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| K Natwar Singh: The cricket bat and the toilet seat |
| K Natwar Singh / Mar 20, 2010, 00:13 IST |
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What politicians could not achieve, the IPL has - sporting integration and an end to racism in sports for good. A spectacular achievement.
First the bad news. Fifty-eight per cent Indians, because of lack of proper latrines, have to defecate in the open. The majority of these 58 per cent are women. According to a WHO-Unicef report, 18 per cent Indians living in urban India, attend the call of nature in the open. The percentage is 69 in rural India. Still grimmer is the devastating revelation that 638 million people in India don’t have access to toilets. In several other developing countries, the number is much smaller, e.g. it is 50 million out of a population of 1.3 billion for China.
After 63 years of Independence, we are still unable to provide basic services to our citizens. Why is this so? I’m not an economist or a statistician, but as an Indian I feel ashamed when I’m confronted with these dismal figures. I do not recall our Parliament deliberating these matters of national degradation. As far as I’m aware, the electronic media too has not found time to have informed debates on this appalling reality. Why are we indifferent to these social evils?
I’m not taking a holier-than-thou position. I have no right to do so. I’m one among the small number of Indians who were born in the right bedroom. People like me live cloistered lives. Why do the well-to-do opt for private splendour and do nothing about public squalor? There is a chilling silence on these uncomfortable and unpleasant realities. I’m not absolving myself. Mulk Raj Anand (1905-2004) in 1934 wrote a novel called The Untouchable. Things have certainly changed — human beings no longer carry excreta on their heads to dump it where they could. The solution Mulk Raj Anand offered over 70 years ago was the flush system. How long more will it take us to provide this convenience to all our people?
The other day, a list of Indian billionaires was published by the American outfit Forbes. Their number has dramatically increased. Good for them. I personally know several of those splendid individuals. All self-made (except one), all public-spirited decent people. But. There is always a “but”. Himanshu, in his column in Mint, wrote on March 17: “The good news is that Indian billionaires have, once again, done better than the rest of the world — at a time when almost half a billion people are also going through recession, unemployment, drought and food price inflation. But does that mean we should not celebrate the glory the minuscule minority of billionaires has brought to the country? Perhaps not.” According to Himanshu, the “net worth of the billionaires club increased from less than 5 per cent in 1996 to a little over 10 per cent in 2007, it was almost one-fourth of the gross domestic product of India in 2008”. He concludes, “If growth has to be inclusive, there has to be a concerted effort to tackle structural inequalities.” Fair enough.
Now the good news. Like millions of my compatriots, I’m a cricket buff. In all humility, I claim to know the difference between slips and third man. Cricket was invented in England nearly 200 years ago (I may be out by a few years) and its first Indian patron was the Maharaja of Patiala, who took the first Indian team to England in 1911.
The game is vastly different now. Test cricket, one-day cricket, Twenty Twenty and now the IPL. I do not know Mr Lalit Modi, but his baby, the IPL, has brought globalisation to cricket. Only 20 years ago, no black/brown man could play for South Africa. Today it is heart-warming to watch Indians rubbing shoulders with Messrs Kallis and Smith, Bravo with Shane Warne. It’s a sporting miracle on a grand scale. Tendulkar and Sehwag are worldwide heroes. Also imagine, a former and great Pakistani bowler, Wasim Akram, being invited to be the bowling coach for the Kolkata Knight Riders. I’m aware of the commercialisation of the game, but have no fundamental objection to it so far.
What politicians could not achieve, the IPL has — sporting integration and an end for all time to racism in sports. A spectacular achievement.
Tailpiece: The foreign minister of Malta came to India on an official visit in the late 1960s. Mrs Gandhi was then also looking after the Ministry of External Affairs. So, he called on her. I too was present. The population of Malta was then less than two lakh. What did the prime minister of India say to the foreign minister of Malta? She talked about the Second World War and the Maltese who came to India and stayed in Deolali for the duration of the War etc.
Somehow the subject of commonwealth countries driving cars on the left came up. Mrs Gandhi said, “We in India too drive on the left of the road. What do you do in Malta?” The foreign minister said, with youthful aplomb, “Madam prime minister, we do not wish to offend those on the right or those on the left. We, in Malta, drive in the middle of the road.”
The author is a diplomat, writer and former foreign minister
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