India: The (in)human condition

If seeing homeless men crouched in doorways through the long nights of London’s bitter cold fills one with horror, reading of 5.5 million people on the dole fills me with envy. No, I have no desire to join the 258,000 migrants from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean out of the 371,000 foreigners who batten on the British taxpayer. But I cannot but wish that my country was as sensitive to the human condition as Britain in forging economic policies that shape such a compassionate society that people flock from far and near to bask in its benevolence.

Surely, the extraordinarily successful individuals that India’s economic revolution has directly or indirectly created can help to achieve that goal. Lakshmi Mittal is Britain’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani the builder of an architectural fantasy and Ratan Tata the boss of a global empire. So what? one might say unless their achievements benefit others. The Nizam of Hyderabad was reputed to be the world’s richest man but his jewels didn’t allay the poverty-stricken Deccan’s hunger. A country should be judged not by outstanding exceptions but by the average. That’s why, despite some impressive upward mobility in recent years, India still has a long way to go before it can compare with the welfare state Clement Attlee created and Lady Thatcher tried to destroy.
As a young reporter in this country I wrote about working-class men who shirked work to draw unemployment, housing, medical and other allowances. I knew of doctors who waxed rich by exploiting the National Health System. Since then there has been an influx of foreigners who abuse every welfare provision. The records suggest that Pakistanis, Somalis and Indians were the original offenders. Then came Bangladeshis, Iraqis and Iranians. Poland, Ireland, France and Italy are among the top 20 European nationalities on Britain’s dole list.
Migrants snap up 90 per cent of new jobs. Because of high birth rates and linguistic deficiencies, they cost schools 33 per cent more than native Britons. The official Migration Advisory Committee claims that migration causes pressure on housing, pushes down wages for lower skilled workers, and has put 160,000 British workers on the dole.
I have always wondered how little resentment all this generates. Perhaps local whites are seething within but a tradition of tolerance backed by stringent race relations laws has more or less banished discrimination. Nevertheless, two British ministers, Chris Grayling (employment) and Damian Green (immigration), warned cautiously last week that attitudes might change. “There’s a natural instinct that says no one from other countries should receive benefits at all,” they wrote.
The comment reminded me of an NRI doctor whose spoken English was so execrable as to be barely intelligible and whose manners were boorish in the extreme. When I mentioned him to an English friend, she replied in long-suffering tones, “Now you know what we have to put up with!”
The hysterical emails I get about Bangladeshi infiltrators “talibanising” West Bengal don’t suggest that many Indians view aliens with similar equanimity. Oh yes, India has known migrant waves since time began, but they were conquerors and the indigenous population had no choice in the matter. Britain’s immigrants arrive with permits to work or study or as tourists. They come clandestinely on lorries and in leaking tubs. Some are fleeing repressive regimes, asylum-seeking being big business. The European Union, with its heightened awareness of human rights, forces Britain’s hand when native hospitality falters. Many EU citizens exercise the right to travel, work and settle down free of restrictions.
However, it’s not an open-door policy that I am recommending. India has enough people and problems of its own without taking on more. I use Britain as an example of the ideal that attracts others. Curiously, it isn’t fashionable among Indians, especially Bengali professionals who make a jolly good living in this country, to admit any virtue in the host country. Listening to their griping you might even feel they are doing Her Majesty a favour by keeping the National Health Service or some other department going. They are strong on Indian nationalism and Hindu piety… but only at long range. Few expatriate patriots are prepared to live up to their principles and move back to the ostentatiously revered motherland. The amused dismissiveness of their British colleagues does not shame them out of posturing.
This is only another aspect of the failure at home that worries me. There was no point in talking about equity when there was no wealth to be shared, though some of our leaders did, indeed, echo the smugness of the Vietnamese foreign minister, Nguyen Co Thach, who famously observed, “We are not without accomplishment. We have managed to distribute poverty equally.” But now that India is on a roll, quoting another Southeast Asian politician, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, it is essential to adopt policies and promote practices that ensure that the division between haves and have-nots is not permanently seared into Indian life.
No one has grudges against Mr Mittal, Mr Ambani and Mr Tata for their success, but some mechanism must be devised to share it with others. If Mr Mittal pleads that his money is earned abroad then let him surrender all right to India. If he is Indian, then India has as much claim on him as on the other two. A graded system of taxation is one way of persuading those who have prospered from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s reforms to help build the better India that inspires him.
“Give me men of character and I’ll give you a new India,” said C. Rajagopalachari. It’s now up to the Mittals, Ambanis, Tatas and other Indian tycoons to show that the ability to make money doesn’t rule out character.

The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author