When the Weakest and Poorest Empower the Nation

[Guest guest]

Here's a great guest editorial that appeared in today's Indian

Express. Its author is Naveen Patnaik, Chief Minister of Orissa (an

eastern, Shakta-oriented Indian state).

 

Friday, November 04, 2005

 

WHEN THE WEAKEST AND POOREST EMPOWER THE NATION

 

India prides herself on being the world's largest democracy.

Democracy means the rule of the free. But too many Indians are not

yet free. Poverty and illiteracy have kept too many Indians

enslaved, exploited by the powerful and the corrupt. When not

exploited, they are often patronized. We even use a constitutional

term, originally coined to ensure economic and social equality, by

calling a huge mass of our population 'backward' to justify our

condescension. But do we really know what we mean when we use the

word 'backward' so freely?

 

In my State, considered among the poorest in India, a quarter of the

population are from the tribal communities, considered the most

backward and certainly the most exploited in Indian society. Yet

only last month two Oriya tribal girls represented the whole of

India at an international forum on children's development in

Beijing.

 

The twelve-year-old daughter of a daily wage earner and the ten-year-

old daughter of a village school teacher, both are child reporters

of a local monthly journal. In Beijing, they presented papers

covering gender and children's issues, tribal culture and the

economic development in their areas. "I want to be a journalist. I

really enjoy my work as a reporter under the programme. It also

increases my sense of responsibility towards my community," the

younger girl told a press conference.

 

Recently, I met a group of tribal students of Malkangiri, one of

India's most deprived areas. They belong to the Bonda tribe, a tribe

not only considered backward, but also primitive. They were the

first children from their community to have completed high school.

Each student shared the same ambition, to return to Malkangiri as a

teacher and empower other tribal children.

 

Then we have the tenacious Tulsi Munda, a tribal woman who has

released hundreds of tribal children from a future as exploited

daily labourers by setting up a school in Orissa's mining area. As a

girl, Tulsi Munda had herself worked in these mines as a labourer.

It is an interesting fact that when tribal children go to their

schools, they are out-performing many children attending general

schools in the rest of the state. If only the others could be as

forward as such 'backwards'.

 

Padmashree Tulsi Munda pioneered what is today in Orissa a

phenomenon, the growing strength of women. As an administration, we

thought it would be a slow and painful process to get our poor and

reticent women to join Self Help Groups. But Orissa's women proved

us wrong. They seized the opportunity and in only five years and

with an initial investment from the Government of only ten million

rupees, Orissa has Self Help Groups of more than two million women,

who have banked over one billion rupees.

 

The women of these groups have gone from breaking stones by the

roadside to becoming masons and plumbers and electricians. They hold

their own assets and are passionate about educating their children.

They often head Pani Panchayats we have formed all over Orissa to

give villagers control over their own water resources. And free of

the spectre of destitution, they are changing the social fabric of

the state.

 

As one group told me, there is a big difference between a single

woman going with a grievance to a police station and a thousand

women going with her. These women are no longer afraid of the

powerful, whether they be policemen, bureaucrats, politicians or

even their in-laws. If only everyone were as fearless as these women

have become.

 

Among many different groups of people in Orissa, I have begun to see

evidence of what V S Naipaul calls a "million mutinies", the small

rebellions against entrenched injustice which can change society.

But I have also seen that unless the cancer of corruption is

eliminated, ordinary Indians will continue to fear the powerful.

 

Corruption corrodes every vital part of the machinery of justice-

economic, social and political. Where corruption is rampant,

citizens are reduced to election fodder, forced to watch the money

they pay to the State in taxes disappearing into the pockets of

those who are supposed to be their guardians. And social justice

becomes the law of the jungle in which only the fittest, or should I

say "the fattest", survive.

 

Above all, in governance, corruption generates and feeds

inefficiency so that no matter how much money is spent, children are

not taught, patients are not treated, jobs are not created. We have

tried to fight exploitation: from small but vital steps such as

banning school children from lining sun-scorched streets awaiting

the motorcade of a passing VIP to that vast and prolonged task of

bringing transparency and probity in governance, not even sparing

the privileged and the powerful.

 

I believe India will only become empowered when corruption ceases to

be tolerated, freeing those who are its greatest victims from

corruption's many forms of intimidation. And then, the people

themselves, be they be ever so 'backward', are more than capable of

empowering India.

 

SOURCE: The Indian Express

URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=81314