I find your review of Butalia’s book very interesting, as it brings to light limits, which many reviewers out there have neglected to criticize. I am currently writing a paper for a class at Columbia University about the importance of considering primary sources, such as Butalia’s interviews, in one’s study and understanding of Partition.

I couldn’t agree more with your statement: “On the rare occasions when she does let them speak, we see flickers of what this book might have been.” This has led me to realize that Butalia is not so much uncovering history as much as she is choosing what she wants history to be and finding ways in which she can make history seem more meaningful to her, which leads her to go on and on about why she has written this book.

Anyway, I just wanted to know if you would agree with this realization of mine, that in a way, she is attempting to personalize the “history” she is presenting, and that all her reflections ultimately limit the impact of the actual interviews?

I bet they can contribute more to the country and ultimately their biggest market base.

Poverty is after all also an issue relevant to crime and punishment.
People live in such places because they can. There is no prosecution for this crime.
People live on the streets, beg for food, keep their children uneducated, do illegal construction, etc. because they can.

The scale of slums/jhupdis and illegal construction is mind-boggling mainly because there is no fear of punishment and never has been. A recent statistic from the Hindustan Times said that of the 13.8 million residents of Mumbai, 8+ million are slum dwellers.

Go to any Indian market or train station and you can see there is absolutely no regard for property rights. The encroachers encroach on public and private land constantly.

There is no future for these people not only because there is no institution that has showed them the ways of income/savings/investment/returns/planning/etc., but also because the poor are not interested in justice and there is no institution with the iron will needed to bring about respect of the law.

Of course the indicators are improving. There are more IAS officers from rural areas and poor families, and so also for MBAs and doctors. But still the gaps are enormous.

If I happen to be born into an upper middle class family in a city, my chances of a decent education, foreign assignments, and joining the IT industry are immeasurably higher than if I happen to be a poor, bright kid from a rural background.

What has happened though, is that within this already privileged circle, there is more opportunity as the economy expands and generates new kinds of jobs. Thus an MNC operating in India and running a design centre might have previously only hired IIT graduates for its senior technical positions and everyone else would be a technical grad from a top ranked school; today, they need graphic designers, PR people, HR people, as well as engineers, and there are lots more colleges educating all of these professions reasonably well. The pool of opportunity in this segment has both widened and deepened.

Regards
Natasha

I dare say that India’s current development paradigm hardly reflects American values. The quintessential American value is individualism, and that is certainly not a value that characterizes any of India’s development paradigms. We have always combined collectivism with democracy; India’s democracy is not the same as that of the United States, nor is it an offshoot of American ideas.

Secondly, I do not associate equality of opportunity with the United States at all. Anyone who has been to the United States knows how deeply embedded inequality is. The newly emerging development paradigm in India (characterized by the promoters of NREGA etc.) cares much more about equity than any development paradigm in the United States.

Finally, as for free enterprise, it appears to me that even though Indian companies are privately owned, they are also state-promoted. This is just as true for the United States as for India – the rich&mighty in every country manage to twist democratic processes for their profit. Perhaps in that sense India is just as bad as the United States.

There are a couple of things in it that I don’t think have been substantiated well enough, though, and some things you have not mentioned.

I live in Chennai and am therefore familiar with the examples you have provided. Over the last year, I have been volunteering with the Anasuya Foundation for Women and Children (www.anasuyafoundation.org). We have worked on documeting the employment and living conditions of bonded labourers and tribals in the Thiruvannamalai district of Tamil Nadu.

We met with a group of women quarry workers, who are not technically bonded, but who work 6-8 hours a day for Rs. 50 per day, with no occupational health and safety measures whatsoever. They also do agricultural work when available. However, the NREGA scheme that you mention has had little or no positive effect on them. The women, in fact, are paid far less than they are supposed to be. Also, the NREGA activities they described are both back breaking and largely pointless. I have been wondering ever since if it simply makes more sense to hand them Rs. 10,000 to invest or spend as they choose.

The second point I did not see in your article was access to markets. This same group of women has been trained on soap making and doll making. But these skills are useless as long as the women reside in the villages without access to the city’s markets. One of the few successful income generating activities is idli-making – something that the women do at home and trudge to local villages to sell. We have therefore been wondering what specific skills we can teach them that will break the brutal cycle they find themselves in.

I look forward to any further thoughts you may have on these points and on development in general.

Thank you for writing on these important and somewhat unglamorous subjects.

Natasha Oza