now looking at adult literacy in a much wider perspective and getting involved in issues of economic empowerment.

This has naturally led to a much closer interest in the existing movements for alternative, or creative, development. This is what brought Sindhu to the meeting at Khandala in January this year. But, Sindhu says, there is no wave of radical change sweeping across Indian students and professionals in the U.S.

All members of forums like ILP or Asha, do not share the radical critique of the existing model of development. There are often heated differences within such groups between those who support and invest in projects like the Sardar Sarovar dam and others who oppose the project. The issue of India's nuclear tests is another major divider.

Sandeep Pandey, a founder member of Asha, played a leading role in organising the Global Peace March, last year. This march, from Pokhran to Sarnath, was intended to raise awareness about the folly of India becoming a nuclear power. The march was endorsed by AID and supported by many NRIs. They created a website for it, collected signatures and held a one day rally in Washington D.C. But, Asha - which otherwise supports Sandeep's work on education in India - did not endorse the march.

Those who are committed to working out a different paradigm of development and national security do not appear daunted by such lack of support. In any case they are not looking for skin-deep innovations or merely managerial solutions. Their journey is intrinsically linked with the need to work in sync with the civilisational ethos of India for a more holistic and humane culture of progress. Thus, some are homing in on the old charkha. Lehar Sethi Zaidi, the engineer in San Fransisco who is learning to spin, says that the charkha is "a holistic experience. As a scientist I see that it is environment friendly and technological sound, for its principle lie in a civilisation which gave science to the world."

The soothing act of spinning on a charkha also meets a spiritual need felt by many professionals working at the frontiers of modern technology. For some it can become a window to different civilisational perspectives and assumptions which are otherwise being obliterated by that "chariot" of progress which Tagore described.

For example, to challenge the worship of "speed" and "greed" it may be essential to seek a value structure that is different from the "yeh dil maange more" culture. And this does not mean going backwards or promoting some form of asceticism. Emerging perspectives on alternative development are essentially forward looking. They emphasise a rich community-based life with a material super-structure that encourages economic and social self reliance, self confidence and self sustenance.

These ideas may seem out of step to another kind of NRI initiative which had its inaugural meeting at Mahatma Gandhi's Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad in December. "Action India" is the brain-child of Sam Pitroda and several other Chicago based Indians who are keen to pool their energies with resident Indians to hasten the development of India. This group also favours a change of mind set but is probably not inclined to challenge the existing development paradigm.

Yet anyone truly committed to innovative and egalitarian "development" must eventually confront the unviable and unsustainable manner in which modes of production are organised today. Likewise those who want a paradigm shift must nevertheless contend with the vast gap between the vision and trends which are actually shaping day to day reality.

Therefore, many of the techno-savvy activists are planning to concentrate their energies on working out alternatives which are realistically viable in the emerging scenario and also true to higher social values - community spirit, cooperation and mutual creativity.

Many of them will gain sustenance from these words of Mahatma Gandhi quoted in a AID publication: "Hesitating to act because the whole vision might not be achieved, or because others do not yet share it, is an attitude that only hinders progress."

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