We human beings love superheroes. Superman, Spiderman, Batman.. all of them. We just love the concept of sitting at the sidelines while someone else does the job for us. That's why Obama wins the plot, that's how all politicians win their elections.
In modern complex system of work and production, talented people sit through gruelling endless interviews in order to become managers/bosses/leaders of unknown faces that they've never encountered in life. Nobody ever says in a interview "I don't like being ruled over by other individuals, I'd rather rule them all". Why do all politicians answer in similar fashion in all their interviews: "I want to lead you because I want to change your lives". Why do never answer -- "I want to lead you because I want to rule you people.. I want to have power over you all".
It's deemed impolite, too rude to say so. But that's what all governments do to their people.
Golden Quadrilateral is one of the major infrastructural development schemes in India. Its main aim was to connect the four metros across India through four, and wherever possible six lane roads. However, as usual, it ran into problems of land acquisition and sometimes its benefits not matching with those of some vested local political interests. Now, there will always be opposing viewpoints on issue of 'developments vs people' but one thing both sides will agree is that development is necessary and if managed properly, will provide rich dividends to the people in the long run.
Continuing from my last post on stories on India, I'll narrate an incident that happened with a friend of my younger brother. One arm of Golden Quadrilateral(GQ) project runs through Jabalpur(my home town) also. My brother's friend -- Gulaab, owns some land property in Mandla area which is used for farming by his family.
Now, this is how infrastructure projects operate in India. The project is put for auction to private contractors who put their respective bids. In an ideal scenario, the contractor with the best bid and best experience in handling similar kind of project must be given preference. However, as it actually happens, the contractor which promises the highest bribe(lobbying fees) to influential politicians in that area get the contract. And thereafter, the winning contractor has a free hand as far as treatment to labourers, quality of material purchased, etc. is concerned.
And hence, when this winner contractor company came to Mandla, it told all the farmers of the area that Government needs their soil for increasing the height of the road in that area and make it a four-lane highway. Now, since most of farmers are gullible, they accepted the promise of the government officials/private contractors that they'd be given highest quality of 'black soil' for their lands in lieu of this rather *low* quality soil that was sustaining their families till now. However, my brother's friend, Gulaab, wasn't so innocent. When he came to know of this incident, he immediately asked my brother Ankit to search on internet for all the concerned land laws and government norms, took a printout of everything and then went to the engineer who was in charge of whole project.
Gulaab threatened the engineer with dire consequences of his action and told him of every rule of book that his company was violating. Fearing that the boy isn't a fool after all like the rest of villagers, the engineer ordered the workers to put Gulaab's soil back into his fields. Hence, the road got built, Gulaab got his farm soil in the same good condition as before, while the rest of villagers kept waiting in the hope that they'll get soil in their fields -- eventually losing their livelihood means, or selling their land to some land sharks and shifting to city in state of penury.
I asked my brother Ankit that why didn't Gulaab try to create a mass movement amongst his villagers -- the whole village would have benefited. Ankit said that Gulaab has become so cynical that he doesn't even care for his family, leave alone his village folk.
I'd like to leave aside the issue of personal ethics of Gulaab here, since he's just a 19-20 year old kid right now who never gets to buy a single bit of clothing for 6-8 months of year and just manages to scrape through his life till the farm crop gets harvested. Because it's during that time he gets his 6-8 pairs of clothes which he wears for the whole year till the next crop harvest since there is no other source of cash inflow in his house.
My question is: Does the development process has to be so devoid of empathy, that the people whom it's supposed to benefit get run over by the development itself in the process. Probably Gulaab didn't stand up for his own village because making the whole village stand up would have been tantamount to stopping the construction of road, which would be equivalent to creating a political movement. Gulaab didn't want to become a political figure, instead he wanted to concentrate on his engineering studies so as to become an earning member of his family. Why we should blame him?
We want Gulaab to become a superhero. We want Obama to become a superhero. Any guesses why one donned the mantle while other ignored it altogether? Because Superheroes are all about power, not about changing our world -- That task was and always will be done by common people through long and arduous political movements.
As a common jingle goes:
Faster than a speeding bullet,
More powerful than a locomotive,
Look! Up in the sky!
It's a bird!
It's a plane!
It's Superman.
May be it's time we stop looking at the sky and start looking in the mirror to search for our superheroes.
Recent Comments