Just finished reading an awesome book, a book that sharply pricks your dozing

conscience, a book that captures the stinking reality of poverty in rural India, a book
that views from the ground level the hypocrisy of our state developmental programs,
a book that reveals the class character of the Indian State with its pants down, a
book that identifies the proto-formations and processes that deal with the
unfinished agenda of the Indian revolution. And yet, and this is the beauty of this
exceptional book, it never blabbers ideology, rarely mentions a name except to
elucidate a process, rarely refers to research papers and documents. It is plain,
simple reporting from Indias poorest districts by a reporter who believes that the
fourth estates duty is to point out the weaknesses in society, to report not only
events but also the processes, especially the developmental process, and who
believes that the more elitist the press gets, the less it will be able to do these simple
things.
Yeah ! You got it right mate, this book is none other than P. Sainaths Everybody
loves a good draught. First published in 1996 by Penguin India, ISBN
9780140259841, it is equally valid today. The intervening two decades have only
further underscored the trends the author filtered out of rural poverty in some of the
poorest districts of our country, especially the Indian states gradual withdrawal
from delivering the basics like education, health, housing etc. to the people.
For example, the author argues, while our Freedom Fighters had wanted to spend
10% of GDP in education, in the 1st 5 year Plan education expenditure was 7.86% of
GDP, then in the 2nd Plan it was 5.83%, in the 5th Plan it was 3.27% and in 2006 ( as I
could see in Wikipedia) it had come down to 3.1% only. Cuba spends (2006) 13.6%,
UK & USA 5.5% each. All 3 countries have 100% literacy and yet they find it
befitting to spend such amounts on education. The Indian State, on the other hand,
more so after rise of the neo-liberal agenda with Rajiv Gandhi, passed the buck, with
NFE ( non formal education) hogging increasingly more space of our NEP ( New
Education Policy of 1985) . It was a tacit declaration by the state that universal
education was no longer a goal, that all children do not have the same right to a
common minimum decent education. And paucity of funds was a shameless fig leaf,
as institutions of higher learning, meant for the elite, never faced the fund crunch.
After all, educated children will strike at the roots of child labour, and our
developmental plans, shaped by IMF-World Bank ideologues, must ensure cheap
labour as a fundamental right of the real beneficiaries of planning. The author
ruefully recalls John Kenneth Galbraith, There is no literate population that is poor,
no illiterate population that is not poor.
You read about Kishan Yadav of Lalmatiya, Godda, Bihar who trudges 40 to 60 km
on his cycle in wretchedly sultry weather to earn Rs. 10/day ( barely a 3rd of the
minimum wage in Bihar those days.. 1993). You read about Pyari in Jajgir or Puthuli

in Kantaroli village in the erstwhile M.P. who toil, along with her domestic chores,
from 0430 in the morning till sunset, to earn Rs 21-Rs 24 per day packing kendupatta
gaddas. You read about the tribes in the jungles and the moneylenders and the
thieving forest guards and the rural swindlers of poor chilli farmers, about the failed
Bhoodan movement and the unavoidable necessity of land reforms, about the crimes
and no punishment matrix of the bureaucrat contractor politician cliques in
district after district after district in Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Tamilnad,
where the common assets of the people are being looted by these cliques to merry
abandon. You read about the merciless migrations from Kalahandi and Koraput,
from Padukkottai and Ramnad, from Surguja and Jhabua. You read about how
drought relief is one of Indias biggest growth industry, even while those who need
the relief most seldom benefit from it, and why Everybody loves a good drought.
And you also read about the brave fight backs by the poor, with their own weapons,
in forms as diverse as the people themselves. Sometimes it is to save their societal
right to quarry the stone, sometime to save their historically owned forests from
forest guards, sometimes to save the families from the Arrack mafia, sometimes to
ensure drinking water or a roof. With subtle care and finesse the author introduces
the political activist ( as far as I could sense, its a pseudonym for the Leftist
organizer) who is infinitely interwoven with the people in their intrinsic,
unavoidable class struggles, for emancipation.
This book is a great equalizer. It humbles us, the urban intellectual; it deflates our
ego, it questions our smug honesty. But the book is much more than that, it is much
beyond a chronicle of poverty, it is an inspiration, raw inspiration. Read it, my
friends, and we shall be better Leftists and Communists.