Farmers Movement Archive

Povertarian mindset stifles aspirations

A recent televised public exchange between Rakesh Tikait and a senior journalist would have gone unnoticed had it not been for Tikait clearly stating that the farmers of India have had their fill of people foisting poverty on them. Tikait’s aspiration to see farmers becoming rich has to be seen in its proper context. His rejection of the fetishised image of the farmer as a poverty-ridden group is all the more interesting because it comes in the wake of the promise made by the Prime Minister of doubling farm income in India. Critics, unversed in numeracy, have been quick to point out that this could be just another tall promise made by a popular leader. What they fail to realise is that doubling, or even tripling a microscopic number does not take much effort. Currently, farm incomes are quite minuscule — a typical Indian farming household earned about Rs 3,798 per month from farming according to the Situation Assessment Survey conducted in 2018-19.This translates to about Rs 125 per day for a farming family. To put things in perspective, this much money could buy a small cup of coffee at the local Starbucks or a simple masala dosa snack from a dhaba at Murthal where farmers are camping along the road in protest against the introduction of the three farm laws. Much of the income gets lost, we are told by farm experts, because of the humongous wastage that goes on in storing and marketing the produce. Doubling this income would be a cinch were the government to succeed in its ongoing efforts to stop these wastages.At the time when the senior journalist in UP was being ticked off by Tikait for calling him a ‘Designer Kisan Neta’ and questioning his use of an air-conditioner in the heat of north India, in Punjab many people were sniggering at the newly appointed Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi’s use of an aircraft to reach Delhi to consult his party leaders, almost as if there was something blasphemous about a person from a Dalit background using a more comfortable means of transportation. That Channi, apart from being a successful self-made political figure, is also a successful self-made professional and businessman, was a bit of detail everyone seemed to forget.Tikait and Channi are just the latest among successful public figures in India who have clearly shown that they reject the povertarian mindset which imagines that the true destiny of Indians is to remain poor and fetishise this existence.We would suggest that the fetishisation of poverty in India has played a major role in alienating aspirational individuals from India. In the early years of independence, we explained away this alienation under the cloak of ‘brain drain’, the idea that the more intelligent of Indians were moving off to the West in order to acquire knowledge that was unavailable within the country. Since most of them never came back to live or work in India, we moaned about their ingratitude but did little to change the circumstances which impelled people to migrate in the first place. By the 1990s, in states like Punjab and Andhra Pradesh, the exodus was joined by people who came from a less privileged background. They too hoped to never return.The continuation of the povertarian mindset has ensured that those with any aspirations find out-migration to be a more attractive strategy than staying back in India and fighting the so-called system. Anycollege teacher from Punjab or Haryana will tell you that a large number of their students have joined college merely to earn enough educational credits to help them migrate.The latest census bureau data from the USA supports this contention that it is the aspirational Indians who have reached America. These Indians, the data suggests, are the richest group in the country, whites, blacks and minorities included. With a median income of roughly $123,000 per household, Indians in America earn double of what the average American whites do. They also earn 45% more than either the Chinese or the Japanese in the USA. That the aspirational Indians are moving out of the country should be a cause of great concern for us. This is not the old-fashioned brain drain. It is the drain of the very people who could have the spunk to transform this country.In Punjab, Haryana and Andhra Pradesh, we know how desperately young men and women seek to get out, often taking recourse to illegal means. Their families fully support such aspirational people, sell off bits of property to fund their exit from India, and seek out networks of friends and relatives abroad who could help. Simply put, the most ambitious among Indians are leaving India wholesale for other shores, which is why they are the richest group there.We suggest that povertarianism is a key reason for our failure to cater to the aspirations of those who are aspirational. The unfortunate perception, popular but baseless, that wealth is created mostly through sharp practices, puts pressure on those who are successful.Perhaps we can learn from Gandhi, not of Gandhi the povertarian of popular belief, but Gandhi the aspirational young man who also ran one of the most successful and profitable newspapers in India for over three decades and without any support from ads and charities. We already know that leaders like Rabindranath Tagore and Subhas Chandra Bose endorsed products and featured in ads. Gandhi too had no hesitation in selling his name. He even monetised it when he charged Rs 5 for every autograph that he gave to his admiring followers. Gold being priced then at about Rs 25 a tola, in today’s terms, Gandhi would be demanding the equivalent of a little over Rs 10,000 per autograph.Unfortunately in India, we have distorted Gandhi into a povertarian caricature. As it happens, things that are imagined to be real, have real consequences. In the case of independent India, we started creating rules and regulations that would stymie the creation of legitimate wealth. We justified this with the name ‘socialism’.Our historical research which we have presented elsewhere suggests that it is not the people in India who have been lacking. Rather, we have lacked stable institutional systems that support growth. Robust institutions make for knowledge exchange, for innovation and enable an increase in productivity. Successful societies in the modern world are societies with a robust learning eco-system that enables them to make systems work to the greater benefit of all. Equally, they are about providing an opportunity to everyone to participate in economic growth. For a variety of reasons, historically Indians have been unable to build that kind of ecosystem. A happy society is an aspirational society. But aspiring to be poor, to remain poor, is its opposite.

The Tribune

2021-11-01