https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=TOIGO%2F2018%2F03%2F08&entity=Ar01208&sk=1FFEDE3D&mode=text
Every so often, a single data point pierces through volumes of statistics to reveal the heart of a complicated socio-economic landscape. One such moment of truth is on hand for India, in the findings of a new United Nations report surveying 89 countries on “progress and challenges in implementation” of global sustainable development goals as “examined through a gender lens”. Here it is, plain and simple: “the average age of death for Dalit women is 14.6 years lower than that for higher caste women”. Anyway ranking very low by every international standard, the average age of death for higher caste women across India is 54.1years. But for Dalit women the average age of death is just 39.5 years. In this 70th year of independence, there is considerable hype and backslapping congratulation about the “tryst with destiny” that bound together a scattered and disparate nation of a myriad different peoples, and surged irrepressibly out from the colonial yoke to vault into the space age. But in that famous speech at the Red Fort on August 15, 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru also pledged, “To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.” Here, the report card is grim. India has comprehensively failed. It’s true the topography of human development varies considerably across the country. Goa and Kerala perform with the best of Asia, ranking right alongside the developed world. Several of the North Eastern states have banked on traditional tribal values to do very well, even in difficult political and economic scenarios. But right across the most populated parts of India, mismanagement and under-performance have been entrenched for generations, with inequalities evident between upper and lower castes, and also rural and urban populations. For instance, this same UN report also found that young women in the Indian countryside are over 21 times less likely to go to school than their sisters in the cities, and almost 6 times more likely to become an adolescent mother. It’s impossible to ignore the severity of the fact that the average Dalit woman in India will not live to see her 40th birthday. According to the World Health Organisation’s most recent rankings, women in Japan (ranked first) have a life expectancy of 86.8 years. In at least 37 countries, including Israel (84.3), South Korea (85.5), Portugal (83.9), and Maldives (80.2), the average woman can expect to live twice as long as Dalit women in India. Even the worst-off, war-torn countries of Africa have better numbers. This is beyond appalling, or just another cause to be ashamed. It calls into question the national reason for being. Before India became a republic, the visionary B R Ambedkar hit bullseye again and again in his last speech to the constituent assembly (where he served as chairman of the drafting committee). He said, “On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognising the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life?” Ambedkar said “castes are anti-national” because “they bring about separation in social life”. He underlined, “political power in this country has too long been the monopoly of a few and the many are only beasts of burden, but also beasts of prey…it has sapped them of what may be called the significance of life. These down-trodden classes are tired of being governed. They are impatient to govern themselves…the sooner room is made for the realisation of their aspiration, the better for the few, the better for the country, the better for the maintenance for its independence and the better for the continuance of its democratic structure. This can only be done by the establishment of equality and fraternity in all spheres of life.” Seventy years later, the the challenge remains exactly the same.