A Lamborghini society

THE news that luxury car maker Lamborghini is viewing India as a growing market should not come as a surprise since other premium car makers like Mercedes and Audi have also found buoyant demand in this country. Besides, in a liberalised economy, one has to accept that all types of vehicles will be made available to consumers. Yet it is amazing that luxury car makers are finding the business environment increasingly congenial when the need of the hour is mass road transport. Even if sales of the ultra expensive sports car are only in double digits, there is something inherently disturbing about the presence of super luxury cars on the roads in a country where millions cannot find proper roads to even walk on from one rural hamlet to another.

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This is not to say that growth has bypassed rural areas, but the fact is that the gap between the rich and the poor in this country is much wider than in most others.  

The Gini coefficient, which attempts to describe the gap between the richest and the poorest, is extremely high for India. Similarly, data shows that only 1 per cent of the richest people here hold 58.4 per cent of  the country’s wealth. In other words, income disparities are much more glaring than in the rest of the world. 

The question is, why is there such a massive gap between the affluent and the poorest of the poor. The answer clearly lies in skewed government policies. One of these is the lack of focus on mass rapid transport. While Delhi and some other cities are now getting metros, the need for basic, inexpensive bus transport in rural areas, right up to remote villages, has yet to be met. Most rural migrants to the cities have an arduous journey back to their homes every year. The vital requirement of a simple comfortable bus ride is not available in most parts of the country. This is partly because roads have not been built and partly because most state governments have failed to provide a reliable public bus network. Rural roads have undoubtedly improved over the years, but last-mile connectivity to the villages still remains problematic. 

Secondly, basic healthcare in rural areas is missing. Despite huge allocations for rural healthcare missions, the fruits of this large investment have yet to trickle down effectively to the villages. The system of auxiliary nursing attendants has spawned an army of women who are doing this job diligently at the village level, but their remuneration is too low and the numbers are still not enough to do the work effectively. Even seven decades after Independence, essential healthcare facilities remains inadequate in rural areas. Millions have to trek to big cities to avail of specialised treatment in prestigious institutes like the AIIMS. It is indeed an irony that “medical tourism” has become commonplace with patients flying in from abroad to avail of the excellent medical facilities in this country. At the same time, those living in rural areas do not have access to even minimal healthcare facilities.

Even in urban areas, sickness is one of the most common causes for financial hardship. Government hospitals are too crowded and private clinics are too expensive for the poor. In such a scenario, quacks abound, offering quick fixes that worsen the situation. Media reports suggest that the mohalla clinics launched by the AAP government have come as a boon in the Capital, but this is not the case in all urban centres. The latest national health survey suggests improvement in key parameters in many states, but the pace of improvement needs to pick up drastically.

The third critical area where policies have been ineffective over the years is education. Government schools have become a byword for poor quality academics. Even the poorest of the poor seek to send their children to a private school to give them the benefit of a quality education. Some states have managed to improve the infrastructure in schools, but the quality of primary and secondary education in government institutions is uneven, at best. The assistance of agencies like Pratham and the Wipro Foundation have helped in some states to raise the quality of teaching. The plus point is that enrolment has risen significantly, but the level of academic attainments is abysmal, judging by the annual ASER report on education brought out by Pratham.

A representative of a UN agency working in the government once asked me whether the poor quality of public education was due to the fact that most bureaucrats’ children either studied abroad or at expensive public schools. The very fact that the civil services have created an elite school for their offspring in the Capital rather than relying on the government educational system speaks volumes about their own assessment of their work in this sector.

The inability of the political leadership, since Independence, to provide the basic necessities to the masses is inexplicable. It is due to this failure that the people are increasingly disenchanted with political parties and their promises. The overwhelming vote for the AAP was due to this disenchantment and the hope that there could be some political grouping that would actually implement policies to provide succour to the disaffected. The BJP is increasingly gaining ground among the youth who have great expectations that this is the group that will ultimately provide the much-needed “vikas” to the masses.

None of these political entities will remain at the helm for long, however, unless they are able to address this growing disparity between the rich and the poor.  A society that is geared to support the Lamborghini driver rather than the pedestrian is a society that needs a radical course correction. One can only hope that the present political leadership does it sooner rather than later and does not abdicate its responsibility towards those at the bottom of the pyramid.