The root cause...

Lead review

The other country

Mrinal Pande
Penguin
2011, pp 210
350

Mrinal Pande’s ‘The Other Country’ attempts to understand the changing face of rural India, whose issues have often been ignored in the mainstream media, writes M K Chandra bose.

The winds of globalisation may be sweeping across the country creating flashy malls, gleaming carsand yuppie crowds. But it has only deepened the urban-rural
divide. Vast stretches of India still remain shackled in poverty and dictated by the oppressive social structure of caste.

However, the aspirations of people in small towns and villages have grown manifold. Fascinated by TV images of a shining India, upwardly mobile middle class youth now pine for a better life and glamour, emulating the affluent in metropolitan cities. This changing face of rural India and small towns hardly find mention in mainstream media.

The Other Country strives to fill such a vacuum. Mrinal Pande, Prasar Bharati chairperson, eminent Hindi journalist and author takes the reader through a less trodden path by focussing on the lesser-known India. The collection of articles written during the past four years gives an insight into the complex problems plaguing the nation, mirroring the diversity of cultures and mores.

Some are fascinating accounts of men and women who dared to swim against the current. Her topics range from the survival of regional languages, the disconnect between rural India and the English media, maternal mortality and female foeticide to the abysmal state of the healthcare system.

Her canvas is the Hindi heartland that is struggling to come to terms with the challenges of the 21st century. The seemingly affluent Western UP has the dubious record of registering the highest number of crimes against women. Many women carry firearms now. Growing cases of
female foeticide, abetted by the proliferation of illegally operating sex-determination clinics, have produced a skewed sex ratio in the area. Mrinal Pande says that in female deficient parts of western UP, Haryana and Punjab, there are villages after villages sans girls of marriageable age swelling the ranks of old bachelors. Many are forced to buy brides from poor families in eastern UP, who often get resold. The status of women in rich urban families is not any better than that of women in poor households.

Mrinal writes passionately on women. She finds that education hasn’t provided women a level playing field. Citing an inbuilt bias among employers against women, she argues that their need for “soul-satisfying and self-confidence building jobs” is the same as men’s. She says that the cases of women being forced to abandon well-paid jobs to become homemakers can be avoided with better
understanding among employers.

A working woman is more than “just another, faceless, taken-for-granted and perennially exhausted custodian of young children,” she asserts. Even in the age of globalisation, a woman’s role is largely defined by men. Stating that pregnancy is a great killer in India, she charges the formal healthcare system, policy makers and media with a conspiracy of silence in dealing with maternal mortality cases.

Her encounters with women in remote corners have also thrown up intrepid ones who braved social mores in a patriarchal society. Aaalia and Razia, hailing from conservative Muslim families, had to fight social prejudices and derisive glances of neighbours before becoming successful boxers. There is the heartwarming tale of Prabha Devi of Tehri in Uttarakhand who became a barber after her husband’s death. She had to fight every inch to establish herself as the village barber. She epitomises the attitudinal changes gripping the rural areas now.

There is also the amazing story of Dashrath Manjhi, a landless labourer from Bihar’s Gaya district, who single-handedly cut a 3-km road through a rocky mountain to help his wife. It took him 22 years to accomplish the task.

Mrinal highlights the dangerous phenomenon of paid news in Hindi print media which threatens to nullify the fast growth of newspapers in the Hindi belt and raises a question mark on their credibility. She also points out that the mainstream English media tends to be insensitive in reporting issues of relevance to rural areas. She narrates an interesting anecdote on her experience with Doordarshan as an anchor. On Republic Day in 2001, a major earthquake rocked Gujarat.

The correspondent reached the spot with great difficulty and filed the report requesting that the news be telecast without any delay, to enable the fast dispatch of life saving equipment to the area. As the mandarins who had to clear the news were busy watching the Republic Day parade, the telecast was delayed while the victims lay dying.

She analyses the anti-outsider movement spearheaded by Shiv Sena in Mumbai and traces the root cause of migration to the lopsided economic development, deprivation and dearth of opportunities in villages. She hits out at Congress and NCP for their apathy when Sena goons went on a rampage in the metropolis, resulting in the death of several poor migrants from UP and Bihar.

Mrinal Pande feels that the English onslaught in this cyber age poses a grave threat to Indian languages, Hindi in particular. She also finds it alarming that serious discourses on national issues are taking place in English. She faults city-based feminists for using English as the medium of communication. A non-Hindi reader certainly won’t share her fears on the threat from English. She betrays a certain level of insensitivity to non-Hindi speaking citizens who are in a majority. Urban-rural divide is not about language but about economic development.

The Other Country helps the reader to understand why the Hindi belt remains an area of darkness, ill-governed, underdeveloped, crime-ridden, steeped in superstition, caste and communal prejudices. What better way than by listening to the voices from the grassroots?