Impressions of Alwar (cont.)

Cities in India are a study of contrasts - high rise buildings beside dilapidated slums; latest cars beside bullock carts; six-lane flyovers go hand in hand with pot-holed lanes; children begging at streetlights while flabby children of rich parents munch on a packet of Lays and a coke. All this and more exist side by side in the cities. Villages, it seemed to me, more a study in lack of contrasts. The mud houses and the concrete buildings of the schools and the panchayat had the same look of hopelessness. Although the mud houses were the more flimsy of the two (since it looked like they could get washed away with a one good downpour), at least they were well-kept and spotlessly clean. The concrete buildings, on the other hand, were dark, dingy and dusty. The children could barely read, if at all. The dry ration kept at the Anganwadi Centre as part of the Mid Day Meal Scheme tasted like saw dust (as Raghav, being 6 years old and not inhibited by any kind of political correctness, very aptly put it, "no taste"). There was one female teacher present at the first school with whom Priya and I spoke to after inspecting the loo (that kind of broke the ice)! She drew a pretty sad but I think accurate picture of the state of education there. According to her, the school had a high drop out rate, especially for girls. Social vices were rampant such as drinking. Children were pulled out of school for months during harvest season or if parents had to leave in search of employment. When or if they were re-enrolled they had to start from scratch. Boys were sometimes pulled out and sent to better schools or for higher education (the school was only till Class 8). No such luck for girls. College was a distant dream for them since even among the boys only a handful went to college. Therefore, the stranglehold of poverty and social attitudes seem to be the biggest hindrance to progress of any kind. I also think that for these people education (or the mechanical way it is imparted in our schools) does not hold value because it does not translate into jobs or a better way of living.

I came away with a feeling that things would not change for these people until something drastic was done. The place is a few hours (3 hours) from Delhi but seems like a completely different world and era. Except for the teacher, an Anganwadi worker, and an ANM we did not speak to any village woman. As we walked through their clusters of houses, they just stared at us with expressionless faces. Some of them would return a smile shyly if we smiled at them. It reminded me of our annual visit to the zoo as kids. The difference here was the animals did not show half as much curiosity as we did for each other even though we were all the same species!

Impressions

What sets rural India apart from urban India? Leaving aside all the usual cliches, what struck me most was the quiet hospitality that villagers show to any person from the city. We would never reciprocate such dignified courtesy that easily. While I've no romantic notion of an idyll Indian village a la Bollywood movies, our office trip to a couple of villages in Alwar reinforced this view.

The purpose of our visit was to get first hand knowledge of how various government schemes, routed through Anganwadis, health centres, schools and panchayats, work in reality. We, at PRS Legislative Research provide research assistance to MPs. Therefore, it is essential for us to have some first hand knowledge of the workings of government schemes and institutions.

We visited two schools, an Anganwadi centre, a panchayat and met, among other people, an Auxiliary Nurse Midwife, Primary Health Centre doctor and a number of Panchayat members and a couple of Sar Panches. While the government is pouring more money on the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) scheme than on other schemes (the Panchayat gets Rs 12 lakh for SSA and around Rs 10 lakh for all other projects), there was little evidence of improvement. The schools were in dilapidated condition with barely any facilities and the children were barely literate. The contrast with a private school in a city is so stark that one instinctively feels guilty. Guilty that we have so much opportunities while these children through an accident of birth is forced into a life of no opportunites and almost no hope of a better future. It is so frustrating to hear that while money is coming in, there is hardly any proper utilisation of such funds. Apparantly, some of the money was used to build a second room for the principal while the need was for classrooms. The almost painfully transparant hoax was the computers. They were displayed for our benefit still in their plastic covers and one of them not even connected to the CPU. The fact that they actually thought that we would be impressed by the computers spoke volumes about how the government ensured compliance from schools.

Amidst such depressing realities, certain funny incidents stand out. A kid crawling up and falling sound asleep on Madhukar's lap. Madhavan's expression when a 4-year-old started bawling while he was trying to put a tika on his forehead as part of the enrolment ceremony. Priya stating in her American accented Hindi that she's from U.P. Me struggling to avoid going inside a toilet that I had said I needed to use two minutes back (the problem was not that I actually needed to use it but I had said so only to check the availability and condition of the loo).

(To be continued)

NRI Week in Movies: Water and Namesake

Water and The Namesake are completely unrelated except for the fact that both directors are expat Indians. Water was directed by Deepa Mehta (of Fire and Earth fame). I don't know whether controversy dogs Mehta or Mehta dogs controversy -- both Fire and Water earned the ire of religious extremists in India. Fire, because of its theme of lesbian love in a middle class Indian family and Water, because of its depiction of widows. While I have no truck with the religious extremists of any kind, the story of Fire seemed tacky in the extreme. Except for the two lead female characters, everybody else seemed like parodies of perverts. The saving grace were Shabana and Nandita Das's acting skills.

With Water, it seems the other way round. It had a fairly strong storyline but the acting was abysmal. A piece of wood has more expression than the two main leads (Lisa Ray and John Abraham). However, the lack of acting skills of Ray and Abraham were made up by Sarala (who essayed the role of Chuhiya, the child widow) and Seema Biswas (as the dignified and motherly widow who acts as Chuhiya's protector). There is no denying that widows in India had a raw deal and kudos to Mehta for highlighting it (although she's definitely not the first or the best) but the quoting of random scriptures without context was jarring. Now the question of authnticity -- the reason for portraying Gandhi as a saviour or more aptly a catalyst of change on the issue of widows could be two fold -- either Mehta lacks knowledge of history or she used the most recognisable figure in the Western world when it comes to India. On this, I have only one thing to say -- at least she didn't try to show a white man riding to the rescue of the widows!!!

The Namesake was a different ballgame altogether. Its based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Jhumpa Lahiri and boasts of great actors such as Tabu and Irrfan Khan in the main roles. The movie is a leisurely exploration of a couple's relationship with each other as well as their children. Maybe because its somewhat autobiographical, it refreshingly does not have a cause or an agenda to promote. Therefore, there is no drama over the arranged marriage nor does it show the husband as a monster or a saint. They are just your garden variety couple who comes to the US to make a better life for themselves. There is no grand love story but a gentle exploration of the relationship as it grows and matures.

The book is more focussed on Gogol, the son and his trials and tribulations as a second generation Indian-American. The movie balances both relationships well. Kal Penn as Gogol is phenomenal. His transition from a bratty American teenager to a mature young man is extremely believable and strikes a chord. Who hasn't encountered such kids in their families?? However, the sister gets much less screen time. Its not so much the fault of the director as the book since it focusses mostly on Gogol. A very watchable movie as it depicts the lives of so many NRI Indians without stridency or sycophancy.