Uplifting stories of upward mobility

After 36 years in the Indian Police Service (IPS), followed by four years in Romania as India’s Ambassador, I returned in 1993 to Mumbai, where I was born and where my father’s forebears had settled in the first half of the 19th century. I decided to accede to my dear wife’s wish to “settle down” in our permanent home, refusing offers that would require me to move out of the city.

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My first thought after deplaning following a long journey from Bucharest via Lisbon (to touch base with my only uncle who had settled there) was to work for the constabulary that lived in the Police Lines near my permanent residence.

One visit alerted me to the fact that the perennial problems of alcoholism, domestic violence and errant children were a thing of the past. The constabulary was vastly more educated, with only graduates having made the cut. In one sense, it reflected the paucity of paying jobs in the private sector or, what was more likely, a lack of skills required by industrial houses even at junior levels. There was one other dominant consideration that prompted cops’ children to opt for a career in the police. That consideration was the need to assure the personnel who were about to retire from service of a roof over their heads in the ‘maximum city’.

If the sons and daughters managed to beat the competition, the paternal ‘kholi’ would be allotted to the new entrant as per the prevalent policy. That would mean that the father would continue to stay in Mumbai instead of being compelled to return to his village, where his siblings and their families had already established themselves.

A far greater revolution had taken place. The new entrants to the ranks had married educated girls, many of whom were college graduates like them. The fact that girls are opting for education beyond the high school level is changing the entire dynamics of life in police colonies and beyond.

Not every woman is employed, but the many who are have made a huge impact on their living standards and the social outlook of the family. They limit the number of their offspring and send their only child or two children to English-medium schools. About a decade ago, I was asked by some eager parents to plead with principals of English-medium schools to admit cops’ children to their institutions. Many of them did oblige.

My colleague in the IPS, D Sivanandhan, when he was posted as Commissioner of the Thane police, opened a school in the Police Lines to cater to policemen’s children in that city. When he moved to Mumbai as the Police Commissioner, I requested him to repeat the feat here. He did try hard, but found it difficult to locate a suitable and available plot for the school in this overcrowded metropolis.

On January 1 this year, my former PSO (personal security officer) Rahul Laxman Bhoj and his wife called on me. They brought along their only child, a girl. Rahul’s wife Swati is a software engineer who probably used to earn more than him before she became a mother and was forced to take a break from work. Their seven-year-old daughter, Ira, was clearly a very intelligent child, full of confidence and quick on the uptake. She impressed me immensely. I am sure that with the personal attention that the mother is giving the child, Ira will turn out to be an asset not only to the family but also to Maharashtra and the country.

Karthik is the son of Ramesh Wala, who sweeps the compound of the building where my former colleagues and I stay. He had been enrolled in an English-medium school, but his ability to speak the language needed a huge boost. I asked the boy to accompany me on my daily walk around the building, speaking only in English. His skill improved. He went on to enter a university and landed a job as an event manager after graduation.

It gives me immense satisfaction to mention these upward mobility cases that are helping to surmount the restrictions imposed by the deeply entrenched caste system. Even the four-centuries-old conversion to Christianity in Goa had not made a proper dent in the caste configuration. The priesthood was thrown open to all, but inter-caste marriages continued to remain out of bounds. Ten years ago, I met Bernardo, the son of the landless labourer who had been allotted a small plot on my maternal grandparents’ landed property in the Goan village from where they hailed. He had worked in Dubai, earned a tidy amount of dirhams, returned and built a proper house to replace the mud hut that passed for his dwelling place. His two daughters had studied in English-medium institutions, graduated, done clerical jobs in Mumbai, got married and made a better life for themselves than their disadvantaged parents.

Bernardo offered me a beer. I asked him to share it with me, but he would not. No amount of gentle persuasion could make him change his mind. I said we would drink to the fact that he had educated his girls so well. Even that was unable to do the trick.

In contrast to Goa, Bihar has much catching up to do. After I broke the neck of my femur bone five years ago and underwent surgery, a famous physician, Dr Farokh Udwadia, warned me of worse consequences in case I fell again. I hired a boy from Bihar to ensure that I did not fall. He told me that he was a ‘Maha Dalit’. I had not heard of any such category in Maharashtra.

Five months ago, he approached me with tears in his eyes as the village medical clinic run by the government had detected a hole in the heart of his recently born son. The doctor in charge told him to take the child to Delhi or Mumbai.

The very fact that the authorities have opened a medical unit in one village of a cluster was a great advance. One or two decades ago, the hole in the heart would have gone undetected! Arrangements for mother and son to travel to Mumbai were made. My nephew, one of Mumbai’s leading cardiologists, attended on the tiny one who has as much a right to live as you and I.

These are positive stories of progress that should take my readers’ minds away from Uttarakhand’s Uniform Civil Code and the installation of the new Delhi CM.