A well-known venture capitalist and one of Bharat’s leading tech-entrepreneurs had a mild face-off on X recently. The controversy was about the way forward for cities with choking infrastructure like Bengaluru. In response to the latter’s suggestion that the way forward was development focused on rural India, the former claimed that no developed economy is predominantly rural and that we need to “wean our people off the land and into cities”. Technocrats will decide if emulating economic models of developed countries- which took shape in different circumstances, societies and periods of history- are suitable for India today. The increased emphasis we see today on skill-development and vocational training may be seen as restoration of respect for Lok Vidya as opposed to the disproportionate prestige that has been attached to other forms of education. It may help reduce the rural-urban economic divide at least in terms of talented manpower. The NEP 2020 makes promotion of Lok Vidya a specific goal. Beyond such technocratic matters, the significance of the rural-urban divide for democracy itself needs greater study. The quality of our democracy is the bedrock for all development including economic progress. One can have the best technological equipment coming from the city to clean the village’s waste. But whether the decision to do so should include participation of the villagers or not is a different question altogether. The same developed countries whose models we have been trying to emulate have seen a surge of populism in recent times. These political developments have been seen as a result of pent-up resentment among communities, which went undetected or ignored in the practice of representative democracy and became easy fodder for divisive politics.
Rebuilding Communities
As political philosopher Charles Taylor writes, regions like “the rust belts of the United State and France…have been devastated by decades of deindustrialisation, neoliberal fiscal policies and political neglect that the (local communities) find themselves lacking the resources to effectively respond to their present and future challenges.” Taylor points out that no amount of transfer of material resources to these regions will help because industries and technology of a certain kind have shaped not just incomes and skills but also “the prevailing images of what it means to be a worker or what it means to care for your family”. So communities that are not close to such industrial and technological developments lose “their self-esteem or their sense of self-worth, on both the individual and collective level.” They become “passive victims in an anonymous machine.” The way forward, according to Taylor, is rebuilding communities from the bottom like how some Citizens Councils in Austrian villages and Citizen Assemblies in Ireland have done. In India too initiatives of individual Sarpanches and local leaders have transformed villages, stemming population flight and increasing participatory democracy. These examples are few and far in between because the general consensus is in favour of urbanisation.
Fostering Democratic Values
The question of participation and deliberation in democracy is related to the urban-rural divide in a significant way. The psychology of the Indian villager’s aspiration for a city life is best captured by Ashis Nandy in his book on Indian cinema, “The anonymity and atomisation in a city are doubly seductive in a society scarred by socio-economic schisms and cultural hierarchies…to lose oneself in the city is to widen one’s freedom.” Conversely, “all initiatives in the village, including remedies for social discrimination and institutionalised violence must have originated in the city…(and) executed in the village.” This psychological result of the modern-colonial enterprise has made the city incapable of sustaining participatory or deliberative democracy because the charm of “anonymity and atomisation” de-incentivises mutual cooperation. Urban civil society has proved incapable of providing meaningful direction to governance. One only needs to look at polling percentages in urban local body polls, especially among the relatively affluent, to get an idea of the levels of public apathy. On the other hand, there have been numerous studies on how Gram Sabhas foster democratic values and when practiced over long periods with the right kind of state-intervention can reduce inequality and make a more lasting difference to social schisms than mere escape to the “anonymity” of urban life.
In one such study, Paromita Sanyal and Vijayendra Rao say, though State-level policy makes a lot of difference, Gram Sabhas can “become a…space where people make demands, transgress boundaries, defend positions, campaign, instruct, inform, entertain and where mutual respect becomes an institutionalised practice.” This will sound too messy for the urban Indian. More importantly, the Panchayat systems even in States that showed great potential are under increasing stress partly because, like an expert points out, “The consistent trend of urbanisation has meant that the policy focus of development has shifted to India’s cities and towns.”
Budding Lawyers Prefer Big Cities
As a lawyer, I have always wondered why in a country with just one lawyer for every 1,800 people, as opposed to one for every 200 in a country like the US, we need a Bar Council entrance exam to filter the number of enrolling lawyers. The answer is simply that most fresh law graduates want to work in big cities. This is completely understandable considering the priority of career opportunities. Doctors, who render more essential services, are often called upon to work in rural areas mandatorily. The deeper question is how this skewed model of development has made citizens feel about themselves. Acharya Vinobha Bhave may be accused of exaggeration when he says, “When village disputes are referred to a city court and settled by city people, the proper name for it is slavery of servitude or dependence.” But any city lawyer who interacts with a village client who is forced to come to him at great cost for a better opportunity at justice, will vouch for the sense of alienation and helplessness the client feels.
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