Imagine India, free of poverty. Imagine India, in a world free of poverty. A world, where quality of life guarantees human dignity. A world, where everyone exercises basic human rights. A world, where all children live to their full potential.
That is a dream we share – you and I. That is a dream you and I share with all the women and men who went forth from this illustrious institution, carrying the flame of Anand across India for over a quarter of a century. That is a dream all of us share, with the sovereign people of India.
Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the Nation India, said this to scientists once:
Unless all the discoveries that you make have the welfare of the poor as the end in view, all your workshops will be really no better than Satan’s.
Twenty-one years ago, my life crossed paths with a girl child – dying silently in a slum of Cairo, of dehydration from simple diarrhea. That was when – with a strong encouragement from my mother, who is with us today – I bid my final farewell to an academic’s life, to join the World Bank’s fight against poverty. So, like you, I think about the dream of a world free of poverty, all the time. Little did I know then, how much I had yet to learn about poverty and what it takes to fight it…
As an economist, I used to think of poverty measured in terms of income and social indicators such as literacy. This thinking shaped my personal commitment to fight poverty. I never doubted the strength of that commitment. But, looking back, I think there was this little voice somewhere deep inside me that kept calling me a liar, questioning how I could possibly commit myself to a dream, an outcome, which was not likely in my lifetime…
It took the subcontinent of South Asia to teach me the meaning of poverty – to put aside the intellectual and analytical mindset of the economist that I am. It took the people of South Asia to teach me what it really takes to eradicate poverty – to reach down into my heart to see with my inner eyes what my commitment really means. Gandhiji reminded us:
India is not Calcutta and Bombay. India lives in her seven hundred thousand villages.
And in those villages of India, and beyond her borders – in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Pakistan, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka – I met my teachers.
* * *
My newly found teachers began to help me question all that I had learned before. So, I began a diary of my intellectual and emotional journey as an economist and a human being. I share these “travelogues” of my ignorance routinely with my staff and colleagues at the World Bank. I want to share with you, today, a few entries from my “India Travelogue.”
Upper Krishna was the very first stop on my first official visit to India. It was perhaps amongst the bleakest moments of my life. Yet still, in life’s strange ways, it was an auspicious beginning of my journey through India.
Our helicopter rises above the last ridge, and a god-forsaken place comes into view. The Western Ghats holds on its north-eastern face a vast highland plane of scorched red earth, spreading as far as eye can see. Any moisture coming in from the Indian Ocean must be blocked by these mountains. It is not yet mid-morning, but the sun has already sucked up from the earth every drop of morning dew. Through a thick curtain of waving heat, I can see horrible famines that routinely cursed this land, and chills run up and down my spine. From horizon to horizon, the air is full of ghosts – of peasants and their children who starved to death over centuries after centuries. I close my eyes, but can still hear their cries of hunger and suffering, seeing up through the earth below…
I am now sitting inside a white mosquito net hung over my bed, in the Almatti Guest House overlooking the Almatti dam. It is late, but the air conditioner is labouring hard against the lingering heat of the Upper Krishna night. I am trying to record what happened today, but methinks I am losing my mind. This must be what the heat does to one’s brain.
The village visits, I do remember. Oh, how can I forget!
Driving to the edge of the first village, there is nothing but scraggy red fields where only rocks seem to grow, giving shades to exhausted dogs.
We walk into the first house – one windowless room made of mud and those rocks that grow in the field, with a tiny yard in front shaded by sticks and dried grass overhead. Skinny women come out of the dark house dressed in sari, their edges threadbare and their once-vibrant colours faded from the sun. their wrinkled faces are like dried prunes, totally betraying their youth. Their smiles show missing teeth, but no life inside their souls. Mridula [my colleague] tries to stir them up with her bell of a voice and dancing giggles, but even she fails to light the fire in these women’s eyes. They have the eyes of a dead fish, long gone and decaying. The only remarkable thing about these women are their shouting voices – very loud and at a pitch that hurts my ears. With such voices they speak of nothing but “demands.” Give us this, and give us that… Their souls have no presence on earth, and their eyes hold no promise of stars. They say give us this, and give us that, to this total stranger from an outside world. How could such women inspire their kin to help themselves out of poverty?
Words spread rapidly through the village, and hordes of men – all much better fed and dressed than their women – have now gathered outside the house. Their human fence blocks any breeze there was flowing through the front yard, and the women fall suddenly silent covering all but their empty eyes. So, we decide to meet with all the village women in the village common that is also a temple ground. Sitting under the temple’s tree, one and the only tree in this village, I face more of the same – women with little sign of life in them, as if human souls and independent rational thinking has been bred out of their genes over centuries of survival. I have never in my life seen anything like it.
Still, they complain of their fear – of men drinking the resettlement money. What do you want to do with the money then? Build a house. A great big house! How would you live, if you spent all your money on such a house? Don’t you want to see the land you can buy with the money? No response. Only empty giggles…
I hear an early morning chorus of strange birds, just outside my window. The air conditioner has finally won over the black heat of this Upper Krishna night. But, sleep escapes me totally tonight. I keep thinking whether the whole of rural India is like what I saw today. Women repressed for centuries, living a sub-human existence, raising their sons to do the same, and their daughters to be the same, slowly squeezing any remaining soul out of the entire female genes. Cycle after cycle of curse and suffering, from which even death permits no escape.
A flash of azure-blue light shines a distant horizon of my mind’s ocean. That, must have been the ghosts I saw and heard today, as I flew into this god-forsaken place. Famine, not just of food, but of life! That, must be exactly what that young prince saw in north India, in the 6th century BC. That, must be what drove Prince Siddhartha Gautama to leave his beloved family and his palace, in search of truth – the four noble truths, and eight noble paths, to Nirvana…
Sunday, May 17
Up before sunrise again, for I must fly almost the entire length of India today into a mountain town called Pithoragarh, near where the state of Uttar Pradesh meets Tibet to the north and Nepal to the east. Mayal Village is my destination – 45km north of Pithoragarh on a hairpin Pithoragarh-Thal road that is pasted o the side of lower Himalayan mountains, and another 5km across a gorge on foot.
Waiting at the mouth of Mayal Village to receive me is Mr. Sher Singh Bhandari, Chairman of Village & Water Sanitation Committee, who quickly steps into the background having introduced to me his Treasurer, Ms. Janki Karki. Janki and her troop – the other office holders, all of whom women – seem to be the real powerhouse around here. Their iron determination and golden pride make these delicate women stand erect, like sari-clad Greek goddesses, ten-feet tall. They take me through a village path winding uphill, threading through Mayal’s neat mud-stone houses. One whole side of a particular two-storied house is whitewashed as a canvas on which to report their projects’ financial accounts, meticulously written up in black and red letters. For transparency, beams Janki with those unmistakable stars of a born leader in her eyes.
The village has installed a water supply system, sourcing at the Khor spring near the mountain peak high above Mayal, with a filtering mechanism, a reservoir, and a distribution network throughout the village, all by gravity.
It was only in July 1996 when the villagers began their planning work. They brought feasibility analyses to closure in March 1997, made up-front cash contribution and began implementation in October, finished procurement of materials in November, and completed construction not long ago. All for a grand total of Rs.681,944, of which the community contributed Rs.175,990. I look up to the mountain peak and the Khor spring I cannot see, marvel at their courage and determination, and wonder how much longer the same work would have taken, how much more it would have cost, and ho much the “take” by the corrupt might have been, had the villagers not been so involved.
The tent is already full of more Mayal women beaming with joy, surrounded on the edge by their menfolk looking rather overwhelmed. The instant my eyes meet their smiling ones – the ladies’ that is – I partake their sense of relief for the hard work well done and of happy anticipation for the time saved, now that they need not spend hours fetching water.
Sipping their sweet tea and home-made curd, I listen to Janki describe the arduous process of social mobilization they lived through, busbanded by the patient staff of Himalayan Study Centre. It took them months to believe in these NGO workers that they are real, and months more to convince their men that they (the women, that is) are real, before they believed in their own powers within.
Now that we believe in ourselves, the sky is the limit, says Janki. That bridge below you crossed, sister, we built it ourselves. The government said they would, but never did. Our men said it was impossible. But, we list too many children wading across the rapids on the way to school. So, we worked with a young engineer from the Himalayan Study Centre, with local rocks and bamboo, and with our own bare hands…
Our men were humbled, and respect us ever since. We take Sundays off now. Household chores? The men do them on Sundays…
Rushing back to the airport to beat the departure deadline of the sunset, the leader of the Himalayan Study Centre asks what I thought of Mayal. True empowerment! I saw it in these women’s open faces and shining eyes! Amazed, I watch an incredible expression of joy spread slowly across his serene face. That, is the motto of our Himalayan Study Centre – villagers’ face to mirror the Himalayas, its strength and self-assured presence. You understood us well…
Thus began my first journey through India. It had an end just as auspicious as its beginning, for that journey ended right here in Anand. Under the tutelage of Dr. Kurien, his management team, and the proud owner-farmers of the Anand co-operative, my lessons were complete. The history of Anand, its present might, and its dreams for the future helped me to comprehend, as deeply as I knew how then, what India could be – India, without poverty, under visionary leaders of courage who know the power of empowerment to discover the strength in unity, of diversity.
* * *
the language may be different, and so may be scale of successes. But the story of empowerment remains the same – from village to village, and from slum to slum too, all over India and beyond its borders. Thanks to the people of these communities, whom I revere as my teachers, I now think about development very differently. I think of it as a learning process, a process of transformation of a society – of the people, by the people, for the people.
§ I think of development process as an ever-lasting learning process of change, where people of a society choose to gain more control over their own destiny, enrich lives by widening their horizons, reduce afflictions and shackles of poverty, and improve the very vitality of life.
§ I think of development strategy as first and foremost that of a society – a living and dynamic strategic “framework” that is based on a long-term vision of the society’s own; that identifies structural barriers for its transformation; that selects those who can serve as catalysts for change; and that is founded on a participatory process among the people in creating, revising, adapting and realizing that vision.
§ And I think of an outsiders’ role, be they governments, NGOs or international agencies like the World Bank, as a facilitator for the process, invited by the people to serve as a catalyst for change as “honest brokers.”
Thinking in this way, success of development programmes cannot be judged by high rates of return alone. It must be judged by whether it kicks off a process of sustained social learning, spreading to a broader society over time. It must be judged by whether the acorn of institution building has been firmly planted, and is beginning to grow as a strong oak tree. It must by definition be an open-ended process that cannot possibly be designed 100% up front.
Such s a “poverty reduction” outcome, to which I can hold myself accountable as a professional and a banker. It is not an outcome beyond my lifetime’s reach. There is no longer that “little voice” anywhere in my subconscious, calling me a liar.
* * *
Poverty has always been the focus of public discourse in India, and able and committed planners and thinkers have built this concern into sound, path-breaking strategies. Their words have not been empty. India has contributed some of the most innovative and pioneering work to empower her poor and marginalized people, especially in the rural sector.
Why, then, is India still home to a disproportionately large number of poor people, of illiterate people, of malnourished children, of people afflicted with HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria, and other diseases? Why are there so many villages like those I saw in Upper Krishna, and so few Mayals and even fewer Anands?
I have been truly humbled by the iron will, unbroken courage and fighting spirit of the people of Gujarat to overcome the calamity of the recent earthquake. I have also been inspired by how all sections of the Indian society – ordinary women and men, NGOs, community organizations, private corporations, and of course the governments – have stepped forward to join forces with the affected people to regain hope and rebuild their lives. Yet, I cannot help but ask one question: Why is it that citizens of Gujarat were so vulnerable that too many perished, and even more list their homes and livelihoods? Who among us was not struck by the contrast to the earthquake that violently shook Seattle a month later, where not a single person died?
Following Gandhiji’s footsteps with all humility, “I know no diplomacy save that of the truth.” The truth, then, is this: There is a vast gap in India between intention and action, between strategy and implementation, and between policy and outcome. But, why?
There are many factors we know about, and many we do not know about, that work to achieve growth with equity. I hold a view that quality of leadership – in governments and throughout civil society – is one such factor that is of enormous import.
Reducing poverty is about sharing tangible and intangible fruits of economic growth more equitably. Strategy, policies and actions to achieve them are about changes with winners and losers. This fact challenges people with vested interests in the status quo. It also challenges those with radically different political views about the course or process of change.
Visionary leaders inspire and raise the sight of the people above their lowest common denominator. They help their people see beyond the immediate personal losses to greater opportunities for all. Rapid economic growth can be achieved without such leaders. Economic history of the world is full of such cases. But, quality growth with equity, redistributing income and wealth as nations grow cannot be achieved without their good governance.
That quality growth, moreover, is not just about sharing the fruits of growth more equally. It is also about helping poor or socially marginalized people help themselves. Citizens need to feel satisfied that they are consulted truly and have participated actively in the process of change. They need to feel convinced that they can honour a consensus, and share deeply in a common vision, strategy and actions. Such a participatory process of change is the only way to secure a sustainable development path.
But, in consulting deeply – especially with those women, as well as men, who are marginalized from the mainstream of the society or economy – it is important to listen to their silence. As Helaluddin Rumi (the 13th century poet-saint who hailed from Balkh, Afghanisatan) reminds us,
There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.
It means knowing their fears, and making a secure space for their empowerment and voice. It means valuing differences as society’s wealth, and finding unity in diversity of views and perspectives whatever the roots – be they culture, language, race, religion, caste, gender or simply age. It means listening to and learning from the wisdom of these people, with genuine respect.
Such a process demands humility and tolerance in every citizen of the land. It is especially so, in leaders and the elite who are in the position to shepherd the change process. In the cultural context of many with power and privilege, these qualities do not visit naturally nor do they always stay for good. Yet, no development process will ever be truly participatory and sustainable without the humble and tolerant leadership.
Fifty-four years ago, India set an example to the world when she chose democracy as the vehicle to deliver wellbeing to her people. Gandhiji saw in India this soul of democracy, and helped to give it life. He said:
My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest should have the same opportunity as the strongest… Democracy is an impossible thing until the power is shared by all.
I dare say, India without poverty will remain a mere dream without the humble and tolerant leadership throughout the nation, from Delhi, to her state capitals, to cities, to towns, to slums, to “her seven hundred thousand villages” and most likely more – leaders of courage, who draw strength from humility, find peace in tolerance, and gain true power by giving it away.
* * * *
Gandhiji inspired the people of India, and of our world, with the potent concept of Swaraj, the self-rule. I will leave you with this call of his:
The Swaraj of my dream, is the poor man’s Swaraj.
You, are the chosen few leaders who will spread the beacon of this great institution, the Institute of Rural Management, and the spirit of Anand throughout the Nation India. Yours will no doubt be a brilliant career. But, you will achieve nothing, absolutely nothing, for yourself, your children and your beloved India, unless the Swaraj of your dream is also the poor people’s Swaraj – of all the poor women and men of the Nation India.
I wish you well – the humble and tolerant leaders of India’s tomorrow. Namaste, from the bottom of my heart.
