Jaswant Singh ceased to be finance minister before he could pursue his idea of gross national contentment; but it was worth pursuing; both the British and the German governments have taken interest in their people's happiness. This column was published in Business Standard of 28 January 2003.
TOWARDS GREATER JUVENILE CONTENTMENT
The Honourable Finance Minister has adopted a new national
objective: Gross National Contentment. Cynics will say they know where he is
coming from: he has at last recognized the value of chanting Hare Rama, Hare
Krishna, loosening one’s belt and stretching out in the afternoon (not
necessarily in that order). They will say that he cannot do anything to
increase the gross national product, whose enhancement his job is; so he wants
to country to undergo suffering and enjoy it.
Might he be right? Do we bitch
about too much and take our blessings too much for granted? Again the cynics
would say, what do you expect from this government? With every grand gesture it
has worsened the state of the economy. It has no clue about how to better it,
so it would like to say: lie back and enjoy it. It has excited communal
passions, promoted violence, and when the fire spreads, it says, there is too
much division, let us unite.
Cynicism is the appropriate
attitude towards this government – as it no doubt was towards Indira Gandhi’s –
but let us get away for a moment from set attitudes and ask ourselves: can the
government make people contented without spending money – or, at any rate, a
lot of money? Are there any cheap bargains in the market for happiness?
Obviously a full stomach is the
source of much contentment, and a good belch its highest manifestation. Midday
meals for children are a good idea – as long as teachers do not take cooking as
their only duty. The question is, what meal would, while being tasty and
nutritious, create the least mess and need the least infrastructure? Shiv Sena
was not so interested in feeding children since they would not vote for it.
Instead, it set up stalls all over Bombay to sell Zhunka Bhakar to adults at
absurdly low prices. It cluttered up Bombay pavements even further to give them
space. Despite free real estate in prime areas and subsidies, few of the stalls
survive. Even rabid Shiv Sainiks do not want to eat Zhunka Bhakar; Pao Bhaji and
Masala Dosa are more to their taste. Similar political preconceptions have led
to the supply of cooked meals, largely made up of surplus foodgrains, to
schoolchildren.
I enjoy a well cooked meal eaten
at leisure, and I recognize that Indians love lunches cooked by their wives –
so much so, that they pay to get them collected from home shortly after they
leave for office and delivered at their desks at lunchtime in Bombay. But it is
all right if grown-up men decide to waste their earnings on fare cooked by
their wives; and if they, as a result, need to take a nap afterwards, that is
their employers’ business.
The government, as a model
employer, does make it its business. The Government of India supplies every
desk employee with a napkin to drape over his backrest, so that he can take a
nap without smearing it with his favourite hair oil. But school benches are
quite inappropriate for taking naps; if children start dozing off on benches,
they would slouch and slump sideways and fall off. If a heavy meal is forced on
them and they have to have a nap, it would be best to give each a little mat on
which to stretch out. Stretching out mats in between benches will promote
closeness at an early age, and train kids to sleep on the floors of crowded
economy class cabins of planes when they go to work in the Middle East or wherever
they have to go out of jobless India. But if we want to train them for
something better than being coolies abroad, then perhaps we should rethink this
business of cooked meals.
When I went to school, my daily
allowance was 2 paise, for which I could get a reasonable quantity of peanuts;
that was my lunch. In my last year of school the allowance was raised to 1
anna; then I could afford the luxury of having both chickpeas and peanuts. That
remained my midday meal when I went to work for National Council, but my
new-found prosperity enabled me to add a glass of sugarcane juice. It was a
tasty, nutritious lunch that could be taken on the run and had no aftereffects requiring the draping of napkins over chairs. Now I am
considerably more prosperous; but I still sometimes have variants of this
lunch. The chanawallah of yore has himself diversified. Now he sells chana and
peas in a number of colours and flavours, all pretty sharp; and he has added on
gajak – a sweet made of deoiled sesame cake and white north Indian gur – peanut
chiki and such other delectable sweets. Cane juice, unfortunately, has largely
disappeared from Delhi streets. Cane has become too cheap, and cane juice can
no longer support the shop rents and bribes of Delhi. But it has been replaced
by a multiplicity of fruit juices. The juicer is a versatile and
undiscriminating machine; it enables the juicewallah to make an undefinable
multipurpose juice out of the cheapest materials and to earn the highest
margin. But at a price he is prepared to make such delectable juices like
pomegranate or chiku-orange.
The government may not be able or
prepared to give children such expensive juices every day. But the development
of the Indian economy has opened up many snack choices before children than
were inconceivable in my childhood; an intelligent government should use those
choices rather than force boring roti and dal on the poor kids.
To return to the Finance
Minister’s grand theme of gross national contentment, children’s contentment
can be increased without additional cost to government if they are allowed the
choice of lunch. Rather than turn classrooms into kitchens, buy big vessels,
engage fat cooks, make a special LPG allocation for schools and spatter
children with haldi stains, it would be better to give them pocket money and
let them buy whatever junk food they like best.
That would be good enough in
towns where private enterprise ensures that children would have ample choice.
But in villages and near schools too small to attract chanawallahs, the
government may find it necessary to provide meals. They should, however, be the
same kinds of tasty snacks as chanawallahs sell in cities – light,
durable and portable.
And that is just an intermediate
stage; eventually the government should work towards setting up a cybercafe in
the place of every school, where children would get free junk food and pick up
knowledge from the internet as a byproduct. Teachers are an endangered species.
