Consider these two options. In option 1, you are experiencing power cuts every day at different times, and this frustrates you no end. But if you complain to the Discom, someone gets around to attend to it quickly. In option 2, you don't ever lose power. Which is better?
A govt that can prevent problems from arising in the first place is considerably better than one that merely fixes them as they arise. But it's not a simple matter to ensure that only such govts get elected, or that public administration is strong regardless of who's in power.
Power cuts and potholes are actually the much smaller examples. The biggest deficit is in education, from which all else flows. We have a situation where more than half the children in the country are not receiving even a complete school education. It's bound to crumble.
Millions of citizens walking on our streets and highways is the most recent reminder of where we have failed to prepare, and thereby only prepared to fail. They were always among us, but somehow unseen. But on otherwise empty roads, our collective shame was impossible to hide.
Our acts of omission too, not only commission, have consequences too. We've failed to respond to the major trends around us - urbanisation, formalisation, financialisation, industrialisation and skilling. Our inattention on these fronts is appalling.
Yet election after election we see promises to fix roads and keep the power on. Why should we be led by such low expectations, and not by the promise of never having to worry about the roads or water? In Bihar the dominant contenders have each delivered poverty for 15 years !!
The evidence of the unseen is as important in solving problems as how we respond to what we can see. We know this, but there is a TINA factor that frustrates and demeans voters. There is a sense that every political option is bad, and we are seeking only the best of the bad.
There is a solution, but for that we have to look within ourselves. Because the public too is guilty of trying to respond to only the problems it chooses to see. The politics, in some ways, merely reflects the wilful blindnesses of the people, and society has to change first.
Our act of omission is not functional, it's moral. We know the problems, and we even know many of the solutions, or at least that solutions exist to many of them. But we have chosen not to see. The evidence is everywhere, but our senses are shut to it.
For better or for worse, this is how it happened. Some farmers worked the land and labourers toiled at work sites so others of us could go to school. Poor and malnourished children worked in our homes while we learned of faraway lands and the opportunities in them.
Some folks washed clothes on crumbling sidewalks as we stepped carefully past them in our pleated skirts and pressed pants. As they remained mired in misery and ignorance, we married into fortune and awareness.
I say those things not to accuse anyone, but to draw attention to the truths we refuse to see. Some of us are educated, and as a result they seamlessly progress into opportunity. Others are not, and suffer for this reason, but we don't care enough to correct this.
The inertia of our efforts for the downtrodden and the willingness to protect our own interests have brought a few of us to a frontier of great opportunities. But it's come at a terrible price for those who are not among us. When we fix that the power will always be on.
WHEN WE BEGIN TO SEE WHAT WE REFUSE TO SEE TODAY - my Sunday column in Deccan Herald in the continuing series on state, market and society. This time the focus is on how the poor are locked out of opportunities by lack of education. @msisodia @AtishiAAP
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