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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Journeys |
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Journeys |
Searching for the Mahatma in Modi’s Gujarat
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| Whose state is it? |
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SHAILENDRA YASHWANT / © GREENPEACE |
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| Labourers on the shores at Alang salvaging materials from a container ship.
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Y FOREFATHERS, LIKE GANDHI'S, were Kathiawari banias who worked as administrators in the courts of the petty princes of Kathiawar. My grandfather, Prabhudas Kamdar, was of that generation of Indians who came of age in the late 19-teens, just in time for the publication of Gandhi’s manifesto, Hind Swaraj. As a youth, Bapuji, as we all called |
him, gobbled up each issue of Gandhi’s political tract, Young India, as it came off the press. Naturally, he joined Gandhi’s satyagraha movement. In 1920 or 21, he left home to live in Gandhi’s ashram in Ahmedabad on the banks of the Sabarmati river. Though he didn’t stay more than a year, those heady youthful days as a satyagrahi marked him for life.
In my family, devotion to gandhian principles died with my grandfather, a man who wore khadi dhoti to the last and inveighed passionately against such evils as Bollywood movies and Western technology. If this was the case in my family, I wondered what, if anything, remained of Gandhi and his life’s message in the land of his birth. Last December, I went to Gujarat to find out.
Gujarat owns Gandhi as no other part of India does. But under the leadership of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, Gujarat has moved farther away from Gandhi’s vision of swadeshi than any other part of the country. Narendra Modi has created a state where religious communities are scrupulously segregated, lower castes and other marginalised poor know their place, and big business dictates the terms of governance.
In Gujarat, there is no happy ‘multiculturalism’ of the sort vaunted by India’s image-makers to the world. Since the 2002 pogrom, Muslims of any class are restricted to well defined ghettoes. Even Hindu buildings are segregated according to vegetarians and non-vegetarians, upper castes and lower castes. The head of a well-known institution in Ahmedabad complained to me that one of his star employees, a Hindu woman married to a Muslim man, had to quit her job and leave the city because they could not, as a mixed couple, find anyone who would rent them a flat.
As for Gandhi’s vision of a nation of villages where smallscale farming satisfied local needs with the lightest possible effect on the environment, and empowered peasants dictated national governance from the village level up, Gujarat has become quite the contrary. In Modi’s ‘Vibrant Gujarat,’ natural and human resources have been placed entirely at the disposal of private capital, which has responded with gusto: Memorandums of Understanding valued at 14 billion dollars in 2003 shot to 243 billion in 2009.
In Vibrant Gujarat, farmers love genetically modified seeds; the urban middle class adores the new shopping malls. Unions were broken decades ago, and there are no requirements to hire local workers anyway. Set up shop in Gujarat, and you not only get land, electricity and water, you can have it all virtually tax-free. No wonder business leaders have hailed Gujarat as the model of all that India should aspire to be, a beacon of industrial-strength light guiding the way to a fat future. As Ratan Tata observed at the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors Summit 2007, if you’re in business, and “you’re not in Gujarat, you’re stupid.”
Unfortunately, the people of Gujarat are not doing as well as the captains of industry rushing to set up Special Economic Zones on Modi’s generous terms. The International Food Policy Research Institute’s 2008 Global Hunger Index ranked Gujarat lower than Haiti.
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HE NIGHTMARE VERSION of ‘ Vibrant Gujarat’ is surely Alang. Drive far enough south from Bhavnagar, and you come to a stretch of poisoned coast where the world’s ocean-going vessels come to die. Modi is proud of Alang, citing it with no irony as part of Gujarat’s growing range of transportation industries. |
I had imagined ships arrive at Alang as empty hulls. That is how they look in photographs, their rusting hulks lined up like beached whales along the shore. Not at all. Along the road to Alang, an endless stream of specialised markets stretches for several kilometres. The shops sell pumps, gas tanks, iron chains, pulleys and hooks. There are life jackets and ring buoys; life boats and stacks of crockery bearing the names of shipping lines. There are thousands of mattresses, pillows, bedsheets and blankets. One shop sells nothing but iron portals. Everything is sold by weight. People come from all over India to buy a few items or truckloads at rockbottom prices. After all, it’s all garbage as far as the folks who got rid of it are concerned, and it costs virtually nothing to extract this booty from the abandoned ships.
A doctor at Alang’s sole clinic, a grimy little place, told me the 25,000 workers come principally from Orissa, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkand. They don’t speak Gujarati, and many are illiterate. They shuffle with the air of the utterly exhausted, like the inmates in grainy old films of Nazi work camps. I watched six men struggle to lift a heavy iron ring. They inched forward, straining every muscle. Others hunched over sheets of steel, cutting out sections with torches. They wore sunglasses, not proper visors. These men are exposed daily, like the beach and the sea, to heavy metals, asbestos, PCBs, chromates and mercury.
A man in one of the examining rooms of the clinic was being treated for ‘foreign object in the eye.’ Another very young man came in and collapsed on the floor in front of the reception desk. A doctor looked at the man and said, “High fever. Malaria is endemic, you know.”
| REUTERS/AMIT DAVE |
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Narendra Modi and Ratan Tata pose for the cameras after finalising a deal which brought the Nano manufacturing plant to Gujarat. |
I was told workers are paid between 140 and 375 rupees per day, depending on their skill. They are provided no housing and sleep ten or more to huts slapped together from the ships’ detritus. There are no toilets. They squat on the beach to relieve themselves. Their waste is scavenged by packs of dogs. They wash themselves as they can with a bucket of water from one of the few pumps. After their shift, they gather, all dirt and sweat and stunned relief in slightly larger shacks to watch a movie or a cricket match. Some have an arm looped over the neck of another. Some just sit dazed, staring ahead. At regular intervals, punctuating the unrelenting grime with bright, fresh colour, are signs for Reliance Mobile. I was told the workers spend their earnings on calls home and country liquor.
Foreigners are not allowed inside the ship-breaking area, and photography and filming are strictly prohibited. Clearly, the human reality of Alang, as opposed to the profit reports about Alang, is not one Gujarat wishes the outside world to see. | | | |
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Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
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Sahil
27 February 2011
08:17 AM
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This article is merely based on author's perception, but there are no facts and statistics provided from reliable sources to back up lot of claims made here.
1) No facts or statistics provided to prove that Gujarati residential communities are divided based on the castes of the residents.
2) I personally know hindu woman married to muslim man, both of them have found place to rent and live. Author has quoted one example and making a case that this is true for entire Gujarat.
3) Except Tata's Nano plant, I don't know a single company which is operating virtually tax free as claimed in this article. In case of Tata, lot of ancillary industries have opened in the vicinity and paying full taxes. This has boost up entire economy of Sanand. I would like Ms. Kamdar to name at least 5 companies which are running tax free in Gujarat.
4) Author could have added more value to this article by giving statistics about the monetary value and volume of trade going on at Alang rather than merely saying that ships come empty, it is very vague and silly statement. She could have also provided statistics on health condition of people living in Alang area and compared it with that of people living in similar areas in other parts of the country.
As I explained above, this article is merely loaded with personal biases and opinions, but completely devoid of facts and statistics. This only reaffirms that anti Modi hatred runs so high that people don't hesitate to lie to prove their point.
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abhi
5 August 2010
12:15 AM
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the author is absolutely right. this earth belongs not to us, but to our children. their right to equal, if not better, food, water, freedom and happiness should weigh heaviest on our minds. regarding solutions, the author has clearly indicated where a person of knowledge may find some. many more are scattered in our own experiences, and in those of the past.
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Benedicte
28 May 2010
07:27 PM
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Thank you for this clear sighted article on Gandhiji's legacy in modern India. No doubt the Mahatma would be horrified if he came back today in "Vibrant Gujarat" and in "Shining India".
As a paradox, after having spread their harmful consumerist vision all over the planet, Westerners are now just starting to rediscover and praise Gandhian concepts, such as his advocacy of a sober pattern of development and his visionary understanding of the impact of human activity on the biosphere.
Now the wisest voices on earth claim that even the "sustainable" version of capitalism is harmful and that the world needs a totally renewed economic system, based on self-reliance and human and environment-activities. The world still has much to learn from swaraj....
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Rohit
27 April 2010
06:15 AM
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Criticizing is easy. The author is mindless and the article is senseless. Corruption is the nature of the modern India and Gujarat is getting so much better with help of Modi. Being non-gujarati, I'm jealous and each and every state needs to learn from Modi on how to progress. Jay Hind!
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satyajit das
27 April 2010
05:01 AM
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Your article resounds with the very voices of India, that have been stifled, by the soulless mainstream media and the perversely democratic and ultra-nationalistic middle class India....not surprised that you would attract the mindless commentary above from the sycophants of Modi and his ilk...
Hope your courage and strength endures through every such challenge from these puppets and their masters.
Thanks..
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Satish
23 April 2010
07:39 PM
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If we accept you as right, more than 90 % reports on Gujarat's development are wrong. These Ambanis, Tata, Bharti chief, all are wrong and only Mallikaji is right? People are not as foolish as so called activists, journalists, secularists, dancers, film producers etc. think. People know whats right and whats wrong. One who could not even retain deposit in democratic election, I think should understand what is importance of his/her thoughts.
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ABC
15 April 2010
04:04 PM
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I would like to ask the author, what does she exactly want Gujarat to be like? I don't get the point here.
Criticizing is very easy, she should mention the ideal Gujarat, and how can we make one like that?
It would also be good, if she went to other areas of the state and went into more depth before writing an article with facts , rather than talking to a few people out of 50 million population.
I am neither for or against Gujarat and its present condition, but the article seems extremely biased.
A reply to this on the above email would be highly appreciated
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