Whatever It Is, I’m Against It.

(24 Sept 2012)

            If you want foreign FDI, I’m against it. Had you not wanted it, I’d have asked why. It doesn’t matter which government’s occupying The Chair. I know my rights: cribbing is one of them. I don’t know my responsibilities and don’t want to know either. That’s the attitude of the average Indian today.

 I’m fazed by the news shows on television. I don’t know whose side to take when hysterical shouting bombards my senses. Ever since I quit working at a job and bought a television, I’ve learned about what’s happening in India (and other places on the planet) through on-screen yelling. Regarding FDI: not a single channel has shown an objective debate with sane voices stating pros and cons in tones/voices and vocabulary that I can comprehend and accept. I consider myself ‘common’ (as in ‘common (wo)man’, a very Indlish term) and assume that whatever decision is taken will subsequently somehow affect my tightly budgeted housewifely duties. That’s why I’m keenly watching/listening to all the opinions coming my way.

In 1987, the publication I worked for acquired a computer. It was kept in an air-conditioned room. In those days, offices weren’t cooled the way even shoe-shops are these days. We had to remove our footwear to step into the sanctum sanctorum to see what that very expensive equipment looked like. All of us were afraid of it because whispers echoed around that Computers Would Replace Human Beings and People Would Lose Jobs By the Thousands. Time went by and Sam Pitroda was proved right: the arrival of the computer, and later the internet and the mobile phones, changed how we functioned. My middle-class world altered rapidly, much of it for the better. I don’t shed romantic tears over the extinct letter-writing era.

I’ve found that technology benefited many like me. Did it take my countrymen out of poverty? No.  But it still did transform a very large number of lives.

Back to the FDI: Will the grocer who has served my family for two generations survive its arrival? Which elements of culture and commerce will go? 

In 1978, good quality rice was used only when we had guests. Regular rice was full of stones. Mustard or jeera seeds had to be rinsed to get rid of grit. My children haven’t a clue that once milk and sugar were rationed. Biotechnology zindabad. We moan the loss of several ethnic foods/seeds/genetic strains. We must protect them, but alongside, accept that genetically modified seeds are necessary, too.

Just a few years ago, it took long to get a domestic gas connection.  Today, in our village here in Goa, the only ones who don’t use gas are those who’ve come in from other states as daily wage earners.

Times and lives change with policies. (And technology: stem-cell treatment, which until last year sounded like mumbo-jumbo, has already benefited patients in some medical areas).

I see Goa as a part of India. The pride I take in my culture is exactly like the pride a Malayali, Haryanvi or Assamese takes in his.

Goa has several advantages over some other states: like a higher level of literacy and better healthcare facilities.

What choice will Goa make regarding the FDI? Will we agitate like we’ve done for roads going through our villages, the airport at Mopa, against selling land to outsiders, the mining lobby?

Suppose the government gave us perennial potable water in our taps, would we stop selling bottled water? That would reduce the garbage. Could we ban manufacture or import of plastic bags? That would reduce the garbage, too. Could we acquire the discipline to handle the garbage we (in every home, hotel or factory) generate? At least segregate it and pay for its disposal? We need better organized, affordable public transport, which means we need better, broader roads, too. Complaints pour in, but few practical, commercially viable alternatives to what we have now are given.

We blame others for our ills. We want to straddle both sides of the fence: we want to move with the times, yet are fiercely clinging to our past. The FDI might change some of the latter (our past, our habits, our traditions). Will we, won’t we allow it? Will we, won’t we benefit? Or will we be against it just because we can’t bear to change the ‘real’ Goa, whatever that is? I’m curious.

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