Awkward Transition
Monday, January 15, 2007
A visit to Delhi's Connaught Place always gives you a somewhat close to real picture of India and its growing up from infancy to youth. The horse-shoe shaped market built in pre-independence India
with its Victorian Architecture, was the habit of the nobility. The white and the brown sahibs frequented the streets in horse drawn carriages and Austin cars, hung out in its distinctly British cafes and bars, and ocaassionally caught up with a movie in Regal theatre. Independence saw the place transform gradually into the city's business district with premium stores, and company offices; and street food, pavement based apparel shops, road side vendors mushroomed.
With the late eighties came the rapid decline, as the architectural masterpieces were defaced with betel and tobacco stains and majestic while pillars where covered with political posters. Thousands of lepers and beggars turned the pedestrian subways into their home, and good old CP became
synonymous with pirated music and sleazy theatres. The erstwhile boulevards turned into permanent traffic snarls, and the heart of Delhi felt, and smelt, like a giant public urinal. In those pessimistic
years, we all concurred that it was the end of CP as we knew it, and middle class delhi abandoned the place.
Happily, that was not to be. Visit the place now and you get a feel of the new India. A resurgent, confident, never say die and increasingly wealthy India. A walk down the inner circle might for a few moments, make you feel you could be anywhere else in the world, and everything would look the
same. From the re-done central park, the giant search lights linning the inner circle, the brightly lit stores and restaurants, the bookstores and the pubs. CP is now the heart of the underground
railway, as glass elevators and escalators take you a hundred feet down below into what is to me, an architectural and political miracle: a giant state-of-the-art station with 3 intersecting underground routes at different elevations. The rich and the famous are back, and so is the student, the connoiseur, the foodie and the yuppie. The diapidated theatres have morphed into gleaming multiplexes. You see swanky retail outlets and all the symbols of capitalism Americana (not
that I would call that a sign of progress, but that's a different story). The traffic's still around, but the cars look a lot better.
Now if only there were no flip side. The place still boasts perhaps the largest congregation of people who beg for a living, larger than ever number of hoodlums roam the streets and parks and despite the surprisingly clean public toilets, most people still prefer the roadside wall for answering nature's call.
Most would agree, that if any real development and progress happened in India, it was only in the last decade and a half. Most would also concur that it is this period that has seen exponential increases in urban slums, crime, and rural to urban migrations overall. If you are a resident of Delhi,
today, you probably wonder when was the last time you stopped at a traffic intersection without being approached by a little girl or a young mother clutching an infant, and the occassional amputee knocking at your car window with his half-arm. During the communism inspired times, which went right upto the end-eighties, the often repeated media coinages, 'India' and 'Bharat' were synonymous with same country (both were poor, inefficient, stuck in the well) ; today their stark differences bring them in confrontation with each other.
While socialism/communism despite their stated goals eventually end up spreading poverty equally, the opposite isn't true for a capalistic society. While that cannot be simplistically explained off in terms of a juicy political soundbyte like 'the rich getting richer and poor geting poorer', it is a given that some sections will benefit from economic development before the others. There will never, ever, be an equitable distribution of wealth. From a 'have-not's perspective, this would, justifiably, not sound a fair deal. More importantly there would be pockets of development which the poor gravitate towards. For a criminal or a potential criminal, it also opens new vistas as the spoils get bigger and there are a far greater number of potential victims than ever. The sense of an unfair treatment, could, to a person of meagre social, intellectual, economic and educational development, can potentially justify any crime however heinous it may be. That feeling of an unfair world can motivate many to gate crash into the party, who would want a stake in the consumption of wealth, without having any stake in its creation. The recent clamour for reservations in the private sector, in the elite educational institutions based on caste and religion is a case in point.
India stands at defining moment in its history. Perhaps closer than ever to the real independence that the freedom movement envisaged but could not deliver to entirity. There are many challenges, and depending on how simplistically you wish to look at it, you can call it akin to a Rajiv Chowk or akin to a Connaught Circus, and many of the roads lead to disaster. Our problems are big, but solutions to them exist, and they can be solved. Do we have to will to go forth? Hard to answer,
because somehow 'Bharat' seems to have dropped off the 'We'.
with its Victorian Architecture, was the habit of the nobility. The white and the brown sahibs frequented the streets in horse drawn carriages and Austin cars, hung out in its distinctly British cafes and bars, and ocaassionally caught up with a movie in Regal theatre. Independence saw the place transform gradually into the city's business district with premium stores, and company offices; and street food, pavement based apparel shops, road side vendors mushroomed.
With the late eighties came the rapid decline, as the architectural masterpieces were defaced with betel and tobacco stains and majestic while pillars where covered with political posters. Thousands of lepers and beggars turned the pedestrian subways into their home, and good old CP became
synonymous with pirated music and sleazy theatres. The erstwhile boulevards turned into permanent traffic snarls, and the heart of Delhi felt, and smelt, like a giant public urinal. In those pessimistic
years, we all concurred that it was the end of CP as we knew it, and middle class delhi abandoned the place.
Happily, that was not to be. Visit the place now and you get a feel of the new India. A resurgent, confident, never say die and increasingly wealthy India. A walk down the inner circle might for a few moments, make you feel you could be anywhere else in the world, and everything would look the
same. From the re-done central park, the giant search lights linning the inner circle, the brightly lit stores and restaurants, the bookstores and the pubs. CP is now the heart of the underground
railway, as glass elevators and escalators take you a hundred feet down below into what is to me, an architectural and political miracle: a giant state-of-the-art station with 3 intersecting underground routes at different elevations. The rich and the famous are back, and so is the student, the connoiseur, the foodie and the yuppie. The diapidated theatres have morphed into gleaming multiplexes. You see swanky retail outlets and all the symbols of capitalism Americana (not
that I would call that a sign of progress, but that's a different story). The traffic's still around, but the cars look a lot better.
Now if only there were no flip side. The place still boasts perhaps the largest congregation of people who beg for a living, larger than ever number of hoodlums roam the streets and parks and despite the surprisingly clean public toilets, most people still prefer the roadside wall for answering nature's call.
Most would agree, that if any real development and progress happened in India, it was only in the last decade and a half. Most would also concur that it is this period that has seen exponential increases in urban slums, crime, and rural to urban migrations overall. If you are a resident of Delhi,
today, you probably wonder when was the last time you stopped at a traffic intersection without being approached by a little girl or a young mother clutching an infant, and the occassional amputee knocking at your car window with his half-arm. During the communism inspired times, which went right upto the end-eighties, the often repeated media coinages, 'India' and 'Bharat' were synonymous with same country (both were poor, inefficient, stuck in the well) ; today their stark differences bring them in confrontation with each other.
While socialism/communism despite their stated goals eventually end up spreading poverty equally, the opposite isn't true for a capalistic society. While that cannot be simplistically explained off in terms of a juicy political soundbyte like 'the rich getting richer and poor geting poorer', it is a given that some sections will benefit from economic development before the others. There will never, ever, be an equitable distribution of wealth. From a 'have-not's perspective, this would, justifiably, not sound a fair deal. More importantly there would be pockets of development which the poor gravitate towards. For a criminal or a potential criminal, it also opens new vistas as the spoils get bigger and there are a far greater number of potential victims than ever. The sense of an unfair treatment, could, to a person of meagre social, intellectual, economic and educational development, can potentially justify any crime however heinous it may be. That feeling of an unfair world can motivate many to gate crash into the party, who would want a stake in the consumption of wealth, without having any stake in its creation. The recent clamour for reservations in the private sector, in the elite educational institutions based on caste and religion is a case in point.
India stands at defining moment in its history. Perhaps closer than ever to the real independence that the freedom movement envisaged but could not deliver to entirity. There are many challenges, and depending on how simplistically you wish to look at it, you can call it akin to a Rajiv Chowk or akin to a Connaught Circus, and many of the roads lead to disaster. Our problems are big, but solutions to them exist, and they can be solved. Do we have to will to go forth? Hard to answer,
because somehow 'Bharat' seems to have dropped off the 'We'.
posted by Angshuman @ 1:51 PM,
2 Comments:
-
At 9:35 AM,
DreamCatcher said...
-
I think the debate should never be about rich getting richer or the poor getting poorer. Its should be about offered opportunities (as opposed to given) to get rich, grow to all.
Earlier, the opportunities were either for supertalented (and lucky) or those with a talent for manipulation. Now they are open to so many more of those with talent. Though we still have a very long way to go before they are available to all. -
At 9:40 AM,
Archana Bahuguna said...
-
Great blog. And pretty thoughtful. Have been pondering on similar lines. Because its pretty common to hear "Hey, Delhi has changed so much for the better" or "India is booming", these days... but if you really look at it objectively, probably the progress is only in a very small societal as well as economical cross section of the huge Indian populace. Its sad that most of India is still pretty much the same.
