The
Voice of a Real Aam Aadmi (Common Man) of India
A
First-Person Interview in a Mumbai Taxi
Reported by Dr. Seshadri Kumar
13 February, 2014
Copyright © Dr. Seshadri Kumar. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer: All the opinions expressed in this article are
the opinions of Dr. Seshadri Kumar alone and should not be construed to mean
the opinions of any other person or organization, unless explicitly stated
otherwise in the article.
*********************************
Abstract
This is
an account of an interview, the audio recording of most of which I have already
posted on youtube, which I personally conducted with a common man, an “aam
aadmi” of India - a person hailing from the Hindi heartland - a village in
Uttar Pradesh.
What I
learned from this interview stunned me – that the common man of rural India
today is nothing like what he is imagined to be by the mainstream press and by
the national parties. Instead of being
an ignorant beggar who has his arms outstretched for government handouts, the
aam aadmi of today in India is a confident, assertive person who simply wants
the shackles on his freedom removed – a man who favors a free-market system
instead of the freebie system that has been institutionalized in India.
The audio can be heard here.
The audio can be heard here.
Introduction
In December 2013, I had the opportunity to take one of those
A/C cab services that are ubiquitous in major cities in India today. In Mumbai there are several – Easy Cab, Mega
Cabs, Meru, and the like. I usually like
to chat with taxi drivers when I go on these rides, especially if it is a long
journey. This time I had the bright idea
of recording the conversation. When we
reached my destination, I told the driver I had been recording it, and asked
him if he would terribly mind if I shared it publicly. He happily gave his assent and said people
should hear the voice of a common man.
And so I am sharing this interview I had with a real Aam Aadmi. He happens to be a Muslim from Uttar Pradesh
(UP) who works as a taxi driver in Mumbai.
I found my subject to be extremely intelligent, highly aware
of the issues surrounding him, and a very competent decision-maker. I found our conversation to be very
illuminating, illustrating what the Aam Aadmi of this country actually
wants. He does not, as most political
parties today assume, want free food, free education, etc. He just wants freedom to earn his living and
earn his bread on his own merit. And he
trusts no politician.
There are those who will claim that this one sample does not
represent what all rural or urban Indians actually want. While I agree with such an assessment, and
make no claims that this is an exhaustive, scientific study, I still think this
individual will give us all an idea of what the real India wants – specifically
because my interview subject is from the minority community in India – the community
that is so specifically targeted by many government policies. My subject was also not rich – he made his
living as a taxi driver in Mumbai and came from a fairly poor background in his
village in UP.
It should be, therefore, quite educative for people
interested in Indian politics to understand what this gentleman from a minority
community – whom I had never met before (or after), and who had nothing to gain
from me by lying (he did not even know that I was recording this interview
until it was over) – had to say about the state of the country and what his
aspirations and the aspirations of his fellow-men and women are.
Narendra
Modi and Muslims
My interview was on the day that Narendra Modi had his
mega-rally in the Bandra-Kurla complex – December 22, 2013. Since my interviewee was a taxi driver, I
asked him what traffic disruptions he had witnessed. And so began our conversation.
He said that there were about 700 buses that had been
pressed into service to ferry the people who wanted to attend the rally from
various train stations to the venue. He
also told me that the party had organized food packets for tens of thousands of
people – each consisting of a samosas and other eats. He then asked me “what is the point of this
massive expenditure?” He said, wouldn’t
it make sense if the huge money spent on this rally was used to help poor
people?
This was getting interesting, so I asked him: “What do you
think of Narendra Modi?”
He said, “Sir, what is there to think about?”
I replied, “Well, the Congress government says that Modi is
responsible for the 2002 riots, and that if the BJP is elected and he is made
PM, he will engineer more riots against Muslims.”
He replied, “Sir, look, as far as instigating riots goes, it
is never one man. There are so many
people in this country who are guilty of instigating riots, who will you put in
jail? Also, I don’t believe that if Modi
comes to power, he will incite violence against Muslims. I believe he will make sure no such thing
happens on his watch.”
I then asked him, wondering if this might be the “new Muslim
voter” the BJP is looking for, “So do you believe that the BJP might improve
things for the common man?”
He surprised me by saying, “No sir, I don’t believe they
will. Nor do I believe that the Congress
will improve our lot, nor for that matter any other party.”
“So
you have no faith in any political party?” I asked him.
“No
sir, I don’t.”
“What about the Aam Aadmi Party?” I pressed on.
“They too are worthless, sir. Sab bakwas hai. Sab ek jaise hain.” (transl.: They are all
the same, just talk the same nonsense.)
At this point I decided this guy was very interesting and I
hit upon the idea of recording the conversation on my iPod. I did ask him before I disembarked if he was
okay with it, and he was fine. You can
see the recorded parts of the conversation here.
I reproduce most of the conversation below as a translation
from the Hindi. I have grouped our
conversation into topics, but that’s not exactly how the conversation went, as
you can hear from the audio. I quizzed
him on various topics of contemporary interest – and recorded his answers. I have grouped them into headings for ease of
navigation.
Here are the views of this Aam Aadmi on all these topics –
in his own words.
MNREGA
(Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme)
“The
MNREGA scheme is full of corruption. It happens this way: People work in this
program for a few months – 4 months, 6 months.
But how seriously the work is done is not examined. A little mud is removed, and walls are built
on the sides with mud, and they proclaim that a lake has been constructed. And then when the rains come, the mud walls
will dissolve, and no one will know there ever was a lake there. It is completely worthless.”
“Very few people in the villages enrol in MNREGA. Why? Because you get Rs. 120 a day for
participating in it. If you work
elsewhere, you will get Rs. 250. If you
can get Rs. 250, why would you go for Rs. 120?
Why would you join MNREGA?”
BPL
Cards for Food
“You know what happens in UP in these government
schemes? There are educated people who
earn Rs. 1 lakh or Rs. 1.5 lakh salary and possess below poverty line (BPL)
cards, and do you know what they do with the food they get from these cards? They feed the food to their animals!”
Housing
Subsidies
“There is this government scheme to provide the poor with
housing ... they supposedly give a poor family Rs. 20,000 or Rs. 25,000 to help
him build a small hutment. The person
who needs it doesn’t get it, and the person who lives in a palace grabs it and uses
the money to build a stable for his animals.”
Government
and Private Schools
“There are plenty of private schools in my village. I myself have studied in private
schools. Nobody goes to the government
schools in our village if they can help it; except the hopelessly poor, all
those who can afford it prefer the private schools. That’s because villagers want good education
for their kids.”
“Why don’t we go to government schools? Well, the government schools give you
everything – they give you food (midday meals), uniforms, books, all for free –
they even pay you to attend them – but they don’t provide the most important
thing that a school should provide – knowledge!
They don’t teach in government schools. And that’s why village folk don’t go to the
government schools. In fact, for 5
teachers in a government school, you won’t find 50 students in all for them to
teach.”
“And this is in spite of the fact that government school
teachers earn so much more than private school teachers. A government school teacher may make Rs.
45,000 to Rs. 50,000 per month, whereas a private school teacher makes only Rs.
3000 to Rs. 5000 per month. So why do
they teach in these private schools at that salary while the govt. school teachers
do not teach?”
“I’ll tell you – because there’s no need for them to
teach! There is no accountability! They government pays them anyway, right? They come in the morning, sign the register,
hang around for a little while, and then go home. The ones who teach primary classes don’t know
anything at all. Many do not even teach
English. If you do the same in a private
school, then in a couple of months, the parents will pull their kids out of
your school, saying your teachers do not know anything.”
“They
should get rid of all these government schools – privatize all of them.”
“You ask me if inspectors check these things – tell me, who
will check? The inspectors are related
to the teachers or are their friends.
There is nepotism everywhere. And
if there is the odd person out who wants to be honest, he will be transferred
either to another place or out of this world.”
“Earlier people were chosen on merit for jobs. Nowadays you sit at home, someone else writes
the exam for you and you pass it by paying money – and you get the job.”
“We only send our kids to English private schools. Nowadays, even in villages, good schools like
Dolphin schools are present. They are
good schools, but they do not ask much in fees --- it’s not much, but still
it’s significant for a villager: Rs. 300 or 400 a month, but we don’t mind
paying that.”
Government
Hospitals and Private Hospitals
“Now look at doctors.
Any doctor needs a BMC certificate to practise (so technically they are
all qualified doctors.)”
“But look at doctors in government hospitals. Aren’t they doctors? If you go to a government hospital, you’d
think they don’t know anything – their service is so poor. But you see them in their own clinics, and
then they are quite willing to practice medicine after taking Rs. 200 or Rs. 250!”
“The
only people who go to government hospitals are those who have no option. Those who can afford it, go to private
hospitals because the care is better.”
Political
Parties in UP and the Political Process
“All the political parties in my state are thieves. Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party – all of
them. I’ll tell you about the BSP. That is a completely worthless party. She (Mayawati) has no child, what’s she going
to do with that much money? Why the hell
does she have to spend so much on her birthday?
Do something that will benefit some people, even after you are gone, so
people remember you for something good.”
“You ask about caste.
Yes, unfortunately a lot of people still do vote on caste lines, though
they should use their brain, think carefully, and not do such things. They just sell themselves.”
“You ask me if Kumar Vishwas of the AAP can defeat Rahul
Gandhi. I say: why not? People will treat politicians like they treat
old clothes. Maybe it is time to wear a
new shirt? What have they (the Gandhis) done
for UP? If they were to provide
electricity, then some factories could propser.”
“Now think about this: if you set up a factory – will that not
provide employment to 5000 or 10000 people?
And it isn’t just the people who work in those factories – someone will
sell tea, someone will do some other service, and that’s how it works.”
“Elections are very expensive. Think of this: if there is an election in 5
years, the country goes backward one year, because of the expenditure involved.
That’s where all the money in
politics is.”
“Now think of this man, Narendra Modi. He used to sell tea. Where did he get all this money from for
today’s rally to burn? It is the public’s
money, right?”
“Think of Kripashankar, also from our state. He used to sell milk. His sister’s home is 3 kms from our
home. Where did he get all this money?”
“There is too much unemployment in UP. In UP, there are 8000 vacancies for watchmen,
80,000 police officer jobs are vacant.
Why doesn’t the state government do anything about it?”
Food
Security Bill
“Sir, they won’t give you any free food. You saw what they did with the LPG cylinders.
First they say we will give you only 6 subsidized cylinders; then, under
pressure from the public, they raised it to 9.
Where will they give it from?”
“Sir, 90% of Indians are poor. No one cares about the really poor.”
“They will give a pittance here and there and say they are
giving us free this and free that...but you know what? I say, don’t give us anything free! We have hands and feet, we can earn our own bread. Give us that (jobs) by which we can earn our
own money!”
Other
Thoughts
“Now you know they say that today everything is cheap and
made in China? I say it is not good, it
is bad for us.”
“You remember, in the old days, in the rain, everyone used
to wear Bata shoes. Now everyone wears
Chinese shoes because it is cheap. Yes,
it is cheap, but your jobs are going away!”
“People buy and throw things these days. In the old days, you wore a watch all your
life. Nowadays you buy a thing for a
couple thousand rupees, and there are no guarantees – they even post it on the
shop, much as you would post a sign, “beware of dogs.”
“Am I unique in the way I think? No, I don’t think so. I think many people think like me.”
“But you see, it’s like this. If you ask them, 'is this wrong?' most will
agree and say this is wrong. But if you
put them in the position of power, they too will do the same thing. They are not Gandhiji. If things are going waste, they will say let
it, it’s not ours, it is government money.”
“Times have changed a lot.”
My Concluding
Thoughts
Our interview ended when we reached my home, but I was
stunned and elated on what I had learned that day. Let me summarize my observations on the
interview.
1. The Aam Aadmi is not someone who can be fooled
or bought by freebies, the way the Congress, the BJP, and the AAP are trying to
do. I was absolutely stunned by what the
driver told me: “I say, don’t give us anything free – we have hands and feet –
we can earn our own bread!” I think
parties in our country had better wake up and smell the coffee.
2.
If this driver is representative of the people
in our country, then hopefully the evil effects of the socialist system that
were imposed on India by misguided intellectuals like Nehru since 1947 will
finally end. That this person is no fan
of state socialist policies was clear from his reaction to government schools,
government hospitals, the food security bill, MNREGA, food and housing subsidies. In every instance he thought the subsidy
schemes were worthless, not based on some textbook argument of why capitalism
is better than socialism, but on raw experience. He had seen firsthand that socialism did not
work for him and was rejecting it.
3.
The first (and obvious) conclusion from this is
that if the Congress Party has been (as it clearly has been) counting on the
various subsidy schemes that it has rolled out, including the Right to
Education Bill (Government Schools), Food Security Bill (Free Food), MNREGA
(Rural Employment Guarantee) to win over the rural poor, they have massively
miscalculated. The poor in the villages
are not impressed. The driver’s comments
on the condition of government schools is a scathing indictment of the UPA
government’s flagship scheme, the Right to Education (RTE) act.
4.
Even more significant than the fact that the
villagers are unimpressed is the reason why they are unimpressed: the realization
that these ideas SIMPLY DO NOT WORK.
5.
Why that realization is so stunning is that in
debate after debate on TV channels like Times Now, NDTV, CNN-IBN, and the like,
you have so many commentators who defend these freebie schemes as what the poor
really need. These commentators like to
attack those who criticize the government socialist schemes as elitist and paint
themselves as advocates of the poor. Not
only are the politicians totally out of touch with what works and what poor
people need, even the so-called social and economic experts, people like the
well-known Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and his followers, who make a living out
of acting like champions for the poor (who never asked for a champion), HAVE
BEEN DEAD WRONG. Mr. Sen may write a big
book with Mr. Jean Dreze, and get many people to praise it for his “humanity,”
but clearly he understands NOTHING of the way things REALLY WORK in India’s
villages.
6.
This should also be a wake-up call to the BJP,
most of whose leaders still seem to believe (with the notable exception of
Narendra Modi, who has been the only BJP politician to chant the capitalist
ideal) in the idea of the Mai-baap government, and many of whose leaders have
publicly said that they will continue the UPA’s disastrous subsidy schemes. One can only hope that these pronouncements
are cynical and that the BJP is saying them only to win the elections – but the
ground reality in BJP-run states like Chattisgarh, where 90% of the population
is covered by a food subsidy, suggests otherwise.
7.
What I heard this Aam Aadmi, this Common Man of
India, say to me is: “We’ve had enough of socialism. Free our shackles so that we can have a
free-market system.” And in cases where
they have been able to do it themselves (like having private schools in
villages), they have done so without waiting for someone to do it for them.
8.
Politicians in our country have been underestimating
Indian voters for decades. It is about time
they stopped doing so and started developing a mature relationship with them.
