What do we mean when we say that India lives in villages? If we mean our ancient heritage, rigid caste system, slow and uneventful life away from the madding crowd, yes. If it is superstition, ignorance, illiteracy, poverty, yes too; India lives in villages. If it is about scientific and technological innovations, industrial growth and comfortable living, no, India does not live in villages. Ask any doctor to go and set up their practice in a rural setting. Even if you offer him attractive incentives and generous compensation, he will say no. Tell a teacher to go and work in a village school. He will tell you a hundred excuses, all seemingly real and reasonable, even a student on vacation feels like a square peg in a round hole. He longs to get out at the least real and reasonable opportunity.
Even a student on vacation feels like a square peg in a round hole. He longs to get out at the slightest opportunity that occurs to him. But we discussed loudly and at length about the serene atmosphere, scenic beauty, and quiet life uncontaminated by modern, materialistic civilization that the countryside presents. We are all praise for the hospitable nature, love and kindness, simplicity and sincerity of the villager. We cherish your God-fearing nature, your qualities that have sustained you through the centuries and preserved our glorious cultural heritage. We know that he lives without a grumble on the brink of semi-famine but that he works tirelessly to satisfy the hunger of others. If all this is not mere talk, why have we not done something to improve his lot and wipe away his tears?
Wherever he is, in a city or a village, the essential needs of man are the same. Hunger and thirst, fear and hope, pain and pleasure are universal, even animals share these feelings.
The first necessity after the meal is, wherever you are, a roof over your head, a roof that can protect you from the sun and the rain. We do not know how the landless poor, the jobless artisans, the potters, the shoemakers and the weavers, live in their thatched mud houses which will collapse year after year when the rains or floods come. His counterpart in the city does not live in better conditions, but at least during the days of incessant rains, he has somewhere safe to hide, a school or a university building. If you’re lucky, you might get an allowance from the slum clearance board. But there is no housing board or slum development plan to help the poor villager erect a solid roof over his head.
With Acharya Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan Movement came the Sramadan and Sakitan movements. But just like the mother, the children are also convalescing. No metal or tarred roads, no public lighting, no protected water supply, no drainage facilities. There is a Panchayat office, president, vice president and members too, in every village; but there is no one who thinks about the needs of the village community.
Each village needs a primary school, a health center and a counseling cell where the villager can get the information he needs regarding his farm work or off-season vocational facilities. A family planning center, a community hall, a library with the collection of essential books, annexed with a reading room, and a recreation center equipped with radio and TV are the minimum facilities that every town should have.
It is true that that is what governments are trying to do with their Block – Development schemes. Due to the bureaucracy involved, the poor farmer with few properties cannot reap much benefit. In the cooperative credit society it is not the ignorant tenant but the wealthy owner who would be enjoying the credit facilities. He would have put the thumb print on him without really knowing why he did it. It is his poverty and ignorance that are to blame, poverty that makes him unduly grateful to someone else, and ignorance that keeps him forever in the dark.
Poverty and ignorance are the twin diseases from which the villager suffers. The main cause of both is illiteracy and therefore education is the main need of him. But he can never go out to seek education. Education should go to his door requesting his participation.
He needs constant and continuous work to support himself and his family throughout the year. In the absence of adequate irrigation facilities, agriculture is a seasonal occupation. During periods of scarcity, the small farmer and the landless laborer need some kind of vocation to keep them united in body and soul. Every time we think of unemployment, we immediately think of the educated urban. Graduates and postgraduates, doctors and highly qualified engineers. We also think of the skilled labor force, the mill worker, and the slum dweller in highly industrialized cities and municipalities. But rarely do we think of these millions of unskilled unemployed seeking opportunities to free them from despair. A government that has organized Toddy Growers’ Cooperatives can definitely think of some village-oriented cottage industries to keep these starving poor fully occupied. When a foreign administration, with a touch of benevolence, had thought of connecting Vijayawada and Madras with a long canal just to ward off famine from the famine afflicting millions of people in their province, a popularly elected democratic government should definitely think in restructuring these towns that cry. for drinking water, roads and minimum sanitary conditions.
There are certain areas that are prone to devastating floods that visit year after year with mathematical precision and wash away town after town. Millions of standing crops are destroyed, thousands of cattle are killed, and hundreds of tanks are broken. Nothing has been done so far to prevent this colossal loss of life and wealth. The Danes have built the dikes; the Chinese its huge wall. But instead of doing something permanent to assuage their pain, we rush food and medicine to the stranded sick and announce thousands of rupees on the spot to bereaved families. This is the drama that is enacted year after year. We sit in the galleries and watch the scenes.
There are many international organizations willing to offer assistance in kind and in cash, just by asking, if we just try to avoid such natural calamities. The immediate need is to build permanent structures to accommodate those affected by the flooding, in every town that may suffer.
In this world of opposites, beauty and ugliness, pain and pleasure, scarcity and opulence coexist. It does not mean that we should accept it as a way of life and remain complacent. Our effort must be to eliminate ugliness, pain and scarcity and make life deliverable. A country on the threshold of the industrial revolution has an obligation to reduce the gap between the two ways of life, between the ancient and primitive way and the luxurious modern style. Until then, until we deliver, India will surely cry in the villages.