COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
ELECTIONS '98
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Flush With Cheese and Biscuits

Had lunch at a comfortable South Bombay club one very recent, very rainy day. As I downed my excellent Chicken Jalfraizi, I listened in as two of my companions at the table chatted. She is a dog breeder, he had recently bought one of her dogs, a pup called Hari.

Hari's hair isn't growing, he observed. How often do you brush it, she asked. Well, once a day, he replied. Ah, said the dog breeder, shaking her head. That's where you've got it wrong. You should brush him just once every two weeks. That allows it to grow. And what about a bath, he queried, how often should that be? Only once a month, she answered. Also, never let him dry by himself after the bath, she went on. You must blow-dry him. And are you giving Hari his cheese regularly? Yes, replied Hari's owner. Good, she said, because that's very important.

Hari's worries taken care of, the breeder sat back and told us some more about her work. She imports purebred dogs every now and then, which turns out to be a complex operation. If the dog comes from Australia, she said, he has to spend several hours in transit in Singapore because of flight timings. So I pay an extra $ 100 for someone at the airport to feed him, give him some water, walk him a bit, talk to him. You see, if you pay, they take very good care of the dogs at the Singapore airport.

There are, she told us, breeders in India who are importing fine German Shepherds from Germany, paying as much as 1.5-2 million rupees for each dog. Of course, she said, I don't believe in paying that much. I pay a maximum of Rs 200,000 or 300,000 for the breed I work with, which is what Hari's father cost me. That includes the $ 100 for the Singapore halt.

Outside, the rain had started coming down in torrents. Through the soft conversation in the room, the cool air, the cigarette smoke, the tinted window and the rain, I watched a young man in the distance leap across a puddle and run for cover. Oddly, he reminded me of that morning, of some others running through the rain.

I had stopped for the traffic light at the Mahim Causeway junction, familiar to all of you who know Bombay. They have built an enormous flyover there. Only days after it was opened a couple of months ago, they found it was causing even worse traffic snarls than the chaos they said it was built to address. So they decided to allow traffic on it only in one direction. As a result, one entire section of the flyover, an exit ramp into Bandra Reclamation that I took in those early days, lies unused.

Not quite unused: scruffy children from the nearby slums play joyously on it. My taxpayer money at work.

Bumping over the terrible road under this sweeping new one-way flyover, I had driven up to the traffic light. Two of the same scruffy children, I noticed idly -- naked except for tiny undies, soaking in the rain -- were leaning against the door of the car in front. Begging, of course. Suddenly, the window rolled down. The driver's hand emerged with a couple of Gluco biscuits. The kids took them and ran back to the side of the road. Two of their companions saw the biscuits, followed their pointing fingers and ran up to the car.

The lights changed. The cars began moving. The hand emerged again, with one biscuit. As he accelerated through the intersection, the kids ran alongside, pleading for more. The car was soon moving rapidly. Somehow, the kids kept pace, dodging and weaving as other cars sped past on either side, still pleading for biscuits. No more emerged. Within seconds, they could not run fast enough to keep up. I watched them in my rear-view mirror, standing there for a short while, then turning to return to the side of the road.

It was still raining.

Home after lunch, I found two letters. The first was from a man in Kolhapur district, Maharashtra. He runs an organisation that has a sanitation programme in six villages there. He begins: "One of the basic imperatives of civilised existence is proper sanitation. According to a recent finding only 6 per cent [of] Indians have access to a toilet. This fact must shame a country boasting five thousand years' continuous civilisation. ... Therefore [this] sanitation programme is a priority for us."

So far, they have built 125 family toilets at Rs 4,800 each. This cost is met by a government subsidy of Rs 3,500 for those below the poverty line (Rs 2,500 for others), with the beneficiary contributing the rest. He writes to share his experiences and conclusions, which were "to put it moderately, thought provoking." In his own words, which are far more effective than any paraphrasing I might attempt, here is a sample.

* "Every village is riven with groups [reflecting] the political groupings at the district level. The village panchayat [council] is controlled by one group while the other either sulks or becomes blindly antagonistic. ... The group out of power whips up opposition against the ruling group, even on a non-issue like toilet construction. We also found ostracised minority groups [with] sober and enlightened elements, uncorrupt and inbued with a zeal to do good."

* "The Sarpanch [council head] and the ruling coterie is crassly selfish and ... corners illegally the benefits to themselves."

* "In one village [we found] that the subsidy for [those] below poverty line was distributed at Rs 2,500 per unit [instead of] Rs 3,500. Obviously, the difference was pocketed by the ruling coterie."

* "Swindling public funds is a well-grooved routine. ... Those who [want] to deliver with honesty became the targets of an armoury of calumny, harrassment ... even naked threats. Ill feeling against our programme implementation is instigated by the people in power in the village."

* "The canker of corruption and decay has penetrated the basic social unit, the village, the community. ... The ruling class is responsible for the galloping spread of this cancer. Without combating and conquering corruption a different and better India cannot even be thought of. The cleansing process has to begin from the top, whereas we have helplessly witnessed the political bosses steeped in the Havala racket going scot free. ... Corruption among the ruling class leads to the evil compact with the ganglords and the Mafia."

* "Four hundred million [Indians] go to sleep on an empty stomach. ... The per capita consumption of milk of the 250 million at the lower poverty levels is 25 gms a day. Yet the rulers ... hold forth glibly about the national Milk Flood. ... Planning and development without distributive justice in a democratic polity is a fraud. The enormity of this inequity is unparalleled in the annals of human history."

That letter read, I turned to the second. It was from someone concerned about the Kargil war. Upset at our soldiers dying there, at the sacrifice we are asking them to make, he had written to me: "When [will] people realise that dying for the country in turn deserves a country worth dying for?"

I looked outside. Yes, still raining.

Dilip D'Souza