Does It Matter How An Average Indian Lives?
By Romi Mahajan
07 July, 2015
Countercurrents.org
Does it matter how an average Indian lives? I pose this question seriously.
I know few people who’d answer this question in the negative; few would say “no, it does not matter how they live.” Some would answer in the affirmative, many in stentorian terms- one would hear words and phrases like “absolutely,” “of course,” and “clearly.” Some would indicate the affirmative by posing another question like “How could it not matter?”
I know few people who’d actually do anything, however, to actually find out how indeed an average Indian conducts her life, how she manages to eat, how she manages to take care of children, how she manages to maintain a sense of happiness, how she manages to learn, teach, and grow, how she manages to maintain any sense of equilibrium.
So given this, I ask again “does it matter?” We are taught that there should be a connection between what we expend our energy on and what matters to us. If we believe our kids’ education matters, we spend time learning about the school system, teaching kids, and helping them grow and learn. If we believe amassing money matters, we spend time working, saving, and investing. If we believe physical fitness matters, we spend time exercising, eating well, and moderating our worst tendencies.
How then do we reconcile our affirmative answer to the question with the paucity of effort we expend actually spending time with the average Indian, learning about her life, and helping her with her needs? Is this reconciliation simply a fundamental part of privilege or is there something deeper afoot? Can we ever hope to live responsibly if we continue to live with the dissonance between what we profess and what we do?
A good place to start the process of reconciliation, if we are interested that is, is freely-available books. Works like An Uncertain Glory by Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze, Everybody Loves a Good Drought by P. Sainath, or A Village Awaits Doomsday by Jaideep Hardikar are available, informative, and eye-opening. They will puncture the bubble in which we live and rectify the falsehoods under which many of us live and operate. If you don’t “trust” particular authors, you can look up statistics on your own. Take for instance a basic index of human health- calorie consumption. See where an average Indian stacks up and where she did ten years ago, twenty years ago, and thirty years ago. Perhaps go further- find freely available statistics on average rural incomes in India and compare those against average food prices. Then do some basic math to see what an average Indian can afford to eat. While this won’t give you a full picture it will set you on a good path, the path of knowledge.
It is then your choice if the knowledge liberates you from the shackles of misperception of engenders some other effect.
The second step might be to find an organization that will facilitate a trip into the Indian hinterland so you can see for yourself how cropland is faring, whether kids in villages actually have distended bellies and visible ribs, and whether the average villager appears healthy or unhealthy. Make your own judgments on these issues and allow them to inform your worldview. In other words, test your hypotheses by observing real people and how they live.
Most of us live in a world of self-imposed biases. Most of us form perceptions that suit our own sensibilities and allow us to maintain the belief that we are responsible and analytical, fair and balanced, sensible and humane. Few of us then endeavor to keep the fire of skepticism burning so that we question our own beliefs enough to attempt to validate or invalidate them.
In that sense, we all live in a sort of prison. And who indeed would not want to break out of prison?
So I ask again, “Does it matter how an average Indian lives?”
Romi Mahajan can be reached at [email protected]
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