My friend KBL has more than an average sense of scepticism. This is not surprising since he has spent a lifetime in government. But what makes it more powerful is that he is an economist who is unable, even if he wants, to be a bit irrational at times. He also has a firm underlying sense of concern for the plight of poor people. But since his scepticism and rational mindset prevent him from falling for almost any kind of posturing, he often turns out to be, for those who do not know him well, a severe critic of those who tend to take a trendy-jholawala-urban-activist view of life.
It should by now be clear that he is utterly adorable and he lives up to his reputation by calling long distance at least twice a week to demolish most of the rubbish that self-important newspaper columnists write. So, I have a vague sense of unease every time his name pops up on my cell phone screen just after one of my pieces has appeared. On other days I know we can have a few minutes of fun at the expense of some other solemn folks.
It is on one of those occasions that he called to say that what he had to say was too serious to be passed on verbally on the phone. So he had sent me a mail. But since by mixing with journalists he has per force imbibed some of their bad habits and begun to think more in terms of headliners than substantive issues, he would let me have a preview of what he has sent across. Then, after a suitable pause, he delivered his great line: Everybody loves a good slum!
The email began with his hallmark scepticism, bordering on cynicism. The slum dwellers love their slums the most, as otherwise they would not be there but in their villages savouring the rural idyll which has been celebrated by writers across the world from Thoreau to Tagore. But they come only because they are too hungry in the village, I protested to him later. He was utterly unmoved and declared dourly: I thought with so much of pristine, unpolluted nature around, they didn’t also need to eat!
After that aside at environmental activists, his next target was those who analyse human misery mostly in terms of class conflict. Love of slums stretches across classes, he declared. Take the way middle class housewives measure the attractiveness of various neighbourhoods. Remember how Delhi’s Yamuna Paar used to be viewed in the old days, before they started building up on the riverbed until there was hardly a river for you to make out whether you had crossed it or not? The other side of the river was certainly the wrong address to have but the only saving grace was that the maids who lived in the slums nearby were so much more affordable.
The posh kothiwalis of Delhi don’t care if maids come cheap or not, I protested. I could see him smile long distance when he retorted: As soon as you have become rich enough to not care about the salaries of maids, you have qualified to join NGOs that do social work in slums. Imagine what life would be like for those poor ladies if there was no slum within driving distance to distribute old clothes and the like.
It was pointless trying to tell him that not all those who did voluntary work in slums were society ladies looking for something interesting to do. Instead, I tried another tack. You have no idea who earns how much these days, I said. The real rich folks are the politicians and their families. They no longer distribute old clothes, they give away spectrum. Free air waves are not like Marie Antoinette’s cakes which even slum children can relish. These days the rich have also become socialistic. They want to make other people rich too, so that there are more millionaires than Forbes can list. KBL was so dismissive that he didn’t even care to reply to my point, and only said: Find out who gets how many votes from jhuggi jhopris and how many from kothis, and who wins.
Finding that I was getting nowhere, I tried one last time. I went to his next point and asked, how can you say that slums have helped India arrive globally in this age of globalisation. I thought globalisation led to removal of poverty and burgeoning markets. What the reforms have done is unleash the latent entrepreneurial skills that were lying dormant among Indians. This time he didn’t smile, or so I think. Instead he said with condescension bordering on contempt: You really don’t know what brings international recognition these days, do you? It is not money or how many millionaires a country has, when the biggest of them all, the Buffett-Gates of the world, are going round trying to get the rich to give away their riches. A third world country has really arrived when it wins an Oscar. Slumdog Millionaire, he said in a powerful tone and then added sotto voce, the prosecution rests.
Unable to get the better of him in argument, I got personal and accused: In any case your best line, the headline, is not really yours. Wait till P Sainath accuses you of stealing his great line on drought. Spoilsport that he was, he insisted on having the last word: You think I am a plagiarist? Then I better stop writing for EPW and move to the popular media.
