"The Cost of Living" consists of two essays by Arundhati Roy that challenge the image India projects to the world: that of burgeoning democracy and prosperity. Though her opinions are backed up with hard statistics, her writing is passionate and at times caustically sarcastic. Roy's almost casual style lends a coffee-table-chat-like air to her prose, as if your sensible aunt had stopped by with a bee in her bonnet to explain what was wrong with the world. But then it hits you just how serious these issues are, and you snap back to reality.
The first essay (though written second), "The Greater Common Good," concerns India's dam construction efforts. India is the world's third largest dam-builder, inspired by Nehru's speech of fifty years ago, in which dams were praised as "The Temples of Modern India." Depsite the construction of 3,300 dams (with 1,000 more in progress), 200 million Indians still lack clean drinking water and 600 million lack basic sanitation. Clearly, the dam-building is not going as well as Nehru and his enthusiastic corps of engineers envisioned.
Roy traces India's Big Dam program from its roots in nationalism and World Bank aid through its modern bureaucratic momentum, but not from a detached perspective. In writing the essay, she travelled through the Narmada valley, which will be underwater once the Sardar Sarovar Dam is completed and put into operation. Her heated words arise from walking among the people of the valley and learning their story. You see, when the waters rise, these people will lose their only means of sustenance-- the river, their homes, their farms. They will be forced to move into the crowded cities or find a new life in some distant village that will not welcome them. The government will not compensate the vast majority of them for their troubles. The people of the valley are making this sacrifice for the greater good of India. Or so they're told.
Roy calculates that over the course of India's Big Dam efforts, 50 million people have been made homeless. Just like that, because the government said so. Roy snorts at the fact that India is sometimes called the world's largest democracy, and weaves together a tale of internal corruption, foreign influence, and nationalism that have led to today's intractable state. The dams are expensive and environmentally toxic. "First-world" nations are busy blowing up their dams while India trundles on.
Note her stance: "Let me say at the outset that I am not a city-basher... I am not an antidevelopment junkie, nor a proselytizer for the eternal upholding of custom and tradition. What I am, however, is curious. Curiosity took me to the Narmada valley. Instinct told me that this was the big one... The one in which it would be possible to wade through the congealed morass of hope, anger, information, disinformation, political artifice, engineering ambition, disingenuous socialism, radical activism, bureaucratic subterfuge, misinformed emotionalism, and, of course, the pervasive, invariably dubious, politics of International Aid." (p. 8).
"The Greater Common Good" provides a rather different perspective on India's dam projects that is available in the conventional press, particularly concerning a grassroots resistance movement called the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA). It is well worth reading because it provides strong criticism of India's Big Dam program from someone not directly involved in the politics, but still an informed Indian citizen. Roy has a rare perspective on the situation.
The second essay, "The End of Imagination," addresses India's public announcement of nuclear capability in May 1998 (which was quickly "me-too'd" by Pakistan). In her words, "...my first response was one of digust at the condescension, the hypocrisy, and the double standards of the reaction in the western world. (Can the Blacks handle the Bomb?). I returned to India, and it took a few months for me to stop reacting to the international reaction and to begin to address what we had done to ourselves, to our lives, to our futures... Are we to spend the rest of our lives in this state of high alert with guns pointed at each other's heads and fingers trembling on the trigger? Thank you, government of India, thank you, government of Pakistan. But most of all, thank you, government of the US of A." (Preface)
In this dark and imploring essay, Roy explains graphically how taking the plunge into the nuclear arena was an irreversible choice on the part of India and Pakistan. Even if the bombs are never used, and peace ultimately reigns, a certain shift has taken place that can never be undone.
She paints a complex picture of India's feelings of inferiority (its ego bolstered by a macho show of force) entangled with the United States' own deadly game of chess with the USSR during the Cold War. She notes that India has confused raw military might with genuine empowerment, and has fallen prey to the corruption of international power games. Who is left out of the picture? Again, it is the people of India-- another swipe at Indian "democracy." They will suffer the most from the psychological effects of having nukes, and they have the least say in India's nuclear future.
Overall, Roy's essays bring a fresh perspective to the continued struggles of India to wield global power commensurate with its population. In the West, it is easy to forget not only that we rarely get an Indian perspective in our news of India, but also that we can't truly understand the psychology of India since we have not walked in its shoes. Roy provides a brief glimpse of that worldview. I give "The Cost of Living" a "+".
Copyright © Kim Allen 2000
