Last week as I was watching live and jotting down points for the Press Release from the PM’s address during his inauguration of a clutch of railway & road projects, industrial and bulk drug park, and the NGEL’s Green Hydrogen Hub in Andhra Pradesh, I realised that I was gradually hitting a writer's block, and was entering into a parallel dispirited universe inundated with the thoughts of people living compromised lives.
During the course of the event, the stage, subtly adorned with lavish flowers (that alone must have cost way more than the combined annual income of hundreds in the crowd) hosting the centre’s and state’s top political executives witnessed a slew of pompous promises, grandiose development plans, and height of sycophancy.
Though announcements of projects worth hundreds, thousands, and even lakh crores, indeed garnered a big hand and a loud cheer from the crowd, in reality they had little or nothing much to do with these development measures. We can't rule out the possibility that similar to various other political events, they might be persuaded in lieu of some trivial reward by the local party leaders for thronging the venue as mere puppets in huge numbers.
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Though a typical lower middle class/poor family who doesn't own any personal convenience won't really get to savor these butter-smooth highways, no denying the fact that these would add on significantly to the reduction in travel time and less bumpier journeys as they travel from one city to another in a (should-be-abandoned) state roadways bus.
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| Photo by Anurag Gautam on Unsplash |
Coming to the Rail projects, they would certainly help hundreds among the crowd by providing them with a convenient rail connectivity. However, most of them could only be able to afford travelling in unreserved compartments, that hands down, are a malaise for claustrophobic people, and aren’t any lesser than stinking and suffocating fish-markets on wheels.
NGEL’s Green Hydrogen Hub whose foundation stone was laid at a whopping cost of INR 1.85 lakh is indeed a commendable development in the green energy space for the country. But, too technical for most of the people in the crowd because of their lack of quality education. The hub would definitely generate employment for many, however, these people won’t be hired as executives or engineers per se, rather as daily-wage labourers or blue-collar workers doing menial jobs having little or no basic idea about the project (Marx Uncle’s theory on alienation of the proletariat, and Shahrukh's 'koi bhi dhandha chhota nahi hota, dhandhe se bada koi dharma nahi hota' from the Bollywood gem - Raees ringing in ear). More or less the same story will follow for the Kris Industrial City and the Bulk Drug Park. Undoubtedly, the subpar educational standards of the masses are to blame.
Writing the above, it doesn't mean at any cost that I am unhappy with the inauguration of the above development projects, or pointing a finger at the government's intent, or seeing this entire spectrum with a pessimistic lens. These are indeed welcome steps towards achieving the ambitious goal of Viksit Bharat that work as a major catalyst in giving wings to my nationalistic aspirations. However, I would like to shed light on the huge chunk of population residing in Andhra (and in Bharat at large) that’s still too sluggish and incapable of extracting true benefits out of such development projects. As the Father of Harilal & Manilal (not the nation per se), Mahatma Gandhi said, “the measure of a country’s greatness should be based on how well it cares for its most vulnerable populations”. The government should genuinely adopt the above principle in true spirit to avoid slipping further in Pew Research's global inequality indices.