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While there are some areas where rural India still has some catching up to do with its big city counterparts, there have been some distinctive signs of progress that can’t be dismissed. The White Revolution helped India position itself as the world’s largest producer of milk and the Green Revolution helped the country achieve food self-sufficiency--transforming India to a key exporter of food. These silent revolutions did much to change the fortunes of the farmers in the country not just economically, but also socially, culturally and economically these have helped bridge the chasm between rural and urban India. While statistics show only two in a hundred people in the rural areas own a telephone, it is kind of misleading as this may be true for the interior parts of the country, but smaller towns are increasingly singing a different tune. Denims, mobile phones, English-learning kiosks and beauty salons are all part of the urban legacy of rural India. Thanks to the mass penetration of satellite television, jean-clad youth on a steady diet of information, movies and music videos have aspirations to make it big…preferably in the big cities. But lack of opportunities in the small towns and villages have led to a flood of rural migration to the cities. As a result, infrastructure in the metros and the big cities, which were already reeling under the existing population load, is finding itself unable to deal with the constant influx. This catch-22 situation has led to rise in crime and infrastructural problems in these cities.
» Caste & Relogion
That brings us to an important aspect of the modern Indian society Maintaining social harmony in a country as diverse as India is a tough job by any means. Lets take a look at two of the most vexing issues—Casteism and Communalism.
Caste was a way to delegate social responsibilities in ancient India. With time it became an instrument of inequality in the society. The country’s constitutional founders recognized that caste played a distortive role, and decided on reservations as a corrective measure. But what was originally a contingent choice, is now witnessing skewed revision by politicians for electoral gains. The politics associated with reservations have certainly improved the representational aspects of some of our democratic institutions, but as far as social justice is concerned, only lip-service has been paid to it. Reservations have become a cure-all, even as the evidence of their efficacy is not too convincing and much disputed. Positive discrimination, perceived as a way to defuse social inequality and redistribute power to the have-nots, has failed to address the root cause of the inequality. While in parts of rural India it’s still abundantly practiced, in urban pockets reservations for the backward castes have led to a reverse discrimination against the traditional higher castes in government-aided educational institutions of higher learning and government jobs.
While the country prides itself on its constitutional legacy of having tackled casteism, it’s still grappling with a monster in the shape of communalism. While caste is a dominant divide in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, it’s the communal agenda that’s causing increasing rift in the country. Hostile neighbors, geo-politics and the British tactic of divide and rule have all combined to make contemporary India susceptible to communal agendas. The rise of local Muslim extremist groups tells a tale of links to global terror outfits and cross-border terrorism. Interestingly, this is by and large an urban phenomenon as communal strife is a rarity in the villages.
» Keeping The Faith
To understand communal tension in contemporary India, it’s important to understand the role of religion in India, which putting it simply is a complex one. This is a deeply religious, yet secular country. The nation’s greatness has always been that there’s total freedom to follow any religion. Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Sikhism, Jainism and Hinduism are practiced throughout the country. With an estimated 870 million followers in the world and sacred texts dating back thousand of years, Hinduism is followed by majority of the population in India. Although it has a pantheon of gods and goddesses, individual worshipers often pray to only one of them in practice (for example, Shaivites concentrate on Shiva and Vaishnavites worship Vishnu). Religion in India isn’t just about praying, it’s a way of life for most. The new-age Hindu, for example, is a regular guy who most probably takes out 15 minutes every morning to do his 'Puja' (to pray) or recite 'Shlokas'. He or she may also keep fasts and visit shrines like Vaishnodevi once every year. Apart from all this, he is most likely into astrology and numerology, not to mention with an inclination for tarot. Wondering how the party-hearty dude or dudette co-exists with the religious one? The thing is that the two don’t conflict with each other. |
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