India Rising: Tales from a Changing Nation (28 page)

It would be easy to idealise the rustic simplicity of Mendha Lekha. In reality, life is far from perfect. Like anywhere else, residents fight and the best-laid plans sometimes fail. Many of the adults remain illiterate and the ill can lack proper care. As for facilities, the primary school could be bigger and the health centre better equipped. For many core amenities – a hospital, a bank, a secondary school, a dentist, a market, even a shop – they have to travel miles. And the public transport is slow and unreliable.

Even so, sitting there, on the floor of the IT centre, with its one computer and single scanner-printer, I utter silent thanks to Charandas. A thanks for renewing my focus, for reminding me that progress isn’t quantified only in the material, for reawakening
me to the upbeat, optimistic spirit of New India. It’s that which dazzles so.

I pick up Devaji’s booklets and move towards the doorway. As I turn to go, a final question occurs to me. Are there more examples like Mendha Lekha? Charandas shakes his head. He wishes there were. Why not? Lack of knowledge, he replies in a shot. ‘Many are still not educated.’

The comment reminds me of my conversation with Dr Kopulwar. Education, he’d said, is the gateway to development. The Deputy Collector’s disgust at Beenagonda’s ashram school was similarly motivated. Could education really be so fundamental to breaking the curse of India’s so-called ‘backwardness’?

I leave Gadchiroli the following day. Next time I’m close to a computer, I look up the key statistics for India’s educational performance. The facts are startling. Literacy levels among the adivasi are among the worst in India. The problem does not end there, though. A third of the world’s illiterates live in India. Around one in four (twenty-seven per cent) of young people between thirteen and thirty-five cannot read or write. Hidden within those numbers is a learning divide. Literacy rates are only rising half as fast in the overcrowded cities as they are in rural areas. Girls, meanwhile, are ten per cent less likely to enrol in secondary school as boys.

India’s leaders are not blind to the gulf between the educational ‘knows’ and ‘know-nots’. The fact that the ranks of India’s poor, malnourished and generally disadvantaged are filled with illiterates is now widely recognised. In Delhi, moves are under way to try and resolve the problem. With much fanfare, Parliament recently passed a bill enshrining every Indians’ fundamental right to education. From now on, the law holds that all those aged between six and fourteen years must be given a shot at formal schooling. Crores of rupees are being thrown at the target.

Any changes will take time to kick in. For the moment, India’s public education system remains permeable, leaking teachers and losing some children altogether. I travel across the country to meet a voluntary group trying to plug the holes.

Jayaraj pulls up on Sri Konada Prakash Rao Road. The narrow street is devoid of shops and unusually empty for an Indian city in the mid-afternoon. We alight and edge past a couple of rusty parked cars. A destitute-looking cow is nosing through the roadside rubbish. His coat is patchy and his hind legs caked in mud. He turns his head, appraising us with a stare that’s both jealous and threatening, as if warning us to beat it from his patch and go find our own to pilfer.

A brick wall runs up from the junction of the road. We follow it as far as a doorway. The gate rests ajar. Slumped with his back against the gatepost sits Guravaiah. He is an adivasi, from the Dommara community, one of millions of tribals to have gravitated to India’s cities in search of work. Verging on the obese, the middle-aged migrant sports a bushy seafarer’s beard. The top of his head is equally overrun with hair, as if by leaving it to grow wild his facial appearance can obtain equilibrium.

Jayaraj asks after his health. The two seem to know each other a little. He can hardly move, he replies, making a show of trying to rise to his feet and failing. His back has gone. Jayaraj commiserates. The two talk for a while about his condition and possible remedies. For much of his adult life, Guravaiah has worked as
a rickshaw puller. In more recent years, he traded up the hand-drawn cart for a cycle version.

The gateway gives way to a courtyard. Guravaiah invites us in. A small, padlocked bungalow is situated on the left. Behind, running down the slope towards the banks of a canal, is an attractive, tree-lined garden. The immediate area is paved, with a smart black jeep parked in one corner. The car belongs to the landlord.

Guravaiah acts as gatekeeper. The task extends to his wider family. Three women – one per generation by the looks of it – lie strewn on the tiles. A jumbled assortment of infants and young children are sprinkled among them.

Guravaiah’s son-in-law works as a servant in a low-grade hotel. His income is pitiful and falls far short of what’s required to keep everyone fed. The younger two women – the gatekeeper’s wife Jamalamma and twenty-year-old daughter – go out to earn as well. During the day, they work as rag-pickers, sifting through the city’s garbage bins. At night, they prostitute themselves.

The family’s adopted home of Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh serves as the main train junction for southern India. Hundreds of passenger and freight trains pass through this hot, dog-eared city every day. It has a sprawling business park for heavy industry, an automotive district for the production of car body parts and very little else. Vijayawada’s tourist office must have a hard time selling the place.

Because of the city’s role as a rail hub, however, people are always passing through. Most are men, lorry drivers in the main. The sex trade is, as a consequence, one of the few boom industries in this city of transients. Rates of HIV/AIDS also run frighteningly high. For the most part, Jamalamma and her daughter don’t have to tout for work. The city’s canal banks (Vijayawada has three canals in total, all of them black and swollen with filth) have a reputation as red-light areas. Both women have regular clients.

It’s Jayaraj, not Guravaiah, who gives me the family’s back-story. Many Dommara women work in the sex trade, he tells me. For them, as for a handful of other tribal communities,
prostitution has become a ‘traditional occupation’. Like carpentry or shoe-mending or rag-picking even.

Jamalamma stretches and wakes from her afternoon nap. Surprised to find her husband with visitors, she quickly rises to her feet and brushes down her hair with the flat of her hand. She straightens her sari, which is wrinkled from her nap but otherwise perfectly set. She approaches with a diffident smile. Short and plump, she resembles her daughter, who also begins to stir. Then a baby wakes and soon the entire courtyard is brought to life.

I ask Guravaiah if we might see the canal. He nods to his wife, who offers to accompany us. She heads across the courtyard to a brick wall that runs the length of the garden. A section has fallen down, providing a convenient way through to the next-door lot. Through the rubble-strewn gap lies an empty plot. The earth is bare except for some piles of redundant building materials and a cluster of weeds.

The barefooted Jamalamma ushers us through the gap. A line of industrial sacks balances against the wall on the other side. Each is full of used plastic bottles and other recyclable goods, the product of her daytime labours. A short distance in front stands a makeshift tent. It’s the family home. Constructed with plastic sheeting and supported by a bamboo frame, it is held down by bricks and contains everything they own. There is no bed. Nor is there any side netting. There are, however, several more bags of scrap.

Parked next to the tent is Guravaiah’s cycle rickshaw. The frame is chipped and the seat much worn, but it looks still to be in working order. ‘Care and Share’, the name of the Catholic charity for whom Jayaraj works, can just be made out on the metal base of the rear passenger cabin. Guruvaiah bought it through a discounted loan scheme.

A high wire fence runs along the bottom of the lot, separating the land from the water’s edge. The boundary is riddled with holes, each just large enough for an adult to squeeze through. On the legal side of the fence, a group of women is washing their
laundry. The wire doubles as a clothes line. The opposite bank is strewn with discarded rubbish. The open garbage heap covers every inch of space, a contagion of plastic and general detritus. A man is squatting at the water’s edge, defecating. I’ve seen enough of the canal and Jamalamma shepherds us back.

Before leaving, Guravaiah calls Jayaraj aside. He has a favour to ask. The charity worker bends down to hear him better. The bearded adivasi presses his hands together in the sign of petition. In a quiet, pleading voice, he mentions his two youngest sons, Chinna and Pullaiah. He beckons them over. The pair are lurking on the edge of the courtyard, watching inquisitively. They wander over to their father’s side and position themselves shoulder to shoulder as if for inspection.

Aged seven and eight respectively, both boys are slightly built and dressed in little more than rags. Their heads are shaven and their faces blistered with heat spots. Neither goes to school. Could Jayaraj take them, Guravaiah wants to know? Find a place for them in one of the charity’s care homes? He would dearly wish to see them educated. The charity worker promises to do what he can and bids farewell.

Jayaraj restarts the engine and drives off. He talks breezily of the day’s agenda. He’s arranged for me to visit a selection of Care and Share’s education initiatives around the city. The first is just across the other side of the canal. We traipse into Ginny’s Home. The kindergarten occupies a collection of bare rooms above a noisy mechanic’s workshop. Around fifty tribal children attend regularly. All are the offspring of commercial sex workers.

‘You see the showers here,’ he says. ‘The children have a wash at the beginning of every day.’ I peer into the miniature shower block. ‘Every week, their hair is washed with a special shampoo.’ He itches his head. ‘For the lice.’

Ten minutes later, we traipse out again. Jayaraj is efficient. Anxious for us to keep to time, he almost jogs to the car. I follow, my heels dragging a little. I am still trying to process our brief stop at the river bank. A jumble of thoughts is running through my head, not least the description of prostitution as a ‘traditional’
career. Wouldn’t ‘indentured’ be a fairer description? Isn’t that the truth of being born into such a life, a life in which choice is limited to hunger on the one hand or degradation on the other?

I want to ask Jayaraj, but sense he wouldn’t understand. Not because he doesn’t care. He does. His manner may be mild and his speech sometimes curt, but these traits conceal a generous and giving heart. It’s just that for him – working in Vijayawada’s slums, spending his days with those on the very lowest rung of the Indian ladder – such realities mark nothing new. For his constituents, hard choices represent the daily norm. That may be unpleasant, but it’s a fact.

What would confuse him, I suspect, is that after so many months in India I should continue to be surprised.

Jayaraj is not resigned either. He would like to see things change. And it is for that reason, among others, that I have come to see him.

‘We used to take poor children from wherever,’ says Jayaraj, as we head up the stairs to Care and Share’s main office. ‘But now we focus specifically on children from slum communities.’

Vijayawada is a city of over two and a half million people. At the last count, it had more than one hundred slum communities. To make the demands on its resources more manageable, the charity prioritises orphans and the children of single parents, widowed or otherwise. Care and Share makes no distinction on the grounds of religion or caste. Pure demographics mean the majority end up being Hindu and dalit. The process leaves it with over thirteen thousand children on its books.

A sizeable proportion of that number appears to be in the main room of its headquarters. We open the door to a scrum of children. The densest section centres around a long line of desks, where registration formalities for the new school term are taking place. The charity runs a number of pre-school literacy centres, such as the one by the canal. Research shows that knowledge of basic alphabetisation in Telugu and English reduces school drop-out rates later on. In addition, Care and Share has a couple of large residential schools outside town for older children picked
off the street. The bulk of its work, however, concentrates on pupil sponsorships. Government schools are officially supposed to provide tuition, lunch and textbooks free of charge. The charity helps with the remainder: uniforms, notebooks, stationery, school bags and travel money where appropriate. It’s cash well spent. In India, many a child’s schooling is disrupted for want of a proper pair of shoes or money for the school bus.

I mingle in the queue for registration. Naga Srinivas, a bright-eyed boy scarcely big enough to see above the registrar’s desk, proudly hands over his report card from the previous term. ‘You have been consistent and hard-working. Promoted to Class V. Congratulations.’ The plaudits earn him a smile and a tick beside his name and code number, 04-A-14. Contented, he makes his way to a round table nearby and begins writing to the Italian housewife who sponsors him. It is one of three obligatory thank-you letters he sends every year. His script is round and rudimentary, but perfectly legible. ‘My Dear Mummy . . .’ the note begins.

At the back of the room, another queue snakes along the wall. I follow it to the front and discover that it leads to a well-stocked storeroom. Inside, a team of exhausted-looking charity workers is frantically dispensing kits for the term ahead. For the lucky few, gifts from their sponsors are waiting too. The children take possession of the presents gingerly, as if suspecting a mistake has been made and any minute they’ll have to hand them back. Most of the packages contain clothes or toys or stationery. Propped behind the door, however, stand two brand-new bicycles. They earn an envious glance from every child who enters.

Jayaraj has come to find me. We’re running late. ‘Shall we go?’ he suggests.

As he nudges me towards the exit, a gaunt woman of around thirty approaches him. A well-built younger man stands behind her, flanked by two timid boys in their early teens. The boys’ hair is combed carefully and parted. Their clothes are old but ironed. They’ve travelled all morning on the bus, the woman explains.

She is holding a piece of paper, which she thrusts towards Jayaraj. He takes it and reads, one ear still listening to her as she
continues to speak. Her husband died ten years ago, she recounts. She does seasonal work when it’s available, picking fruit for the most part. Her brother – she indicates the tall chaperone behind her – is a schoolteacher. He smiles. Her children attend the Catholic-run Don Bosco school, in Nandigama. In unison, they step forward a pace, like conscripted soldiers on military drill. She places a loving hand on their shoulders. The school is a long journey from their village, she explains. Someone told her that Care and Share might be able to help. Is this true?

Jayaraj looks up. She points to the letter. It describes her church attendance and the boys’ diligence at their studies. ‘It’s from the headmaster,’ she emphasises.

‘Yes,’ Jayaraj says. ‘Very good.’

So can he help? He’ll do what he can, he promises, explaining that she’ll have to fill in some forms and indicating where to do so. Before moving on, he turns to her two sons and, looking each in the eye in turn, asks what they would like to do when they grow up. ‘Priest,’ answers Aravindu, the older of the two. ‘Teacher,’ says his younger brother Ashok. Both are well prepped.

‘Good, good,’ Jayaraj says again, offering each an affirming smile.

It’s the second such petition that the charity worker has received in less than an hour. As we head back down the stairs, I ask him about the likelihood of the boys securing support. It all depends on finding a sponsor, he answers. ‘Frankly, the eldest is probably too old already.’ The younger boy might just stand a chance. It’s a long shot though. ‘People prefer sponsoring younger children.’ Again, Jayaraj’s matter-of-factness is not evidence of him being callous – just realistic.

From the headquarters, we drive out to Bombay colony. Situated on barren wasteland on the edge of town, the new development resembles a poor man’s version of Mahindra World City. It is built by the government and has one road and no amenities. Hulking great apartment blocks are deposited one after another, like concrete bollards hastily constructed beside a highway. The formulaic towers are each equipped with ten flats to a floor, all
uniform in shape and all identical in size. Twenty square feet per family, roughly the size of a bathroom in one of Mahindra World City’s duplexes. The barren rooms have no furniture, little ventilation and, as yet, no occupants.

For the moment, the buildings’ future residents are camping outside. Rounded up from the city’s slums, they have been unceremoniously dumped here in the outskirts. The fact that the buildings are yet to be finished did not halt their eviction. Quietly but determinedly, the government is building ghettos of permanent exclusion for these people. It calls the policy ‘slum resettlement’.