CONNECTING DOTS OF 5-15
In our management of governance, there lies a blind spot which escapes attention despite being part of everyday rhetoric. It's the children born during any regime and more than that, children between 5-15 years of age.
In all societies, and more so in South Asia, Middle East, West Asia and South-East Asia, political masters manipulate their system and institution with a view to face and accommodate the pressure groups and a mass which is considered physically and mentally capable to take on the system at any given time. But what they miss out is those weak, meek and helpless looking children who despite being physically disorganized are more aware of things around than that of their preceding generations. They watch, they see, they learn and exchange freely shaping a more progressive world view. Their mind squirms to break free of many visible bondages and ills, but they remain quiet till they achieve the power of organizing themselves in to a homogeneous group of people who nurture similar ideas and thoughts. It starts then attacking the system in many shapes, forms and ways. Sometimes in the form of disorganized violent snap demonstrations, sometimes in form of organized crime including Terrorism, sometimes in swift mass mobilization like Tiananmen in China or, recently faced Jasmine revolution in Middle East against the long oppressively monotonous, status quoist regime, and sometimes as petty and local vandalism in schools, colleges, government offices and institutions.
It's this group of growing human resource which leads the bandwagon of enterprise, adventure and inventions. It goes unnoticed by the machinery of governance which keeps engrossed and over occupied with sustenance of status quo and its legitimacy.
It is this segment of human resource which is going to be the boon or bane for each of our federal states, and in turn, the nation India. Incidentally, focus of governance on this vital layer of society willy-nilly presupposes implementation of presented theory of 'Inclusive growth' also, as it necessitates a balanced concentration of government fund, planning and development on all the sectors of importance - e.g. Health of Women as mothers and children, elementary & Primary education, emphasis on learning through their respective mother languages, ensuring quality food to avoid malnutrition and thereby healthy development of body and mind, generating commensurate employment avenues, creating new paths of enterprise for future development of diversified vocation and so on.
We certainly cannot discard the continuing age - old baggage, a centripetal inward pull, which needs additional and extra dose of both funds and mid-course correction to repair the dent. India's ethnic diversity and its diverse culture-specific regional needs too may act as a big hindrance to our proposed strategy which highlights the role of the respective regional or state governments' modal of development suitable to their local cultural mores. Central government while regulating the whole exercise within the given planning parameters and national goals, may exert more pressure on capacity building of the states lagging behind rather than leaving them to be ruled by an anarchic set of local politics and vested interest. After all, the resources lost or wasted are loss to our nation as a whole.
This 27% of demographic layer remains susceptible to disease, malnutrition, child abuse, child labour, regional physical ailments like Arsenic in West Bengal and Malaria in many other states. It is this age group which is vulnerable to all physical and moral damages on the one hand, and all value education and formation of ethical strength of the society on the other. It is they who are the carriers of our inheritance, heritage and cultural mores; it is they who carry the pollens of progressive evolution and decide what will be the harvest of our future development and its quality vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
India, as a nation, has witnessed a very uneven path of development in last 3 decades where our successive Annual Plans have mostly remained utopian parameters achieving less and loosing what ought to be achieved. A favourable statistics does not really reflect a true picture of ground reality. Growth divorced from proliferating potential only breeds Oligarchic pockets of well being. Blaming our inherent handicaps of archaic rules and laws, unforeseen adversities and guising our inertia in self-pity only makes our plight more mock worthy.
In states like West Bengal, where there is a fresh change in hands of governance inheriting a sluggish and suffocated trail of development, it should sound like a caution bell. It is always at the beginning that we falter; and once we take a wrong path, it becomes irreversible as it involves reshaping millions of wronged aspirations and interests. Mid course correction is only possible if the course is right. It is now that both political and bureaucratic bodies and their heading individuals at local level have to be sensitized to grow responsible for the local needs.
Sample survey based development needs extremely homogeneous geography and social landscape. We are a nation of digital divide in terms of our ethnic needs, beliefs and aspirations. The need is to valorize standards and quality of development mainly to suit the needs of the '5-15'. In the state of creative slogans, we should perhaps have a unified slogan of development for West Bengal: 'kaal ker hero, paanch theke ponero!’
This strategy is based upon protecting and serving areas, and not persons. Whether it is health, education, agriculture, industry or law & order, our approach has grown person-centric. We protect people instead of protecting areas where they live; and that heavily depletes our resources and eats upon the focus and vitality of state's machinery. We got to create well equipped clime rather than chimes of isolated brilliance, which in any case would leave if it is not provided opportunities to suit their brilliance. As a result, with best of our strategy and effort, we are left with only people breeding mediocrity and chimerical legitimacy. I do not plan to quote examples as each of them have their own local culture and need to feed on. Following examples without assimilating them to our cultural mores further bleeds creativity and kills initiative.
We may learn from the ethos and ethics of Tagore who borrowed heavily from diverse sources of culture, collated the similarities well and adapted them so seamlessly that it became inventions, and have given Bengalis a sustainable repertoire of culture, which otherwise could have been decimated or become extinct by now. Copying others is good as long as we copy rightly and it inspires creation, not dogmatic copyrights. Tagore's vision too was inclined towards managing the children's mind to galvanize the broken pieces of awareness which in turn generates a much organized civil society, and not a society of broken identities.
Nothing could be a better tribute to his revered soul on his 150th birth Anniversary year than recognizing his vision with a matching model of development. We have created enough cosmetic castles around Tagore's music, art and literature; can't we get a little more practical by giving credence to his philosophy of society building? We have ran too many NGOs on the name of child development and felt like Samaritan by giving a pittance as alms; is it not the time ripe enough to actually adopt a development model which revolves around the 5-15? Is it not ironical that we have renamed our erstwhile jails as 'Correctional Homes' and yet call a home of destitute or an orphan child a 'Yateemkhana' (Orphanage)? Perhaps this brand continues to attract more pity and hence, generous dose of both governmental and private donations. Let us be parents of a brighter future rather than patron to an unending mirage and falsehood!.....
- Mrityunjay Kumar Singh -
(Mrityunjay Kumar Singh is an IPS officer of West Bengal cadre presently serving as Counsellor Culture of the Embassy of India, Jakarta, Indonesia since 2008. He may be contacted on mrityunjay.61@gmail.com)
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