Of Excerpts and Ideologies

Excerpts from an Article by Jaideep Sahni, scriptwriter, "Chak De India" on India @ 60, taken from Rediff.com .
Full interview @ http://specials.rediff.com/india60/2007/sep/20slide.htm

'India C is not invited to the party'

In terms of India today, Jaideep is quick to make demarcations. "The way I see it there's an India A, India B and India C. India A is us, sitting here right now. We've come from pretty privileged backgrounds, as normal Indians go. We are the top 1% in terms of resources. We call ourselves upper middle-class, but are actually extremely high class as far as percentages go in India.

"India B is the India of Bunty Aur Babli, who sees us on cable and wants to be like that. Then there's India C, the tribals we used to watch dancing with Indira Gandhi when we were kids. You ask them who the prime minister is, they'll say Mahatma Gandhi. They are completely untouched by all this. So the market economy has touched India A, has touched India B, is on the rise in towns like Kanpur, etc. And India C is not invited to the party.

"They're the ones who are committing suicide," sighs the writer. "So this trickle-down, as they say, is happening. I'm aware it's happening. Whether it's happening fast enough, or in an equitable enough way, I don't think so. We don't make movies for them, we don't make any product for them. We don't even do government for them, some Naxalites are their government. There's a vacuum there, no?

"So they make their own movies. Bhojpuri movies are doing well, na? They have their own system of judiciary. The trickle-down is happening, opening up to the world is helping us and I'm all for it but there's an India which is shining, there's an India which is waiting to shine, and hungry for opportunities, which is Bunty Aur Babli, and there's an India which has no hopes in hell of ever shining, and we aren't even looking at them. That's not fair."

'We are basically decent people'

On the present generation's apathy towards all things rural, Jaideep is more hopeful than most. He considers us decent, unaware people too caught up in an economic boom to look at the rest of us. "We want to succeed and there are opportunities for us to succeed after a long time. We want to make the best of everything, and now. Which is great, I love it. Because we're in a hurry we don't have much time to look at India B or India C. But I'm confident that if our attention is drawn to it, we will. Because we are basically decent people."

"I think we can be more equitable," he says when asked to comment on the current Indian government, "which, in theory, the government seems to be preaching. I just don't know how much it is practising it. Perhaps it is. I love Dr Kalam's idea of urban infrastructure in rural areas. I love the work that micro-credit people are doing. I love the fact that the rural economy is growing in many areas."

"But I don't love the fact that most people are not aware of an experiment we had implemented, which I'd read in the Harvard Business Review 10 years back," he smiles at yet-another invaluable decade-old memory, digressing to grin and add the thought that's there's a movie in the story. "They went and put one telephone in a village in Karnataka. Just one telephone. Before the PCO boom started. They went after three years. The per-capita income of the village had gone up, multiple times. The middlemen were out of the vegetable market. The bank balances of an average villager had gone up many times. Some people from the village had gone abroad for the first time in their lives."

"Just access, and a telephone. What does it take? It takes us nothing to do it. The cable revolution and the telecom revolution have given this country the biggest fillip than what all of us imagine we have done. They are much bigger stories than all of us, and what any of us do."

'We need equality of opportunity'

I just feel that the government's got its theory right, but we're in a time of coalition governments, and coalition governments, by their very nature, don't allow many theories to be converted to practice, because there are too many conflicting agendas. As a computer engineer myself, I'm willing to celebrate a Wipro. I love a Wipro, an Infosys. I love all of it," he says in a relentless rush, finally pausing to collect himself.

"But I believe that if you put the same operating system in Hindi and put it in a village, there will be an equality of opportunity and they'll be as good as anybody else."

-- Berhael

Of Comparisons and Good

Alright, I've been away a while, really sorry. Anyways, the other side of what I've learned.

We're incredibly incredibly good at math. Yes, we are. I remember thinking before I went, that 3 years in college without number crunching as much as I used to in school has led to the considerable decay of my math skills. But once I got there, I realized, most people don't get math for squat! Simple problem (and I'm not blowing my own horn... I think) where I skipped a couple of steps, would bewilder them and I would frequently be asked to repeat what I explained. Having said that, the focus is more on interpreting the equations rather than solving the equations themselves which is fair enough. I mean ultimately, I would want to know what is the outcome of all that mumbo-jumbo. Moral : you need both kinds of people and don't compromise on math skills in school. It's a definite edge.

We've got much better communication skills compared to a larger and more populous neighbor of ours. Honestly, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how most people from that country got in without being able to say a sentence like "My name is xxxxxxx and I am xx years old", whereas we Indians need to slog it out so much. I'm not generalizing, there are exceptions to every rule, and this by no means reflects on how nice people they are, but its so difficult to even converse in basic English and you wonder how they survive in a place where English is the first language. The only explanations I could come up with is - a strong sense of community working to bring people, good presentation of their work even if in some cases it is ordinary.

There have been some debates about whether we're really learning enough in our college. Well I felt that we're learning quite a lot, it was so easy to explain to students over there about various circuits used and why/how/when they are used. We've got a good bunch of teachers here. The only disadvantage is, our learning is too theoretical and individual oriented. In other places, the course to lab ratio is nearly 1:1 and if you say something like "It's ok, I'll do it all by myself", you'll probably get a reply like "Like @*#(*@& you will!!!!"

We've got a good open society which is capable of absorbing different cultures. That is amazing because it means anyone from another country can come in and fit in pretty well. That gives us a definite advantage. We're a democracy too and that means freedom of speech, which means we can say most things we want (at least in hushed circles).

For the average middle class person, computers are slowly becoming a part of life. I can't talk for the whole of India but in the so-called "society" that I live in, its becoming unthinkable to be not able to communicate via email or order items online or end up chatting all night.

We're slowly changing from a country of savers to one of investors, which means more entrepreneurial ventures and original ideas. That is a big step in the advancement of any country. We're about 60 good years behind the developed countries and if we need to reduce that gap in 20 years, we'll need new inventions.

This and more. I firmly believe that more and more people need to go out of the country and see what is happening in the rest of the world. It's a good experience culturally and intellectually. I for one think it has given me a chance to see my country in a different perspective rather than just what the local news channels show. I've learned that many countries look at India as a strategic partner not because they want to, but because they can't afford not to. A company sees India as a growing market and hence a chance for potential growth for itself, this is what drives investment, not the feel-good factor. Many things like that. Having said that, we need to cash in on this opportunity while it lasts and focus on using this money for our own welfare. It's a brilliant opportunity and with people with both advanced language and technical skills, we really should go forward. And we will. Slowly.