For most of my life I’ve been given floccinaucinihilipilification (the action or habit of estimating something as worthless) — and the use of the second-longest word in the English dictionary — completely needless, leads me to an extremely existential question – Why? This is not the dilemma brought on by some premature version of a ‘mid-life crisis’. It is the result of a Saturday spent with my alma mater at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, talking about and to a man, who has just won a Ramon Magsaysay Award for his contribution to society.
In his acceptance speech in the Philippines, Anshu Gupta, the founder of Goonj, said he did not want to change the world; he just wanted to make it better. That came across as earnest. But as he was being felicitated by the IIMC Alumni Association, that earnestness changed into the bare naked truth, when he said, “I can’t sleep at night because I have burdened by a huge debt.”
And then he went on to explain how he owed a huge debt to his country and its taxpayers whose money had subsidized his education at this government-run institute. Imagine my indignation — what debt? I had (many moons ago) made it to IIMC on my merit. I had battled off reservation (all such government institutes have half the seats reserved) and competed in the open category to be selected for a course in journalism at what was then one of the few institutes to offer such a course.
But the rationale hit home and I’ve stewed in it for a good three days now. Yes, I competed but then I also ended up paying ₹20,000 and not ₹5 lakh as the course, correctly priced should have cost. I went to a government college in Calcutta (now Kolkata) which is one of the best in the city and where the taxpayers spent ₹1 lakh each year on a student like me. Then of course there is the entire hidden subsidy. For example, I went to Delhi Public School, which in all probability got the land, on which the school stands, at extremely subsidized rates from the government.
Most of us, the ‘creamy layer’ as sociologists and economists keep referring to, have benefited from these subsides enormously and continue to do so. According to estimates, nearly 3% of the country’s GDP is spent on subsidies — and much of it seems to be coming to people who don’t need it.
For example, how many of us have given up the LPG subsidy that we enjoy? Government figures from earlier this year say 10 lakh people have voluntarily done so. Good going you may say — not really, when the total number of LPG subscribers is a little over 15 crore. Yes I know, there are arguments both for and against this — but this is just an example. An example of how we all take from the system, selfishly and yet, put very little back in…
So what Anshu says makes sense. Give something back to your country not because of some inherent sense of patriotism but because you’ll sleep easy knowing that you’ve tried to repay the debt of the people to the fullest. It could be with something as small as running a neighbourhood watch that makes your back alley a safer place or petitioning your MLA or civic councilor for relaying the water pipelines.
Abraham Lincoln said, democracy is “for the people, of the people and by the people”. It is the actions of citizens such as us that will determine the quality of our society and our democracy. So we need to be the change instead of resisting it…
Abraham Lincoln said, democracy is “for the people, of the people and by the people”. It is the actions of citizens such as us that will determine the quality of our society and our democracy. So we need to be the change instead of resisting it…
For me, step 1 is awareness. Step 2 is WIP.
This article was first published in timesofindia.com
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
