In the enigmatic tome "Everybody Loves A Good Drought" penned by the venerable P. Sainath, we embark on a meandering journey through the obscure labyrinth of rural India, where perplexity and burstiness are woven into the very fabric of existence. Sainath, the harbinger of bitter truths, leaves us spellbound with his storytelling prowess, enveloping us in a dense fog of emotions.
Everybody Loves A Good Drought
As a Times of India fellow in the tumultuous year of 1992, Sainath embarked on a somber odyssey to the most destitute districts of India, seeking to decipher the lives, or perhaps one should say the mere existence, of the country's poorest citizens.
Existence, a term perhaps more apt than life in these dire circumstances.
The book under scrutiny comprises a collection of reports meticulously crafted during Sainath's extensive journeys. These narratives, at times, sparked controversies and even catalyzed limited official action. However, in the grand scheme of rural poverty, these were but fleeting ripples in the vast ocean of despair, offering only academic satisfaction amidst a grim tableau.
Sainath's findings can be distilled into a single, haunting word—apathy. It's apathy toward the rural destitution that seeps through the nation. Around this nucleus of indifference, he spins the tales of real people, individuals whose stories are often buried beneath the avalanche of statistical data. Sainath breathes life into poverty by giving it names, morphing it into a tangible, gut-wrenching reality. His narratives provoke, jar, and shock to the point of becoming a grotesque macabre spectacle.
The choice of districts he scrutinized—two of the poorest from the five most impoverished states: Orissa, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu—was unanimous among experts, marking these areas as dubious epicenters of suffering. Sainath's unique perspective paints poverty not as isolated events but as relentless, grinding processes steeped in mind-bending paradoxes.
Within the pages, we encounter a farmer who earns more from selling water than tilling the land. A super high-tech project in Bihar's Godda region, one of the most backward, generates jobs for a meager 1300 individuals, many of them outsiders, at an astonishing cost of Rs. 65 lakhs per job. Meanwhile, a foreign consultant wades through transactions worth Rs. 645 crores out of a total of Rs. 966 crores. Loans are offered to tribal members to purchase cows, unaware that the tribe predominantly consumes beef and not milk products. The result is a cruel irony where the cows end up as dinner while the recipients are trapped in a lifelong debt spiral.
Sainath's revelations expose the existence of schools without buildings or teachers alongside schools with both, albeit buildings being used for fodder storage, and teachers instructing absent students. In one absurd instance, a teacher draws a salary without visiting the school for years.
The plight of Chikpaar, a village acquired in 1968 for a MiG jet fighter project, is emblematic of a recurring nightmare. Evicted multiple times for various projects, the displaced villagers received paltry compensation, often after interminable delays.
On the status of Sekupani village in Gumla, Bihar, a government official rhetorically questions, "What if the residents of Malabar Hill in Bombay had to evacuate every time the navy conducted an exercise, and were paid Rs. 1.50 a day for their troubles? This is happening here because these people are adivasis. It's a backward, cut-off region."
The artist Pema Fatiah's story embodies exploitation, with government officials and their minions descending on him, forcing him to produce artwork free of charge after his initial recognition.
These narratives are a tapestry of interconnected lives, woven with a thread of concern from global agencies to local politicians and bureaucrats. Unfortunately, this concern often dissipates into the coffers of local strongmen or is misappropriated, as witnessed with the tribes gifted cows in a loan event. Sainath unravels this intricate web, infusing each story with piercing irony.
The book operates on various levels. It's an unfiltered portrayal of India's direst poverty, a narrative of heart-wrenching misery juxtaposed with remarkable resilience. Simultaneously, it delves into the aspirations of the "insulted and the humiliated," echoing Dostoyevsky's poignant phrase. It's a scathing critique of development policies, where well-intentioned schemes run amok, forsaking their original objectives.
Sainath's accounts also cast a critical eye on the idiocy embedded in the very notion of development. Dams displace people who will never benefit from them, while contractors enjoy perpetual construction, guaranteed income, and missile ranges displace entire communities like Chikpaar, driving villagers into urban centers where they often become virtual slaves of contractors.
Ultimately, the book serves as a damning indictment of India's elite. It lays bare the "two Indias" that Dr. K.N. Raj astutely discerned. The book's tales, though seemingly otherworldly and macabre, spotlight the Indian middle class, reared on the very 'development' that thrives on the shoulders of India's impoverished masses.
Sainath has, in these pages, given voice to the voiceless, unearthing stories that should shatter any veneer of complacency. His narratives evoke the anguish of a tongueless adivasi, jailed despite being a victim.
In "Everybody Loves A Good Drought," Palagummi Sainath is indeed a bitter man. His bitterness, however, is a potent catalyst for change, an urgent call for society to confront the apathy and indifference that often surround the country's most vulnerable citizens.
So, dear friends, if you yearn to embrace the heart-wrenching complexity of rural India, if you long to kindle the flame of change within your own soul, then this book is your compass, your guide through the enigmatic wilderness of human emotion and social transformation.