Fear and loathing...on campus in Delhi

I was lucky recently to have an opportunity to gain a real, albeit small-scale, insight into what young Indians think about the state of their country and its society. This opportunity presented itself while I was interviewing final year students in the grounds of a college at one of India’s most prestigious universities. What these informal discussions revealed about what some Indians in their early twenties think was largely negative to my mind. I admit that ‘fear and loathing’ is an exaggeration; ignorance and condescension would be a better way to describe the opinions that were expressed.

We were talking about rural India and about conditions in the slums that are a part of every city in the subcontinent. Knowing that very few well-off urban Indians know much about the realities of village life or even those of slum life, I was not expecting much insight. But I was surprised at how little insight there was. People living in slums were described to me by two different sources as being “criminal”, while the rural existence of 70% of India’s population was seen as “simple” by another. Associating poverty with crime is of course something that a great many people do. There is everywhere, in any country, a gut reaction that the majority amongst the middle-class experience when faced with poverty. It’s a feeling not far from disgust. This is brought out clearly in a recent documentary made for Channel Four in the UK, where an upper middle class girl and a working class girl spend a day together. Before they meet, the girl who goes on skiing holidays declares that the other is going to be a ‘chav’. Chavs; travelers; the underclass in Britain; they have long been seen as a primary source of criminal activity. In India, slum dwellers may well occupy the same space in many better-off people’s minds. Equally, spinning a utopian idyll out of rural life is a well worn activity. M.K. Gandhi was a great fan of the uncomplicated and harmonious existence that, supposedly, is village life in India.

I was surprised partly because several of the students I spoke to had spent time in villages or were from semi-rural areas themselves (although not from agricultural families). One had even been into a slum for a day, which is saying a lot for a university educated Delhiite. Revealingly though, this visit had been organised by a college environmental group with the aim of educating slum dwellers about how bad the use of plastic bags was for the environment. I had to stop myself from suggesting that going to the wealthiest enclave of the city with the same message would have made more sense (though been less rewarding for the soul). Perhaps this ignorance is borne of the particular way many middle-class lives are lived in India. Living in something of a bubble, effectively cut off from the deprivation around them, many people, young as much as old, seem unable to fully comprehend that reality even when they look closely.

But these young people were actually telling me they wanted to do something about inequality; they wanted to devote themselves to social service. Despite their ignorance they were aware that something wasn’t working in society and there was value in being part of the fixing. This puts them well ahead of the morally lost campaign launched by the Times of India newspaper, ‘India Poised’. By describing half of India as a “leash” holding back the progress of the rest (this ‘half’ cannot be other than those who don’t read the English Times, live in the booming metro cities or consume conspicuously), this campaign not only effectively acknowledges the bubble of middle class urban existence but denigrates all those excluded from it. This belief in a bright future for India, if only the poor would get up off their backs, can even be expressed in terms that deny the very existence of India’s 300 million or so citizens who are officially poor. For example there is a Facebook group entitled ‘India is not a third world country’. If not ‘developing’, what is India? Almost developed, as some have told me confidently? Riding on the Delhi Metro, sitting in a multiplex, shopping in a gleaming mall, one might well think that. But it would mean being duped by aspiration and blind to the reality of life outside the enclaves of progress.