The real public servants

When Rangasamy Elango speaks of his village, his pride is unmistakable. Kuthambakkam isn't your ordinary sort of Indian village, one that is quickly imagined in the urban mind as a combination of deprivation and squalor. The long lines that characterize Chennai's perennial water shortages are nearly unimaginable here, only 40 km away -- the water table in this village isn't much deeper than a dozen feet away under your feet. Evidence of planning and purpose abounds -- paved roads, integrated housing for dalits and non-dalits, even a largely self-sustaining village economy. In panchayat president Elango's efforts and continuing dreams for this hamlet, the India of Gandhi, Vinoba and Hazare is real.

In many respects, this is how our society ought to be, unlike the mindless chaos that characterizes our larger cities and towns. "It is my hope", says Elango, "that Kuthambakkam will serve as a model, one whose social and economic achievements are so obvious that people will clamor to replicate it elsewhere in the nation too." In the many years since he abandoned his comfortable government-scientist position as a chemical engineer, Elango has overseen the growing prosperity and social stability of his little corner of the world. He speaks of his achievement now with a smile of satisfaction, and even a glint of amusement at the many hurdles he has passed along the way.

The gravity of past times isn't forgotten, though. "The people who traditionally controlled the dairy industry would have gladly killed me, and I did not want to die", he says almost impishly, reciting the story of Kuthambakkam's new dairy processing unit that has made much of the costs of transportation, pasteurization and packaging disappear while creating local jobs. An eminently sound point of view. "All reform is such in India. When you try to do good things for your community, the people who have always benefited from pillaging it don't approve. They can easily arrange to have you 'removed'. And all the legal rights in the world cannot protect you. You know how it is with our country -- the laws are perfectly sound but they are often used against the good people".

He should know. Even as his constituents re-elected him to a second panchayat term, the district administration and state authorities sought to remove him from office, on the technicality that he hadn't quite floated the right tenders to build storm drains in dalit neighborhoods. These same drains, mind you, that previous administrations had simply never built, even as they found the money and means to build others in the higher-caste areas.

Elango is a man of many convictions, one of which is an unyielding belief in dharma. "I believe I did the right thing", he says, "and I explained to the district administration that I had made no illegal income from the construction, had accomplished the task cheaper than it would have been had we obtained tenders, and the people who benefited from the effort are actually thankful. That truth must prevail." Much like Gandhi, he offered to suffer the consequences of his conduct, but insisted that his actions were just. The law, he said, must serve justice above all. The district authorities have since backed off, temporarily at least, unwilling to offend his numerous supporters.

Elango's experience is striking, yet sadly it reminds us of the ongoing travesty of democracy in India. The governments of India and her states often do not look kindly upon those people who have genuine regard for the nation. Sometimes from an overbearing paternalism, but more often from outright self-interest, they seek to thwart any independent effort to build a better society. While they busy themselves with buying mountains of armaments and offering self-congratulatory expositions at every opportunity, those who truly serve India must labor alone, depending only on the humanity and gratitude of their fellow-citizens, and the outrage they feel at the conduct of their "representatives" in government. Often at the mercy of vindictive bureaucrats and criminal politicians, they risk their very lives pursuing an idea of India that speaks to justice, integrity and above all, simple human decency.

The assaults on their enterprise aren't minor irritants to their work, instead they are deliberately intended to undermine all positive reform. Some three weeks ago, Dr Sandeep Pandey was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay award; several leading publications including rediff carried news reports of this development. The media unfortunately didn't do a very good job of profiling Sandeep's more recent work in anti-nuclear activism and in promoting people-to-people peace between India and Pakistan. Some of the interviews were so scant that one might be forgiven for thinking that all he really did was to build a few schools in some forgotten corner of UP. On the contrary. Sandeep's essential decency has simply found honest expression beyond compassion for the illiterate, and any nation perennially engaged in armed conflict should heed some of his criticism. A fuller accounting of anti-establishment thought, also, should be more common in our mainstream publications.

Instead, peace initiatives don't find much support amongst the many hawks in our federal government and their always-ready henchmen, or in the allegedly free press reporting on events around the nation.. Sections of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad demanded Sandeep Pandey's arrest and prosecution under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, POTA, labeling his views anti-nationalist! Only a complete idiot can fail to recognize in all of fifteen minutes that Pandey is only slightly more terrorizing than, say, a Trappist monk sworn to silent meditation in the woods of Siberia. The ongoing abuse of POTA by ruling governments to target their political adversaries is par for the course; that it is now sought to be used against peacemakers is disgraceful.

The campaign against Pandey reminds me of one other Magsaysay awardee with similar tales to tell. Rajendra Singh has attained the status of rain-god in the Rajasthan communities where his water-harvesting schemes have been developed and implemented. Even an otherwise callous administration -- which is even now blithely endorsing the privatization of water -- was forced to concede that he may have some knowledge of water management after all, and offered to discuss its National Water Policy with him. Predictably, however, their discussions were only a facade; even as he was presented with one version of the draft policy, the Union Cabinet was quietly considering a different one for actual legislation.

Rajendra Singh, meanwhile, has been charged with every conceivable form of fraud and criminal conduct, including some heinous offences, following the familiar pattern. A pioneering social servant who works decades to provide local communities with the barest of means to manage their resources independently is swiftly attacked personally, and his removal by every means is sought. The mildest-mannered individuals -- people you would love your children to regard as role models -- are charged with having carried out barbaric crimes, although there isn't the slightest evidence of any such behavior, for the simple reason that they are obstacles to the limitless greed of elected representatives and the bureaucracy. Rajendra Singh was actually physically assaulted at a public function!

Such targeting of reformers is widespread. When the national education policy deliberately eliminated the right to education of children under 6 years of age, it was widely condemned. In response, governments at both the federal and state levels sought to cut off funding for non-formal education initiatives in the poorest districts, as in Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. At public hearings designed to assure local populations of the environmental safety of new industrial activity, those who raise questions are assaulted, often with the police standing by idly, and in some instances with their active participation. Across the entire spectrum of government responsibilities, respectable individuals, especially those who are determined to reform India for the better, face the wrath of the State.

Ordinary citizens are often unsure how to respond to this state of affairs, partly because the social and economic associations that permit responses from large groups simply don't exist in India. As Pradeep Chhibber records in his book Democracy Without Associations, India ranks lowest among the free societies of the world in the percentage of people who profess membership in some association. A tiny 13% of Indians have found reasons to band together in groups that raise their voices above the individual. Whatever our social and economic outlook, then, it is rarely expressed with enough strength to gain political ground. And the few ideological positions that do find national attention aren't really as significant as they appear from the news pages.

As civil liberties organizations and other non-profits acquire greater organizational skills, and as interest-groups understand the power of their collective voice, this will no doubt change. Meanwhile, however, the muted indifference that many profess is understood by the political class precisely. The people who don't care enough to participate in civil society don't actually matter, and it is this connection between apathy and irrelevance that is cleverly exploited. The persistence of the Elangos and Pandeys of our nation, then, is stunning testimony to the tenacity of their hopes for India. Amidst political and popular cultures that leave them physically and financially vulnerable, their unyielding quest of the good society is stirring.

RELATED LINKS:

• Elango's Kuthambakkam initiatives are online.
• Get connected -- the first Serve India Forum will be held over Labor Day weekend in Chicago. Elango will speak there, along with Padma Shri Dr H Sudarshan. Many public interest Indian American groups are participating.
• Asha's Work an Hour for Education fundraiser is continuing. Asha for Education is the organization that Sandeep Pandey co-founded.

Ashwin Mahesh