Calcutta Diary

HE who escapes, lives : so goes that adage in Sanskrit. Young people from middleclass homes evidently are sold on it. The travel regulations are pretty rigorous; to arrange a passport can take months; foreign countries — even those who were generally hospitable in the past — have gradually clammed up; most of the time an uncertain future awaits the young men and women who migrate. Stil l they are not deterred. It is not so much the pul l of distant lands: the reason for their eagerness to take the plunge is more humiliating. They want to escape from their native plate, from its hopelessness and claustrophobia These youngsters are a near desperate lot, bonds of emotion do not detain them, they want to forsake their heritage. Every day, you can sec them crowding at the foreign consulats, swallowing the insults, and ignoring the brushoffs, from lowlyplaced officials.

HAZARDOUS OCCUPATION

One can rail against them. One can berate their lack of dignity, castigate them for their selfishness, be aghast at the poverty of their ideals. To sit in judgment over the conduct of others as however a hazardous occupation in all seasons. Mora l issues are hardly ever resolved through polemics or through a show of hands. More often than not patriotism merely provides instances of of IhaveIovedtheeSenecainmyfashion Some of the young people woul d even argue that, by leaving the country, they are lessening the burden 01 problems for the rest of the nation; the authorities wil l now be saved the bother of worryin g about them. Pitted against this, is the bynowstylised argument: the nation has invested so much of its scarce resources over so many years to feed and train these young men and women, they therefore have no business to depart, along wit h the capital embodied in them, to foreign shores. A n opportunity cost is involved in rearing and educating them: to allow them to leave is akin to a total writeoff of a certain volume of invested funds, whic h this poor country can i l l afford. A wouldbe emigrant, slightly disturbed by the moral aspects of his decision to get away, wil l perhaps commit himself to remitting from abroad the equivalent of the estimated sum till now spent on him by this society. Or perhaps lie will turn round are counterattack: the accident Calcutta Diar y AM of birth is an accident of birth, his commitment is not to his native land, hut to science and technology, and he wil l be in a better position to contribute to both i f he is permitted to work, under immensely more congenial conditions, in a foreign laboratory or plant than at a dreary place at home. li e might even decide to be viciously bel  liferent: i f the nation were interested in him, well, it should have provided him wit h wages and facilities commensurate wit h his talent, and in accordance wit h international standards. The majority of wouldbe emigrants wil l however stay away from controversies They wil l not even try to rationalise their decision, or to provide it wit h a moral cloak. They escape for breadandbutter reasons: because, wit h all its uncertainties, life is stil l much easier in a foreign country, corruption is less rampant, bureaucracy is a shade less hidehound, and jobs are stil l comparatively aplenty. It could be that the existence over there wil l be drab and anonymous, maybe one wil l miss the challenges and excitements one feces at home; but maybe one wil l also avoid the tensions and frustrations, the pettinesses, and the lack of opportunities. There is, after all, only one life to live : make the most of it whil e you Can, it necessity even at the cost of alienating the large, large numbers of your own people the are not as luck y as you are, who cannot escape.

There is, no doubt, a certain heartlessness in the phenomenon. Given the structure of distribution of assets and incomes in the country, some people suffer more than others do from the social and economic stagnation. Those wit h the advantages of an appropriate education and a disproportionately large share of the capital stock are able to get something out of even the decaying system. And , as they succeed in extracting more despite the lack of growth, the availability of goods and services and hence the standard of liv  ing are pari passu reduced for the others. If you want to stay alive, escape : says the adage. Bu t those wh o are impoverished do not, cannot, escape to foreign lands. Eve n to escape, yo u need assets. It is onl y those whe have assets — and 'connections ' — who manage to fly away Should one roar against them? Lack of idealism is however hardly a culpable offence. An d making the most of the opportunity of free mobilit y is, after all, one of the proclaimed virtues of the system of laissez faire. Before firing an ideological salvo at them, one must also be sure of one's own moral foundations. Patriotism cannot be forced into an individual' s metabolism; either he has it, or he has not. There can be no cram course where you pay the fee and pick up lessons on how to love the country. One comes to patriotism throug h one's sense o f pride i n one's native land. That pride is a gradually disappearing category for a notaltogetherinsignificant number in this country . Recent events have ushered in a kin d of nonphilosophical anarchism There is a loss of pride in the nation's achievements, perhaps because these have been so few and far between, fro m loss of pride follows the loss of a sense of involvement. The young people try to escape: they suffer from no ethical hind. Life is not worth living here, escape, join the rush to Canada, try hard for an immigration visa for the Unite d States, wangle a workpermitcumentry certificate from the British Hig h Commission. Arrange something and go, go, go. Let the nation be left to its own devices. To stay on in India is to condemn oneself to the daily grind of despair escape while there is still time, whil e the visas and the entry permits are stil l relatively easily grabbable.

VALID DATUM

Stop the world, we want to get off : say these youngsters from middl e class homes. Another lot of them, also from middleclass homes, equally sick wit h the state of affairs in the country, choose another course. Those of them who do not get kille d are locked away Does one venture to sit on judgment on either — or both? Must not those who stay behind and continue to fight for principles to be preferred to 'hose whose thoughts turn towards escape • most of the time, comfortable escape? But that too woul d be an exercise in preferring between systems of values And this is a hazy world , ruled by in  d'terminacy. But that the rate of economic development has been brought down to nearzero is a statement whic h does not involve any moral dictum: It is a fact. The opportunities for gainful work have almost totally dried up is another fact. That corruption has proliferated, both inside the citadel of power and outside is an equally vali d piece of datum. That the credibilit y of the government has been so eroded that many wil l not thrust it even over 1086ECONOMI C AN D POLITICA L WEEKL Y July 13, 1974 the time of the day cannot be denied either. But, beyond such assurances, what else can one cling to? Gloom and loss of faith, a feeling that nothing matters any more; the blurring of distinction between idealism and the lack of it: these are the staples of the day. There was, perhaps, at one point of time, an excess of identification between the processes of the government and the nation's aspirations. This, the cyme would say, was the leftover gift of socialist pretension. Now that the government has been seen plain, the crumbling of faith has dragged each and 'Very thing down. The nation is infested by hypocrites: the proposition passes by a unanimous show of hands. The nation has been captured, and is being led, by a claque of crooks: motion approved again. The nation is altogether lacking in moral principles, for this is what the leaders have reduced it to: again, the proposition wins, hands down. The nation docs not any longer grip you, it cannot therefore command your allegiance. The morality at the aggregative level is matched by a frightening array of individual amoralities Cal l it brain drain, call it the apotheosis of talent, the rush to forsake the native soil therefore continues, and you are admonished to withhold your moral judgment. The stringency in 'P' form regulations cannot stem the title. People, find devious ways to give the nation the slip. They manage to get away from it all.

Those who make the getaway do not stop to consider the plight of the millions who cannot escape, who will have to remain behind, grist in the mil l of the ruling class. Now is lor now, and each is for himself or herself Those who can, escape, for they have learned that those who escape, live, Whether those that are left behind deserve an equal opportunity to live is a thought which does not detain them: this callousness they have picked up from the environment which currently defines the nation. This cynicism, in a manner of speaking, sunthesises within itself the saga of the Indian tragedy Shut your heart against the past and the future, now is for now. Wha t is even worse, right is wrong and wrong is right, and none could tell it all by sight. Crass authoritarianism can now pass for humanism; fascist behaviour can parade as socialism; putting the squeeze on the poor can be trumpeted as another milestone on the road to egalitarianism. Crooks are rewarded with national honours; opportunism is elevated to the status of a national code; debauching the modalities of justice so as to serve a sectarian cause, is applauded from official forums; bending the administrative process for furthering a narrow, partisan objective is asserted as a fundamental right; the country's economic future is bartered away through heavy borrowings abroad and the operation is described as a decisive step towards selfreliance. The pride is gone; not because this nation is poor, nor because the nation has little to show by way of achievement in any sphere, but because it — rather, its selfstyled leaders — have promoted lack of integrity as the centrepiece of the new morality. The listlessness one senses is the listlessness which follows from an abdication of faith One particular code of faith, on which one was wont to lean, has been sabotaged, and no surrogate seems to be around. Nobody knows for certain how long the interregnum is going to be, or whether this tunnel, where one waits, itself constitutes the remainder of one's existence. Since no specific coordinates of social behaviour are any longer considered viable, people make their own rules. Some of the stragglers, the oldfashioned ones, still join processions, dream dreams, and crowd into prisons. Others, who have liberated themselves, either make their pile in the black market, bribe ministers and buy governments — or quit the land In the absence of a community preference map, who is to judge who are the saints and who are the sinners? The climacteric of the Indian drama is at hand: right is wrong and wrong is right, and who can tell it all by sight?