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Reviews
Annam
Bahu Kurvita
When no one
went hungry
The Tribune, Chandigarh, December 12, 1999
by Nancy Adajania
In my ancestral home in Gujarat, everybody was provided
for. Even as hot water was poured into the morning dough,
small balls of jowar were placed around the "thaal" for
hungry ants. And in the blistering hot afternoons, water and
food were given to the mentally ill, the orphans and old
people from the village. At dusk, the cows nuzzled at the "chapatis"
we held out to them, and after dinner, the bones were put
aside for the dogs of the mohalla.
Before sleeping, my grandmother left a handful of grain in
an otherwise empty granary jar, or a small piece of "chapati"
in the steel box at night. I always thought that she was
superstitious, repeating some ancient custom that has lost
its meaning. Actually, she was practising the traditional
act of giving: even non-living beings like vessels had to
have their powers renewed with food; no mouth could go
hungry. This act of giving was based on the principle of
sharing, giving without expectation of return. A sense of
wholeness was preserved in society by the act of sharing
one's goods with others and constantly replenishing both,
our physical and spiritual reserves. Here, there was no
place for vulgar hoarding or investments made for future
returns.
Sharing was institutionalised in traditional Indian society
through the establishment of institutions of hospitality and
learning. These institutions flourished all over India, from
Kedarnath in the north to Thanjavur and Rameswaram in the
south, as Jitendra Bajaj and Mandayam Doddamane Srinivas
inform us in their book, Annam Bahu Kurvita. The chetrums,
the charitable institutions of Thanjavur where people rested
on their way to Rameswaram, were equipped with teachers and
doctors. All the travellers, whether Brahmins or otherwise,
were given boiled rice.
Today, these institutions have been replaced by the State,
whose idea of giving is to perform spot-jobs in moments of
crisis. What the State gives, through its ill-planned
yojanas, can only be termed procedural giving. People live
on subsistence wages, are underfed and thoroughly exploited;
they just about survive at the margins of society. It is an
ill-conceived charity that NGOs too indulge in. There are
several voluntary organisations which function as
disaster-management operators, confined to giving out the
mandatory food and clothes to victims of some catastrophe or
the other, and then moving on to worse-hit pastures.
On my field trips into the interiors of Maharashtra, it has
been my experience that charity born out of ignorance leads
to resentment, violence and anger in its recipients. It
leads to despondency, a complete breakdown in the ability to
think for oneself and finally, laziness and defeat.
The word charity comes from the Latin word caritas, concern.
But charity today has come to mean nothing more than the
system of doles, which will result in a generation that will
never break this unequal contract of token generosity.
In the mid-18th century, British administrators made a
detailed study of the traditional institutions of charity
because they thought that large sums of money were being
wasted on such useless activities. They felt that they could
not extract revenue in areas where the act of giving was
considered sacred. They systematically abolished these
institutions which, for them, were a drain on the economy
(that is, they cut into the profits that would otherwise
accrue to the para-colonial British administration).
In the Report of the Indian Famine Commission, London, 1880,
the commissioners worked out a neat transaction with the
famine-affected people. First, put them on a 'dole'; then
withdraw it, as soon as the people are fit to start work.
This might seem like a logical solution, but the relief they
recommended for the people was a hard day's work at
specially organised labour camps in return for a subsistence
wage 'sufficient for the purposes of maintenance but no
more".
This situation should not come as a surprise to the
recipients of the EGS (Employment Guarantee Scheme),
especially in Maharashtra. The EGS is meant to support
people during critical situations like drought or crop
failure. But in Maharashtra, the EGS is employed for road
construction, electrification and afforestation, thus
limiting the employment opportunities of people who could
have done the same work for higher market wages. Or take the
ICDS, the Integrated Child Development Scheme, which
provides khichri to undernourished children, but does not
feel it necessary to construct creches so that the children
of working mothers are not neglected.
An intelligent charity born of vision and compassion for its
recipients is the only way out; nothing can be achieved by
extending the leprous hand of condescension.
Courtesy : Humanscape
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