When Mahatma Gandhi wrote “The worst form of
violence is poverty,” he sowed the seeds for imagining an India that would one
day be free from poverty, where the large numbers of the poor in the country
would have access to the basic capabilities of life.
More than seven decades after Indian independence,
Gandhi’s dream continues to be a far-fetched illusion. The bottom-half of the
country continues to struggle with lack of access to basic infrastructures of
food, health, and shelter.
This is the picture of poverty that is uncomfortable
to the likes of Narendra Modi, whose image of “Shining India” is disrupted by
the accounts of poverty in India.
When Mr. Modi recently remarked that “Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh is marketing India’s poverty,” what he actually demonstrates is
his own adeptness at marketing. Framing talk about poverty as the marketing of
poverty is itself a powerful marketing move.
It’s a strategy that on one hand, seeks to market
India as a brand, and on the other hand, markets Modi as the protector of the
“India” brand.
Poverty gets in the way of brand India that Mr. Modi
wants to project to the world. He implicitly then speaks to the nationalistic
instincts of Indians, suggesting that he would be a better global ambassador
for brand India abroad than the ruling party.
That poverty in postcolonial India should be hidden
in the national narrative is part of a larger story of a fast growing India
where the glamour of the malls and the cash flows generated by the IT sector
are the real stories to be marketed.
In this larger effort at branding vibrant India,
there is little place for talks about poverty, for engaging with questions of
poverty, or for seriously debating the underlying structural issues that
constitute poverty.
Perhaps, the picture of poverty in India is too inconvenient an image for Modi to grapple with. Or perhaps more so, in his accounting of brand India, portrayals of poverty disrupt the positive spin on economic growth and economic efficiency that Mr. Modi seeks to deliver.
Modi’s adeptness at spinning a story is well evident
in his story of success of Gujarat as an economic powerhouse. In this branding
strategy that has paraded the narrative of economic growth, we don’t hear about
the poverty rates in Gujarat during the same period of economic growth. We are
not privy to the data that demonstrate that in spite of the high growth rates
exceeding nine percent a year over the decade in the 1990s, poverty in many
villages in the Northeastern part of the state has hardly changed at all. We
don’t hear the stories or the voices of the poor as we are regaled with the narratives
of business success.
If the Mahatma were to return to Modi’s Gujarat,
what questions would he ask about the stories of economic growth? Would he ask
Indians to take a close look at the poverty in Gujarat even as they are drawn
to the promises of economic growth? Would he ask Indians to consider the
violence of poverty as they spin stories about malls, call centers, the telecom sector, and IT
hubs?
Mahatma Gandhi’s lessons continue to be relevant in
the imaginations of a vibrant India.
In these
imaginations, the stories of poverty are just as important as the stories of
success and economic growth.