01. Who is there to lead the nation?

02. Degrading the females

03. Indian training quality

Gandhi mentioned or maybe he wrote in his minor periodical about the idea of Panchayati Raj. That is every village or small groups of villages should go in for their own local government. If this is said about England, maybe there would some sense. This form of local self government was imposed on the nation around 1996. It was actually a burden for the exchequer. When a lot of developmental activities like public toilets on all roads and streets, good roads with ample footpaths, good English education, free buses for school children etc. were still not there, this was actually a simple impertinence.

However, it is an accepted fact that is mentioned in all corridors of the officialdom that the people are fools and they do not know anything about what is good for them. Actually, I have heard the government officials mention that the people of India are donkeys. So, they decide on what is good for the people. This is more or less prompted by a desire to associate their own name with grandiose public programme. They want their names mentioned on public hoardings.

Now, what is wrong with the Panchayati Raj (local self government in villages)? Well, for one thing there is actually no need for one more government. There is one at the Centre and one at the State level. Both are running at an inefficient pace. One more means, new licences, new government offices where the people would have to bow and pay bribes. Apart and above all this, the government decision-making was again moving to small time people. They are mentioned as persons who do not know anything. So, the government officials naturally come into the picture and guide them. This guiding again actually means that it is the officialdom which is running the show.

The panchayat arranges a lot of study classes and interaction programmes, wherein the government bosses come and act out their grandness. The panchayat leaders pay obeisance to them, and they in turn extract obeisance from the local people. It is an opportunity of a lifetime. Persons who do not have understanding of what is the real development that has to be imparted to the people come into positions of power. The tragedy can be better understood when I refer back to what the British rulers gave to a section of the lower castes in a small town in North Malabar. They gave them the opportunity to learn good quality English and thus to come above the social suppression in the local vernacular.

However, the new leaders in the Panchayats, would simply be using powerful pejoratives with the added power of their newfound executive powers. Actually what would happen would be a more intense despoiling of the local people. For, many of the panchayati leaders would be lower quality persons who come up due to the various reservations made for them. For example, many panchayat seats are reserved for the lower castes and many others for the womenfolk. Both of them are not of the material fit to bring in quality change in the society. At best they can induce crude leadership qualities which might be seen to be more effective in crushing the self-dignity of others.

For example, look at this content I have taken from the newsletter published by the Panchayati Raj Ministry of India. There is this quotation mentioned to be by Gandhi: “If we would see our dream of Panchayat Raj, i.e., true democracy realized, we would regard the humblest and lowest Indian as being equally the ruler of India with the tallest in the land.” It does not require much intelligence to understand that equality and the concept of people being the rulers cannot be brought in by instituting a local self government, when the communication system among the people are so demeaning to many and ennobling to others. The quote has no meaning, and the person who made the quotation is only playing a hoax. In fact, almost all of Gandhi’s chatter can be seen to be pure deceit and hoax, if examined in detail.

In a nation wherein the official class of people are way high above the common man in terms of monthly income, there can be no way the common man can communicate with them from a position of equal dignity. This is only one part of the problem. Among the people itself, there will be sharp level difference in the ability to be articulate. If a lower person tries to be articulate, it shall be either impertinence or his or her endeavour to become a leader.

People with no knowledge in English and bare information are given leadership over other people. It would be a terrible situation if a well-informed and well-read person were to live in these villages. These people would take it as an issue of personal competition.

Like in my own case, wherein a formally educated man, with bare English knowledge took up the honorary post of educator in the local Panchayat. He got the position because he was a communist party worker. One of his endeavours was to write a petition to the police to have Varuna and Ashwina forcibly taught Malayalam in the local schools. He found it a great crime that Varuna and Ashwina were not learning Malayalam. However, the police after a protracted period of investigation gave the report that the home education that Ashwina was getting was exemplary. Or at least that was what was mentioned in the court order regarding this case.

Who is there to lead the nation?

At the same time, who can be entrusted to take up the leadership of the people? It would be quite difficult to find anyone in India to be a leader who would think of improving the people. His or her first preoccupation would be to assure his or her own ‘respect’. Example: Chacha Nehru, Nehru Ji, Gandhi Ji, Indira Ji, Sonia Ji etc. That in words means that he or she would want the pejorative form of addressing and referring to be enforced on the maximum number of people. Moreover, they wouldn’t be able to make any changes to the feudal-language-created social structure, in which every individual is connected to others in a very creepy link of ‘respect’ and insult.

What ultimately comes out of this Panchayat Raj endeavour would be the power back to the bureaucrats who would act like chotta emperors over a huge number of Panchayat Raj leaders. Then the next issue would be to test their ability to create new laws and acts, by which they get more power over private individuals. Here again, one can see that the original aim of the local self-government to unshackle the citizen is going off-track.

Degrading the females

See one law these bureaucratic nuts have framed. In many interior places of India, female infanticide is an act that is getting more popularity. Now, what is the problem with having a female child? Well, the Indian feudal languages, which already have a bias against the weaker individual, have a slightly more bias against the females. This is generally in the husband-wife communication. In this, the wife is given the dirtier part of the communication code and the husband is assigned the ennobling part. This connects to so many other social and familial relationships and reduces the wife, the daughter, the daughter-in-law etc. to the level of a mere appendage.

The females in India who usually break out of this scheme of things are generally a tough type of females who may display a lessening of feminine qualities in behaviour, speech and gesture. This is because they need to escape the thraldom of the language codes by means of acting out in Indian macho behaviour. When Indian men act uncouth, it is seen as a natural pose. However, when females also act like that, it becomes an irksome pose. Not at all feminine. As to the males, most of them naturally haven’t had any exposure to English levels of refinement and can be quite crude to those they do not respect.

Now what is the way to bring about a stopping of female infanticide? Well, the issue has to be seen thus. If infanticide is allowed to continue, in the future there would be a huge number of males who cannot get a wife. This can lead to social unrest. At the other end, female infanticide will necessarily lead to a population implosion. (Which actually is what the nation is planning for!)

The best and enduring way to stop female infanticide is to improve the stature of the females. Indian languages cannot do that. However, if there is a huge financial acumen in certain families, the females therein wouldn’t feel the burden of the language codes. For, they will stand above it.

So, when the social power is given to low-informed, no-English-knowing leadership, the stature of the women folk will go down. However the social leaders want more powers over the females. They have come out with a law. That is, any woman who is pregnant in the villages has to report to the Anganwadi. Anganwadi is the place where totally uninformed class of people don the role of teachers. Actually, the fact is that most senior Indian officials are also of the servant class, but of a superior demeanour).

I remember the issue with regard to Ashwina. The local state minister gave a proclamation that children who did not attend schools would be forcefully taken to the Anganwadi. Within days, an un-educated remote-village female came to enquire about Ashwina. Her details were asked for. Ashwina at that young age also was an English trainer, and quite successful at that. As to this communist minister, I have been told that he has made money and that his children might be in the international arena.

Now coming back to the pregnant females, they would be continuously monitored and their movement tracked by a committee of people formed by the Panchayat. This was to assure that she did not go to any Medical Clinics for child-sex (gender) determination.

Now what is this rule making of the stature of the females? It is bringing it downright to the depth of the gutter. For, she would be continuously queried upon by the social bosses in crude lower grade pejorative words. How would that affect her personality? And what about the child she is bearing? The child’s personality would be soiled.

The nuts who made these rules do not know what they are doing. The way to stop female infanticide is by improving the stature of the females. If India has not been able to do that, well, it might be a good idea to ask for British rule again.

Instead of improving the stature of the females, they are again trying to add more woes for being a female.

Now, who ultimately garners all the royal statures? It is the Indian official class, who adorn themselves with royal robes. Actually the idea of local self-government had been explained as removing an immensity of officials from administrative decision making. However, in reality, they again garner force, by positioning persons who have no idea as to what is the essential development that has to be brought in, as local leaders.

Indian training quality

It is here that one need to think about what are the essential elements of development that has to come in. The problem here is that when low quality people take the leadership of imparting quality, by disseminating it from their own personal demeanour, then what arrives is a lowering of quality.

It is here a special feature of Indian training programmes need to be mentioned. Everyone, including trainers, teachers, businessmen, social reformers, wants persons who are of lesser capacity than them to be with them. What then turns out is a sort of tall person on the top, then a lesser height person below, and below him a still smaller person and thus. It is a system of stunting. Intellectually-stunted persons fill the space. When the taller persons leave the arena, then what remains is a series of dwarfs of progressively lesser heights dominating the scene. This has happened to India since the so-called independence. These intellectual dwarfs stand tall over others in the nation.

Actually, the original British training was the exact opposite. Individuals simply expand in their capacities. However, it is true that the essential quality of Indians arriving with an ambivalent mood could have been a point of consternation. For, the Indians were not fully in English, but did oscillate between English and their native feudal language.

Now, in the new schemes of things as exemplified by the Panchayati Raj, senior officials dominate the top positions. Below them come a series of intellectual dwarfs. The very fact that these leaders do not know English, have no idea of what an English classic is, do have no idea about the British contributions to India, and what is essentially the inputs of quality improvement, make these suddenly sprung-up leaders more or less a waste.

The problem with explaining the dwarfing concept in English is that the picture that comes into the mind would like this image:

However, the fact remains that the people who speak feudal languages look different and the top man should be replaced with someone like:

The persons at the bottom, who are dwarfed looks like this:

They are by no means of kindly disposition towards those whom they can dwarf. When they come on top, they are equally suppressive and snubbing to those below.