Asia Times: Indian presidential address warns of social unrest



	January 27, 2000	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Indian presidential address warns of social unrest
By Ranjit Dev Raj

NEW DELHI - President Kocheril Raman Narayanan warned on Tuesday, the eve of India's golden jubilee as a republic, that its economic liberalization was widening social disparities and could lead to serious social unrest.

''Many a social upheaval can be traced to the neglect of the lowest tier of the society whose discontent moves towards the path of violence,'' Narayanan said in an unusually candid and critical Republic Day eve address to the nation. ''Fifty years into our life in the republic we find that justice - social, economic and political - remains an unrealized dream for millions of our fellow citizens. The benefits of our economic growth are yet to reach them,'' he observed.

Narayanan said the golden jubilee, being celebrated Wednesday, must be a ''day of honest self-analysis and self-questioning about where we as a people and a society are headed.'' The Presidential prognosis was bleak. ''I think it would not be wrong to say that as a society we are becoming increasingly insensitive and callous.''

To prove his point Narayanan indicated the way ''middle class plastic garbage'' was being strewn around, the way public servants treat the public, the way children are exploited and the way vehicle owners spew toxic gases into the air. But more serious socio-economic issues troubled him. ''Why is it that as a nation we do not feel the desperate urgency of making our people literate? I hope that vested interests have not been fearful of awakening the masses through education.''

The President lamented that 50 years after India gave itself a constitution women were regarded in the same way as they were in the 18th and 19th centuries. What was worse, according to him, was that there was no political rhetoric on the persistence of such social ills as sati - the custom of widows immolating themselves on the funeral pyre of their husbands. ''There are signs that our privileged classes are getting tired of the affirmative action provided by constitutional provisions,'' the President said.

The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) recently set in motion a process by which it hopes to effect sweeping changes in the constitution according to a promise it made before the general elections it won in October. ''It seems, in the social realm, some kind of a counter-revolution is taking place in India.'' the President said and referred to derailment of affirmative provisions for lower castes through ''narrow interpretations'' and ''administrative deformation.''

He dwelt on the many glaring paradoxes of life in India. ''We have the world's largest middle class but also the largest number of people below the poverty line and the largest number of people suffering from malnutrition.''

''Our giant factories rise from out of squalor. Our satellites shoot up from the midst of hovels of the poor. Not surprisingly, there is sullen resentment among the masses against their condition, erupting often in violent forms in several parts of the country.''

But Narayanan reserved the worst of his eloquent but biting social criticism for ''advertisement-driven consumerism'' which is ''unleashing frustrations and tensions in our society.''

''The unabashed, vulgar indulgence in conspicuous consumption by the nouveau-riche has left the underclass seething in frustration. One half of our society guzzles aerated beverages while the other has to make do with palmfuls of muddied water.''

''Our three-way fast-lane of liberalisation, privatization and globalization must provide safe pedestrian crossings for unempowered India.'' Only then could it achieve the ''equality of status and opportunity,'' promised in the constitution, he said.

(Inter Press Service)

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