A nation on the move

SUDHANSHU RANADE

Abright young archaeologist, Mr. Y. S. Rawat, once did me the honour of showing me around a Harappan site in Gujarat; the only one I have ever seen. 4,500 years old; 200 or more generations ago. I was dazzled long before we actually reached the Rann of Kutch, when we passed through it on our way to Dholavira, on the Pakistan border, was a brilliant, blinding white of shimmering salt.

The visit left a deep impression on me. A huge neatly laid out township, broad paved roads, indoor plumbing, showers and toilets, all this Harappan citadels are famous for. All this is well known. But my friend showed me two other things which I shall remember to my dying day. First, a huge well near one of the main entrances to the fort. People must have stood there, drawing water from the well, perhaps in large leather pouches, of the Ganga Din, hither aao; Ganga Din, paani lao sort. So long did they stand, one after another, day after day, year after year, drawing up water, that their feet had left a deep imprint on the stone slab, where it had got worn down by the continuous friction of naked feet.

The second thing was a little stone pillar that someone had erected four thousand years ago, at a turning; so that bullock carts would brush against the corner stone, not against the walls of the house, as they turned. Here too my friend made history come alive.

Something like this seems to have happened to our knowledge of poverty in India. It too seems to have got frozen for all eternity. There are still some very sad things going on. Horror stories are to be had by the dozen. Little girls killed by their parents and quietly buried, or simply left by the wayside - dalit families forced to work and live with iron chains around their feet - it is amazing how few of us became free when the 'country' became free.

Still, it is sad when, feeling sad about such things, we forget to look at the bright side; forget to remember how so many people no longer have to suffer the same fate. Forget to look at things in proportion.

Things have improved a great deal over the past twenty years. People who cook and serve noon meals in schools, and car drivers, have to manage on thirty or fifty rupees a day. But people slogging in the sun often fetch seventy. Not everyone gets this, but the remarkable thing is that so many do. But, as I say, we have got a bit stuck. Poverty is studied over and over again. But to know if a poor man is poorer now, you have to compare not only his income but also the prices of the things he buys. The prices of his 'consumption basket'; so to speak. But people today consume very different things than they did in the mid fifties or early seventies, when these 'baskets' were frozen. So its a bit like comparing their income with the price of rice in China.

Isn't it time we moved on? Nations on the move, surely their standards too should move up with them?

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