Swami Vivekananda, that incomparable messiah of India’s resurrection, gave his clarion call , ‘ Arise, awake ye sleeping lions’ to this x- factor in the people of India, which shook the slumbering masses and started the process of liberation. The aim was to cleanse the people of the negatives, so that the true strength of their persona came to the fore, to create a liberated India, where people empowered themselves. Liberation from the British Raj, was only a small part of this journey. Mahatma Gandhi espoused the ‘charka’. The Charka stood for individual industry and village economy. Both these great men knew that the poor Indian was a sleeping lion. Empower him and he would be the key to India’s leadership in the emerging world.

In this sixty first year of independence, can we say that the people of India have been truly empowered, in the sense that Swami Vivekananda or Mahatma Gandhi would have wished? 

Perhaps, we are yet far from it. Rajiv Gandhi was the first Prime Minister of India, to take steps in this direction. He was not only the architect of the seventy third and seventy fourth amendment bills, which aimed at devolution of power to the people, but he also lowered the voting age to eighteen years, to empower young men and women to take part in nation building. Simultaneously, he signaled for economic liberation. The prime role of the computer revolution in Indian economy was foreseen by him and he started the process, by bringing in electronic experts like Sam Pitroda in his team. Rajiv Gandhi wanted every Indian to share in its economic revival. Unfortunately, he fell to the assassin at a very early age and with him fell the focus on the empowerment of the people. The people of rural India, got political empowerment through the Panchayati Raj, but the fruits of economic liberation did not reach them. This is ominous, considering that seventy two percent of our population lives in rural areas and seventy five percent of our poor, lives in villages.

The gains of economic liberation have been largely confined to the urban areas and to some extent, are overflowing abroad. The World Wealth Report 2005, states that the number of millionaires in India, rose by 20 per cent in 2005, comparable to the highest growth of millionaires in any country. In absolute terms, the number went up from 70,000 in 2004 to 83,000 in 2005. 

The benefits of economic development are not reaching the masses. The task of the government is to ensure equitable distribution of national resources, among the rich and the poor. Studies have however, shown, quite a different picture. In India, the richest 10 per cent consume more than 33 per cent of the national resources. This is substantiated by the fact that while the GDP growth between 1999 and 2005 was about 6.3 per cent per year, the people below poverty line, decreased by only about 0.4 per ent per year. As the GDP rises at a higher rate of above nine per cent per year, as is happening now, the divide between the rich and the poor, will further widen unless the wealth is transferred to, the poor, through the strengthening of the micro-industries and making financial and technical support, available to them. Even the benefits of numerous schemes, of the government, for the poor and disadvantaged, are reaching them, only in a trickle. 

An evaluation of government anti- poverty measures, by two Delhi based economists in 2005, based on the last thirty years data, has shown that less than 27 per cent of every rupee allotted to the poor, reaches them. The government has not come up with a solution to this disappearance of the peoples’ money. In this scenario, how can the common people gain any share at all, in the growth of the economy, which is largely market driven and big money controlled? Their plight is compounded by the steep rise in consumer goods prices. Between October 2005 – October 2006, the rise in consumer prices was about seven per cent. The current food production targets have been revised downwards from 220 million, to 209 million tons. The low production, coupled with the inadequate level of buffer stock, available with the government, will further precipitate the price rise of these essential commodities. This will increase the suffering of the common man.

The increasing divide between the rich and the poor, the high cost of living, the high level of unemployment, corruption and widespread ostentation among the growing rich and the lack of any means for self employment among the poor, fuels tension and anger in the common man. Studies have shown only 23 per cent of our young men, get employed. The vast majority of young people have no future to look forward to. The delicately balanced fabric of multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-religious unity, based on human values, tolerance and acceptance, is thus irretrievably damaged.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is anguished at the rise of communal forces. He is alarmed at the penetration of Maoists. He has called for unified, international action to counter terrorism. These reflect his concern for India and its people. But the solution will not come from external sources.

The terrorists and Maoists cannot flourish in a country, without local support. Our vast pool of poor and angry young men and women, who see no future for themselves, are easy targets for conversion to paths of terrorism and extremism. This cannot be stopped by policing, alone. We need to emulate the Nobel Laureate Dr Yunus’s, Gramin Bank, which has knit together crores of poor people in Bangladesh, in participatory management, for their economic revival.

Politicians have used religion to divide the people. There is no difference between the Muslims, and Hindus, in the villages and towns of India. Poverty and illiteracy are endemic in India and if it is pronounced among the Muslims the Hindus are no exception. The government has to address the problem of poverty and illiteracy as a whole and not single out a particular section as it is doing now. This will only divide the country. It is essential to first address the village economy, where 72 per cent of our people live. Inadequate access to micro-enterprise, lack of support to financial resources, poor education, healthcare and social services, has crippled the productive capacity of our people in the villages. The government has done nothing to change the archaic rules in our financial system, which denies the people access to the resources of our banking system and other financial institutions. The inhumanity of the system can be well judged, when a poor farmer in Maharashtra, commits suicide for denial of a bank loan of Rupees twenty five thousand, in the sowing season, because of his failure to repay the previous loan, of a few thousand rupees. It is interesting that the same banking system, patronizes big business, which is defaulting by hundreds of crores. There is a crying need for looking inward and correcting the system, before it is too late.