tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8350112551539792336.post968851793780846554..comments2024-03-23T00:21:20.470-07:00Comments on Golf Charlie Papa: Tagore Trumps Gandhi - The Revolt Of Urban, Educated, Middle-Class Indiaprasadgchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00179696156998026173noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8350112551539792336.post-33094116688263304102013-06-05T00:37:36.044-07:002013-06-05T00:37:36.044-07:00Ganesh,
While I agree with the gist of your artic...Ganesh,<br /><br />While I agree with the gist of your article, I want to make a couple of points:<br /><br />1. The first is to amplify one of the things you mention - that villages are the hotbed of a lot of what is execrable in Indian society - such as casteism, ill-treatment of women, etc. The reason this does diminish when India urbanizes is that in urban India, you CANNOT live in silos in the same way you live in villages. You come to a city and have to live in an apartment complex. Your next door neighbor may be a person from a different caste, a different region of the country, or a different religion, and you don't have a choice in the matter. Few of us are wealthy enough to be able to afford to own a HOUSE in a city. This forces people to at least tolerate the presence of those they may despise, if not accept them. In time it leads to a more egalitarian society.<br /><br />2. Wrt Gandhi, I still think he had a point which has never been fully exploited in his economic theories. India has not adequately exploited the strengths of its villages and has not adequately developed the local traditions. Things, for example, such as local medicine, handicrafts, etc. I have personally met many practitioners of handicrafts and other village arts who have given up their hereditary professions to come to the city and work as presswallas and the like (and once those people start doing that, those arts die out.) This is happening because the government has not invested in rural India at all. As an unpleasant side-effect of this, we see the burgeoning of giant slums in cities, with their attendant loss in quality of life - no drinking water, no sewage, etc., etc. which is definitely undesirable. So I don't think Gandhi was completely wrong.Seshadri Kumarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16367107762267474532noreply@blogger.com