The Hindu : Confused future

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Aug 25, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Confused future

By Timeri N. Murari

The children performed skits about drunken fathers, corrupt policemen, wife beating and anti-education parents. I only hoped they would remember these childhood observations when they become adults.

I WENT to school on the weekend, and learnt a lot. A NGO friend had arranged the visit to a village where his project had begun working. The mission was to tap and encourage the people to help themselves, and not impose any half-baked urban ideas on them.

The village was an hour and a half drive out of the city. The earth was a bright, lush green. Living in urban India one does forget that beyond the bright lights exists rural India where the majority of us live. Or, eke out a living, depending on circumstance, the rain and other variables. We forget too that there is so much beauty beyond the ugly borders of our towns and cities. At least, I had despite spending a large chunk of childhood in rural India.

It was a pretty village, and seemed neat and clean. The village had a population of 800, composed of three castes. I shall not name them, as I find castes confusing. The first complaint was, of course, that trying to get the three to work together was like trying to weld iron to stone. There was no enmity but each community lived within its sealed borders. The Government had built two water tanks, as they did not want to share the same water. So, I guessed at least two of the castes did not object.

The Government was very present on this day, busy building toilets. They dug pits, built a brick platform and set an Indian-style toilet on it. They then moved on and I could not figure out where the waste went. The panchayat told me that the Government had laid down a quota of so-many toilets per village, so that was what the Government people were doing. The local men were paid Rs. 600 a day to dig the pits. Strolling around the village, at arbitrary homes, were these white gifts from urban India. Someone, somewhere had a lucrative contract supplying toilets but not the plumbing. At the end of the village was a large public toilet built a few years back. As it had never been used, it had collapsed.

Also dotted around the village landscape were concrete pillars standing in the compounds of some homes. They were six ft high, four ft wide and two ft deep. It would take a missile to knock down one of these pillars. However, there was a reason for these sculptures. If a household wanted an electrical connection, they had to build these pillars for the EB to fix the board on them. The `board' was a foot square and an inch thick. Each pillar cost Rs. 2000 to construct. No doubt, it was a status symbol to have these costly pillars as everyone would know the house had a working light bulb.

In the village school, the castes mixed and mingled without any inhibitions. No doubt, they separated once they left the compound. It had 70 pupils of both sexes ranging in age from five or six up to around fourteen. They all studied at their various grades in the same hall, facing differently positioned blackboards. The children were neatly dressed in clean uniforms, had scrubbed faces and eyes brimming and bright with eager intelligence. They laughed and chatted, though this was a holiday, they were here to entertain us. The NGO had given the school a computer and would teach the teachers how to use it, who could then teach the children.

It was not that ambitious. I looked down at a small girl holding an open textbook. It was in English. It was the ambition of all these children to learn English, as they would need it when they went into urban India. On one page, the book had the recipe to make limejuice. It is a fine drink on a hot day and no doubt will help her earn a livelihood in the city. On the other page was a poem about a spider going up and down. I am sure there is an underlying reason for such a choice of subjects to teach the English language but they are too sublime for me to understand. I asked her to read me the poem. She ran her finger below each line and read it quickly and fluently in English. When I asked her to explain the meaning, she looked stunned. She managed with the first word after deep thought. The rest defeated her.

The children performed dances and skits for us. The skits were about drunken fathers, corrupt policemen, wife beating and anti-education parents. The other children laughed and clapped at every line. The organiser told me the children had composed the skits themselves, and had had no input from the teachers. They only reflected what they had seen in their homes. I only hoped they would remember these childhood observations when they became adults.

Like everything else in this village, they reflected the confusion of good intentions and the hopes, dreams and longings of India everywhere.

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