india – My Blah

An Emptier Future – II

Revisiting a decidedly long-term trend within a span of about a year and a half requires some explanation. When the theme is population change and the growing tendency of countries to increasingly worry about having more old people and less babies in the future, it requires even greater explanation because the intervening period is definitely not one during which any major generational change would have taken place. What did take place, though, was Covid. When I was writing the first part (as I must call it since this is the second part!) we were unknowingly on the cusp of a pandemic that has the potential of changing human history in ways that we cannot even grasp yet. If this sounds like hyperbole, let’s take a bird’s eye view at what happened during the pandemic, and the data that’s been coming in since the pandemic hit.

When the pandemic started out, people were stuck indoors for months. While the duration of the so-called ‘lockdowns’ varied from one country to another, in no country was it less than a few months at the very least. Even when the lockdowns were lifted, reopening was gradual. This meant that most people – bar health workers, emergency responders and a few essential service operators – were stuck indoors with family (or away from them) for months.

This engendered an entire genre of jokes about how couples getting to spend time together would inevitably fornicate, and if they did, there would be a baby boom. Data that has been coming in the last few months suggests that people were indeed spending more time with their near and dear ones. This is evident from the rise in domestic violence cases, the incidents of child abuse and CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) production and distribution and decline in the productivity of female workers who were stuck at home tending to their husbands and kids. But even if we set aside for a moment the effects of all this “we time” that people got, the question remains – what about more children ?

As it turns out, the optimistic expectations of a baby boom have not materialized. Forget a baby boom, we are staring at a baby bust. No, that’s not a sculpture of a baby’s head. Rather, it’s what demographers are calling the acute decline in the number of children produced during the first few months of the pandemic. Why the first few months ? Because children take an average of nine months to develop before being “born” and it has only been so long since the lockdowns began in various parts of the globe.

How acute is this “baby bust” ? Data from South Korea suggests that the total fertility rate of the country has fallen to a historic low of 0.84. Similar reports of decline are coming in from Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and other East Asian tigers. New Zealand, which generally does not report a decline (given how happy they all are under Ardern), has also reported a decline in the number of babies being born.

The Western countries offer a more mixed picture. While fertility rates have tended to be low for a long time, they have made up their looming population deficit with immigration. In 2020, however, it is estimated that between 500,000 and 1,300,000 workers left the country, and coupled with low birth rates, this could prove to be a threat to the workforce of the country in the future. In France, the number of babies born in January 2021 was 13% lower than the number for January 2020. For Italy in December 2020, the fall was 21.6% compared to the data from a year earlier. For Spain, the same figure is about 20%.

Looking elsewhere, similar trends are noticeable. UAE, a country in the Middle East which requires people to have jobs to stay in the country, noted a sharp fall in the number of workers. While this doesn’t automatically suggest a fall in the number of births, it still is a decline in the total population of the country.

Finally, we come to the case of China. Chinese preliminary data suggests that there has been a 15% fall in the number of births in 2020 compared to the previous year. This must be taken with a pinch of salt, since Chinese population data is often skewed to suggest a rosier TFR. However, given that the top decision making body in the country asked for an “appropriate” fertility rate for 2021, it suggests that the Chinese are indeed very worried.

We will return to China in a moment. Before we do, it is important to ask why we are faced with this alarming data when the “conventional” wisdom suggested that people would have more kids when spending time together. As it turns out, people were spending time together out of compulsion and not necessarily passion. Loving couples (and not so loving ones apparently) were stuck together because many jobs that had depended on people going out and working had simply shut down. They were furloughed, retrenched, laid off or fired, and regardless of the terminology, were spending their hours sitting at home and staring at a very uncertain future on their devices.

Further, we need to remember that many people were, in fact, not allowed to be together at all. The lockdowns and travel restrictions kicked in in many parts of the world out of the blue, leaving people stunned and stuck in place. As the now infamous example of Dominic Cummings breaking curfew rules to visit his girlfriend suggests, people did not like being kept away from their loved ones. In the absence of physical contact, no babies are possible. This is perhaps best demonstrated by the falling number of marriages, which suggests that people simply did not feel that they would be able to stay together or be financially secure enough to start a family. No family, no babies.

To be sure, this picture is not something worth writing about simply because of the decline itself. The 2008 recession was followed by a similar baby bust, but it picked up slightly in some parts of the world thereafter. The Spanish Flu a century ago saw a similar trend as far as populations were concerned.

The problem, however, is that this time, the pandemic feeds into an existing state of population decline. A population decline that produced the first article of this two-parter (for now at least). Women are having children later, or not having children at all. They are marrying less, working more and are both more ambitious and less financially secure than their mothers and grandmothers were. All of this suggests that the decline in births and marriages were conscious decisions that had at least some amount of female input.

Given the rationality of not bringing children into a world you are not sure of surviving yourself (both biologically and financially), the question to ask next is how soon can we expect a return to “normal” ? The answer is cliché. There will probably be no return to normal, but only a “new normal”. This is due to the fact that the decline in economic stability and overall output has been more severe than was seen during either the 2008 or 1918 events, and given the existing trend of declining female fertility and fall in the number of children, the pandemic will only feed this downward spiral rather than be an outlier data point.

But it is also true that a good number of women of childbearing age will want to have children. Unfortunately for them, child bearing is not something that can be postponed indefinitely. Female fertility and physical capacity to bear a child begins to decline in the late 30s and dies out in the 40s. Considering the fact that many women – especially in the more educated and advanced countries – had already put off having children till their last possible child-bearing window, it is very likely that many of them would actually find themselves unable to conceive. Given that careers and economic futures are valued more than the ability to bear children, it is unlikely that these women would risk their physical well-being and that of their would-be children by going in for children at an age when their bodies can no longer reproduce optimally. Long story short, some of the children who were not born in 2020 will never be born.

All of this will simply aggravate the trends that have already been noticed with regard to changes in population structure and what is known as the “dependency ratio”. Less children would mean that the proportion of elderly (65 and above) would begin to increase compared to the youth (0-15) and the workers (15-65). This means less workers, soldiers, mothers and intellectuals. Beyond a certain point, these people – who can no longer have children – will become equal to or greater than the 0-15 population segment, thus causing a gradual inversion of the population pyramid. They would need to be taken care of, but the number of people taking care of them and indeed, defending and working for them, would reduce.

This will have profound implications, which I discussed at some length in the first article. In brief, it would make it harder to provide for the elderly through pension funds paid into by the youth and the workers. It would also reduce the economic growth because there are both less workers and less demand since elderly don’t need as many goods as workers in their prime do. Geopolitically, the economic and demographic decline would together ensure that the aspirations for “great power” status of countries like China and India remain mere aspirations.

This brings us to the specific case of China and India. The pandemic has set alarm bells ringing in China. China, like other Asian countries, has been gradually declining in terms of total fertility rate for quite some time now. This decline was masked by the state apparatus, but it appears that Xi Jinping and his cohort are no longer prepared to paper over the yawning gaps in China’s population policy.

The biggest gap is in terms of the children being born. The Chinese population continues to increase, keeping it marginally ahead of India and saving many General Knowledge books from having to be revised ahead of time. However, such increase is ever-less and we are rapidly approaching the point of stagnation i.e. when births and deaths equal each other and the latter edges past the former. South Korea, another East Asian tiger, witnessed her first decline in population since WWII. China’s day is not far off.

It might be worthwhile to ask why the population keeps growing even as the total number of births keeps falling. The simple answer is that those who bear children were born a generation earlier, and hence, represent an earlier demographic trend. Those bearing children right now would have been born in the late 1980s, 1990s or early 2000s. The number of these women thus represents not the current fertility rate, but the population growth rate of an earlier time.

This is however, small comfort for China. China imposed a harsh one-child policy in the 1970s, and kept it up until 2015. Hence, the mothers of today would have been born during the heyday of the one-child policy in the 1980s and 1990s. Since China shares a patriarchal preference for boys compared to girls, many couples simply opted to have a boy instead of a girl. This sex-selective child-bearing naturally resulted in less women coming of age today. Since those going out of the reproductive age i.e. those in their 40s would have been born in the late 1960s and early 1970s i.e. before the one-child policy was imposed and couples began having only one male child, the number of women entering reproductive age is much lower than the number who are leaving this demographic bracket.

The problem is so acute that by some estimates about 3.4 million women are leaving this bracket every year and much lower numbers are entering it. Given that the next decade will see more one-child generation people enter reproductive age, the problem is set to get steadily worse. Some scholars estimate that it would be beyond 2030 before the demographic imbalance caused by the one-child policy is repaired.

Now that we know that there are less and less women in China to bear children every year, the question of total fertility rate comes in. TFR is the average number of children borne by women every year. If the total number of women is taken to be stable, each woman of reproductive age is expected to bear about 2.1 children to replace the population in a generation’s time. However, we know that the total number of women is not stable, but is declining due to sex-selective procreation. Within this shrinking pool, the number of children that the women are bearing is also declining. The TFR of China as per latest figures is around 1.6, which means that even if there were enough women, the number of children born would not replace the population.

Taken together, the lower number of young women and lower fertility rate pose an existential threat to China. Chinese society is not welcoming of foreigners to a degree the Western societies are, and neither can China offer the lucrative opportunities that the entrepots of global capitalism can. Sure, China is a powerful pole in an increasingly bipolar world, but to expect people swarming into China to redress this looming demographic challenge would be wishful thinking.

In the absence of sufficient in-migration, China faces all the problems listed above. It is now expected that the Chinese would fall behind India by as early as 2027 in terms of population. This population would be increasingly older, requiring more investment and greater outlay in pensions. However, those working and contributing to those pension funds i.e. the younger people, would steadily become less and less. At the current rate of decline, the main state pension fund is expected to run out of money by 2035.

Beyond pensions and caring for the elderly, there would be major ramifications for the economy. An ageing workforce would not be suited for the strenuous manufacturing jobs that are the backbone of China’s prosperity today. There is no indication that China would be able to transition to a high-tech and high-paying economy where the majority of jobs are desk jobs that can be done by the elderly. While the country is gradually exploring relaxing the stringent retirement ages (55 for women and 60 for men) to allow them to work longer, it is a fact that the elderly cannot shoulder the harsh working conditions that are required to keep the Chinese economy well-oiled.

On top of this, there is the problem of debt. The Chinese have taken on record levels of debt, and the pandemic has only worsened the situation by shutting down economic activity over large regions. While the Chinese lockdown of Wuhan was among the harshest but shortest in the world, the economic toll is still noticeable. Even as the economy comes back to life, the debt would have become more unserviceable and would become even more so in the future on the backs of a shrining working age population.

All of this, perhaps, explains the urgency of China’s aggressive foreign policy. For decades, China sought to stay somewhat aloof from the major power struggles of the world. However, ever since Xi Jinping came to power, China’s ambitions appear to have broadened and she is now in conflict with virtually all of her neighbours except Russia. Chinese actions in Hong Kong have drawn international condemnation, and the disputes have rendered China increasingly friendless in a world where the US still dominates.

All of this, on the face of it, would appear hasty and calculated to further the strongman cult of Xi. However, scratch beneath the surface and a different picture emerges. China is ageing, and she has not yet found any magic elixir that would cause more women to appear overnight, or the existing ones to bear a much larger number of children. In fact, given the glacial pace at which the existing outdated demographic policies are being dismantled, it seems that the leadership is at least somewhat resigned to a decline in population in the 2030s and 2040s.

A decline in working age population would also cause the size of the army to decline. This is not merely in terms of the number of soldiers. The economy feeds the military, and a halting economy would have less stomach for a muscular military. Since China – despite being authoritarian – is not in the league of military juntas like Myanmar or North Korea, it would be foolish to assume that China would continue to support a large military at the cost of the basic well-being of the ordinary folks.

Based on that assumption, it would not be fallacious to believe that the Chinese leadership fears that in the course of the next decade, the ability of China to flex her muscles would decline. For the country whose leader Mao Zedong had famously said that even in case of a nuclear war, a few Chinese would be left alive, it is tragically ironic that she must now accept that her geopolitical ambitions are rapidly moving into the realm of fantasy because old people cannot work or fight so well.

Unless she acts fast. Given that China has already achieved a stature next only to the USA, it is imperative for China to leverage every bit of her influence to secure for herself geopolitical domination of Asia and indeed of as much of the globe as possible. No longer is it possible to believe that the Chinese would continue to grow in number and eventually overawe every other population on the planet by their sheer numbers and hardwork. The window of demographic dividends is rapidly closing, and China needs to achieve what she can on the global stage before it shuts her out.

But what of India ? Despite the rosy predictions of the government, India has been badly battered by the pandemic. Her GDP fell drastically in the past year, and it is expected that birth data would not be too rosy either. In the last article, I have already pointed out the geographically skewed distribution of TFR in India. But taken nationally, the numbers are bound to go down because of the pandemic as they have all over the world. One can expect with some certainty that this will be reflected once the Census 2021 data is available before us.

India, like China, also has a major sex ratio problem. This too has some geographic skew but nowhere in India (not even Kerala) is the sex ratio at birth for boys and girls equal. In fact, some recent trends suggest that things have gotten somewhat worse in recent years due to the growing cheapness and prevalence of ultrasound machines. Like China, then, India can expect to have less daughters of reproductive age in a few years’ time (perhaps a decade at most) than we do now.

These suggest that if China’s faces her demographic moment of truth in the 2020s, India will do so in the 2030s and 2040s. The pandemic has only brought us closer to that moment of truth, but it would have come anyway. Given this inevitability, it is pertinent to ask what India can do as a country to survive in the short and the long term.

The answer, it seems, is two fold. Firstly, we must stave off an increasingly desperate China. Secondly, we must prepare for our own China moment. The first is immediate and urgent. China has already weaned off one of our closest allies – Russia, forging an alliance of convenience so close that Russia is increasingly wary of standing by India when China’s interests point in the other direction. Russia’s economy being half the size of China and the country losing a net 800,000 people per year (before the pandemic hit), it is not likely that Russia will either be able to get out of this dependence or forge closer ties with India. Russia, for all intents and purposes, is not very different from Pakistan in terms of its reliance on China for a range of vital goods and services. China, on the other hand, finds Russia’s geopolitical clout and weapons expertise handy.

This reduces Indian leverage in an increasingly bipolar world. The last time there was bipolarism, India could play footsie with both USSR and USA. This time, given the conflicts in Galwan Valley and indeed along the length and breadth of the LAC, it is not likely that India can realistically side with China and still expect to exert influence in Asia. This makes her the travelling companion of the USA, if not a close friend. The compulsion for India is more than it is for the US, even though it is true that US cannot find an alternative of India in South and South East Asia that has such deep interests and geopolitical heft to counter China. Enter the Quad.

But India needs to look beyond her immediate boundaries as well. China is busy establishing a string of client states across the world which are dependent on Chinese capital and companies. This needs to be effectively countered to ensure that a second Cold War does not erupt with the US and China using their proxies to wage war. Given the demographic imperatives of China, one can assume that China would want to establish as much dependence upon herself as possible so that once her military power wanes, she can continue to milk these dependencies to maintain her position. India cannot afford to sit idle as countries as diverse as Nepal, Congo and Russia move steadily closer to China.

However, little can be achieved purely by military posturing. In today’s world, military posturing is only so effective as the engines behind that posturing – the economy. India must get her economy in top shape and running well so that she can seek and bridge the gap between China and herself. China’s demographic difficulties should aid India, since India still has an abundant working age population. However, the more we delay such expansion, the more we can expect that the gap would become unbridgeable.

This ties in with the second requirement – preparing for our own China moment. Sometime in the 2030s or 2040s, our own population would have greyed to the point where we too would have to rely on either past glories or immigration to keep propping ourselves up on the world stage. China is desperate to chalk up as much influence and glory as possible while her sun still shines. In our case, we have gradually moved into China’s shade. This does not mean, of course, that we begin aggressively creating client states and economies the way the String of Pearls envisages.

However, unless we can provide support to countries who are looking for alternatives to China’s dominance, we would have missed our opportunities. For instance, we stayed out of the RCEP led by China, but we have yet to come up with an alternative that would pivot the regional economies towards India. In sheer economic terms, we do not have the economic clout to give out loans and funds on China’s scale, but given India’s history of cooperation and support dating back to the days of NAM, India should dip into the storewell of goodwill and draw out some economic linkages that would serve her well in her own old age.

Finally, we should accept that we are growing old. Our rhetoric continues to date to the 1970s and the thesis of population explosion. This despite it being suggested that India’s schoolgoing population has peaked and no matter how politically unpalatable, we should begin consolidating schools and eventually, colleges. We should strengthen our social security system and provide greater facilities to the elderly. This, especially since children or no children, the elderly are increasingly left to their own devices and faculties to survive in this world. While doing so, we must aggressively address the gender skew and the geographic TFR skew to ensure that declines – as and when they take place – are even and gradual. We should also focus specifically on medical facilities and old-age care.

A lot of this sits in the realm of must and should. Given India’s track record, I am not particularly hopeful that we would achieve what almost no country in the world has managed – gracefully transition to old age. Inevitably, countries keep harping about population booms until the country has more old people than kids, more retirement homes than schools and more pension claims that taxes being paid. However, countries like Japan (probably only Japan) have managed to transition to an aged society gradually. It is to be seen how China manages her own transition. However, we cannot wait for China since by the time China does transition, the silver on our scalps will be too visible to take the measures we can take now.

Hence, to secure our own future and ensure that our country and the world comes to be something we would like to see in our old age, we must act now.

In Numbers We Trust

Roughly a year after the Delhi was rocked by violence, Delhi is rocked by violence. Again ? No, a year ago there were riots. This time, there are clashes between the protesters and the police. Clashes between two communities, and clashes by a determined lot to fight against the government and its police apparatus, are not the same. More importantly, dozens died a year ago. This time, there has been only one casualty. Hopefully, there will be no more. But is there nothing common ? Violence, some will say, is common. And violence is, by itself, something that should be condemned. Violence delegitimizes legitimate causes, damages public property and gets people killed. If democracy works, none of this should be required. If it doesn’t work, we must resist the temptation to quick fix it with fire.

But beyond the similarity and the superficial differences lies something fundamentally different. You would argue that it is the issue at stake. A year ago, Shaheen Baug was the symbol of protest against the possible delegitimization and stigmatization of the Muslim community by a government perceived as anti-minority. The protesters knew that they were heavily outnumbered, outmanoeuvred and hiding behind the fleshy shields of old women. It was a desperate stance, and for all its success and failure, the desperation was evident from day one to the day the Covid-emptied stage was unceremoniously pulled down. Repression was postponed by the possible moral cost of attacking old unarmed women, and engagement was out of question.

What followed the Delhi elections, was however, equally desperate. Angry at being challenged by old women of the minority community, politicians with vested interests (communal polarization to prevent a recurrence of Shaheen Baug, obviously) sent goons into Delhi to wreak havoc. For four odd days (or was it five?) the streets of a section of Delhi were given over to wanton carnage and destruction. There was nothing spontaneous about this – it was pre-planned, as evidenced by the overwhelming presence of armed young men and their desire to attack without provocation. Counter-attacks led to pitched battles that took dozens of lives before the police brought the situation under control.

History will judge the effect of this contrived violence on the prospects of the BJP and the AAP, or for that matter, on the social fabric of Delhi. It will, presumably, also judge whether the protests were successful in ensuring that the NRC/CAA business was put off indefinitely or not. But the numbers involved – protesters, rioters and other “interested parties” – were all in the hundreds, or low thousands. This contained the fallout – good, bad and ugly – and ensured that the results, at least in the short term, would also be superficial and meagre.

As the cliché goes, not this time. Since the December passage of three controversial agriculture laws, a protest has been continuing in and near Delhi. The protesters are farmers, primarily from the adjacent states of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. They are convinced that the laws will open them up to the corporate hawks, who will eventually exploit them by dictating prices and farming conditions a la indigo planters of yore. The MSP or Minimum Support Price guaranteed by the government, which ensures that the farmers get adequate remuneration for their investment and effort come harvest time, will become a dead letter.

Opinions on the desirability of the farm laws is divided, with some claiming that it will emancipate the farmers to do business with whomever he likes. Others claim it will create oligopolies led by corporates in the farm sector and further depress farm incomes and standard of living in the countryside. Either may be true, or even both. What matters here is not the complex economics of the laws and their possibilities, because, as a section of the media never tires of pointing out, the farmers are simple folk who do not understand the nitty gritty of the laws. But they understand their farms, and for better or worse, are convinced that the government is out to gut the MSP system to favour its corporate backers. It may be that Punjab and Haryana are among the few states where the MSP system actually yields any results, and hence the earlier system was not completely broken. The farmers see these legislations as attempts to finish off what good remains in the system, and they won’t allow it.

The result was a widespread mobilization of support by the kisan (farmer) unions across all districts of Punjab and Haryana. Such mobilization soon occurred in UP, Rajasthan and even other, geographically distant states like Maharashtra and Karnataka. The decision was made to march to Delhi and demand of the rulers that they scrap these laws. So began the fateful chain of events that have led – neither inevitably nor predictably – to this moment.

First, the farmers’ movement was sought to be stopped, or atleast contained, to areas within the BJP ruled state of Haryana. The police massively underestimated the number of farmers and the HP of their tractors. Amid scenes of tractors breaking through barricades and tear gas and water cannons proving ineffectual (consider that these are the coldest months in North India), the obstruction effort failed miserably. By early December, the farmers were pouring across the barricades, closing in on Delhi. The Haryana police gave up the attempt altogether.

The farmers reached Delhi en masse and promptly refused to be corralled into stadia and thus marginalized from public view. Staying in public view was important because, as they knew very well, the farmer is a politically important symbol regardless of the colour of your political flag. Unlike the Muslim protest (as it was made out to be in early 2020), the farmers could not be easily “coloured”. Even the attempt to paint it as a Sikh protest did not achieve the desired effect because the patriotism of the Sikhs is much harder to question, Khalistan bogeys be damned.

The farmers had also come much better prepared, turning their trailers and tractors into makeshift homes. Since they were farmers, they had also provisioned well for the coming long vigil. Media and social media warriors were surprised – some rather unpleasantly – by the appearance of community kitchens or langars and the variety of food being available there. That this food could not be painted in beefy colours (pun intended) made it that much more visible and difficult to discard on the communal pile. Since the countryside supports people from the countryside, neither were fresh provisions difficult to obtain, and the mini-villages that cropped up soon proved remarkably resilient.

Another vital difference was that the protesters’ numbers soon dwarfed that of any other major protest in recent times. That these protesters were drawing on deep wellsprings of support was evident in farmers joining them from different districts of practically all the adjoining states as the protests went on. The numbers were soon in their thousands. Such huge crowds, if they chose to “press” their case, would become unmanageable.

It was numbers more than anything else that forced the government to the negotiating table. Narendra Singh Tomar, the ill-fated agriculture minister tasked with leading the negotiations, soon found that postponement and procrastination were anathema for those sitting in the biting cold hundreds of miles away from their homes. They demanded nothing short of repeal. The government of the day is not used to backing down, especially when it comes to “big ticket” reforms such as demonetization, NRC/CAA, GST, tax changes, import duty hikes, and now this. Amendments appeared palatable, but the protesters refused to accept this. Negotiations dragged on. The wise men in ivory towers – the politicians and their experts – were being made to look like insensitive fools.

It is the nature of a democratic system that where the executive fails to resolve a crisis, the judiciary steps in. The judiciary – the Supreme Court in this case – was already receiving PILs demanding a range of things, from dispersion of the protesters on Covid prevention grounds to investigation for Khalistani infiltration (by which was meant receiving Canadian and other foreign funds). Eventually, the Court focused on the right cases, pulled up the hapless minister and his bureaucracy for their lackluster progress, and suggested the setting up of a panel to suggest the way forward.

Farmers – no strangers to litigation given the complex land laws of this realm – did not want any truck with another panel. They had not made any such demand, theirs having been repeal pure and simple from day one. More importantly, however, the Court ordered that the laws be kept in abeyance for a year and a half so the panel could do its job. The farmer unions were invited to appear before it and present their case.

Whether they eventually do so remains to be seen. The protesters, however, were neither satisfied by the composition of the panel itself, nor the modus operandi of the government in going about the still-ongoing negotiations. So they stayed put in numbers that continued to raise the hackles of the Delhi police. In fact, they planned a grand tractor rally to press their case into the heart of Delhi on Republic Day 2021.

Such numbers are difficult to control, and violence was always feared. In reality, the farmers started out with remarkable restraint but at the wrong time and through the wrong places. The result was that barricades meant to keep them within the set bounds of time and space – if the most benign police claims are to be believed – were breached. Once more, the clash was in terms of numbers. Hundreds of police versus thousands of farmers and their sturdy tractors. If the police had been apprehensive about stopping such an influx (or onslaught, as some in the media would have you believe), they were proved right. By mid-day, the farmers had reached the symbolic Red Fort and hoisted, among many flags, those of their unions and the Sikh religion.

The path that history takes along the already tortuous course is unpredictable. That the farmers could have stayed non-violent goes without saying. That they could have turned violent given the vitriol being poured at them by sections of the media and the harsh conditions they have had to live under (about a hundred of them have lost their lives, some through suicide), was always a given. That the violence helps the administration paint the protesters as violent intruders bent on subverting peace and order also goes without saying.

But again, hark the numbers. If the administration chooses to clamp down, nothing short of the army would be needed to clear them out. The political costs for the BJP in Punjab and Haryana would be palpable. Already, the BJP leaders are facing significant blowback in both states, and the BJP-JJP government in the latter appears less than rock solid. On the other hand, the taste of violence and the impact it generated in the space of one day would continue to boil the blood of the “youngsters” who were blamed for breaching the barricades and turning up at places they weren’t supposed to go to.

With the benefit of hindsight and limited foresight, it becomes clear that the numbers were at play in places where it was not readily evident. For instance, considering that the Supreme Court gets petition for everything and the kitchen sink, it is remarkable that they took up the matter and pronounced judgment as quickly as they did. In case of other, limited and distant movements, it takes months before the cases come up through the legal pipeline. In this case, however, the court not just took up the matter but exercised its original jurisdiction to set up a panel that would report to it rather than to the government. This step, whose utility will be tested in the coming months, nonetheless was more progress than anything Tomar achieved with his lengthy meetings.

Numbers also ensured that the protests could not easily be maligned. It is easy to call a group of a few hundred as representing a clique. One or two thousand can be called followers of a political party. But many thousands are difficult to characterize, stigmatize and victimize. The social media lackeys of the administration tried their level best, throwing canards and calumny by the dozen and making dark references to Operation Blue Star and the riots in Delhi aimed at the Sikh Community. But numbers proved to be a barrier such slander could not surmount, since they kept on growing even as the protesters grew embittered at being called anti-nationals, agents of foreign interests, Khalistanis, et cetera cetera.

Numbers too, ensured that all all-out attack was not possible through “non-official” means. Sikhs carry weapons and farmers have basic martial training, especially in the Sikh tradition. This aspect of their self-defense was clear through interviews that some of the farmers gave in the early stages of the protests. Any attempt to violently disrupt the protesters would be met with righteous force, law and order be damned. And so non-violence was respected by all because reservoirs of arms guarded ahimsa. By way of comparison, where Shaheen Baug used the frail bodies of aged women, the farmers used the very real and rippling musculature of Nihangs and even ordinary farmers as insurance against physical assault.

But what does the future hold ? Attempts at sowing division have so far failed. The farmers have made it amply clear who they are and aren’t. Attempts by groups associated with Shaheen Baug – such as the students of Jamia Millia Islamia who generally express solidarity with anyone fighting against the government, have been summarily spurned. So have media groups seen as being pets of the government. The farmers make it clear to anyone willing to listen that they are farmers first and last, and their goal is repeal of the farm laws. It is this simplicity that holds them together and ensures that their opponents – the government as well as the political groups aligned with it, have their “divide and conquer” task cut out.

But will this unity hold ? History tells us that violence tends to reduce support, as major political parties like the AAP and AITC are distancing themselves from the violence. Given that these opposition parties have acted as megaphones for the protesters, this support is crucial for garnering sympathy in the face of the continued tirade against them in the government-aligned media. Further, there are arguments gaining ground that the suspension of the laws should be seen as a major victory and with the Rabi crop coming up for harvest in a couple of months’ time, the farmers should return to their fields, undefeated and victorious.

At the same time, the farmer unions appear to be in no mood to back down. They are wary of cooperating with the SC-appointed panel and have promised a foot march to Parliament on Budget Day (February 1, 2021). What matters now, as may be obvious, is whether they can keep their flock with them.

Because if the past few months, years and decades have taught us – numbers count in a democracy.

An Emptier Future

A couple of years ago, when I was still in Tehatta and still travelling back from Krishnagar to Kolkata on the Krishnagar Local, exhaustion provided a rare insight into the condition of humanity. Specifically the number of humans we have around in the world today. As I sat on the “fourth” seat (and basically had a buttock and a half hanging off the edge), what struck me was not my discomfort but the expressions of the people around me. Some were more uncomfortable than I was – being wedged between seats waiting for one or another passenger to get up and leave. Others were jostling with vendors in the narrow aisles that separated the two sides of the train seats. The scenario in the clear area between doors was a different order of hell altogether.

But some were comfortable, having boarded the train on its way up instead of from the first station (Krishnagar) on the way down. These people, and other enterprising individuals who climbed up from the space between the train tracks because they could avoid the rush on the platform, occupied the much-coveted window seats in the direction the train was moving. Yet all of them – bar the children perhaps – had a look of exhaustion and a forlorn desire to return home.

No doubt some of this exhaustion came from the work they did. But you could tell from their sweaty bodies and their tired eyes that a good amount of it had to do with the daily trials of heckling and being heckled, jostling and being jostled, elbow-butting and being elbow-butted, in the trains and buses that made up the routes from their homes to their workplaces. They were victims of each other, and none could find a solution to the problem. Or they would have found it a long time back – and implemented it for themselves and their children, relatives, friends and near and dear ones. Which would have promptly led to overcrowding and a return to the previous state of affairs.

The problem, essentially, was that they were humans and wanted to propagate the human species, this being their primary primordial purpose in life. Every species tries to do so, and bar the pandas, never tires of doing it when the time is right. In case of humans, the time is always right, and having a child – a male child specifically – is always good news.

Naturally, we, and our parents and grandparents before us, have grown up with an overabundance of people all around us. And with them, advice on how to limit the population so we don’t end up with a ticking time bomb. The more enthusiastic ones – and I count the politicians in this class – claimed that this would also give us a “demographic dividend” i.e. a young population unburdened by too many old or young would focus on working more, earning more, saving more and investing more to spur growth of the country.

In recent years, all of this has taken a specific shape – that of a comparison with China’s population graph. Critics of the Indian experience say that China’s draconian one-child policy was responsible for their rapid strides, and India should have followed a similar approach, even when it advocated a more moderate two-child policy. Hence, while the Sanjay Gandhian sterilization drives of the Emergency period are decried, more “persuasive” measures such as barring families with too many children from benefits and government jobs (Looking at you Assam), are often supported. Whatever the means, the goal is agreed upon – reduce population growth at any cost.

We and our parents before us have grown up with this mindset. So firmly is it ingrained in our psyche that we blame everything for overcrowding – poor government spending on infrastructure, poor management, etc. – but don’t bother to tackle the fundamental question. It is a given that the government will ask the people to reduce the number of children they have, and that they will do so, but too slowly and too erratically for that to be of any immediate relief to anyone.

The government clearly, still believes in harping on this mantra. Our dear Modiji spoke of the population problem and asked people to limit the number of children people have. Yet surprisingly, the government’s own surveys have reported that the Indian population may stabilize faster than anticipated – by around 2050 – and the process may have already begun. An important sign of this was that the number of children being enrolled in the primary classes had already peaked or would peak by 2021. For a country obsessed with having less children, the inflexion point in the growth curve of primary enrolments should have been greeted with a drumroll. In effect, it was all but ignored by all except those working on population and education policy.

But the stagnation in primary enrolment is only the tip of the iceberg. All over the world, populations are stabilizing faster than had been anticipated at the turn of the century. Not just developed countries like Singapore (0.92 births/per female), South Korea (1.12 births/female) and Japan (1.43 births/female), even developing countries like Thailand (1.44 births/female) are facing the prospect of a stabilizing population. China, the panda in the room, has a fertility rate of 1.8 per female. Even this is disputed by some demographers as spurious since China’s own Department of Statistics found the actual figure around 1.2. Given the size of China’s population, a difference of 0.6 would be huge. Even if the truth is somewhere between the two figures, what is clear is that China will stabilize faster than anticipated.

The funny thing is, none of this is bringing any cheer to any of these countries. Countries like Thailand, which gave the world Mr. Condom in the 1970s, are far from enthused by the prospect of population growth coming to a halt, and even a decline setting in. The reasons are not far to seek. Firstly, a population that ceases to grow means that the demographic dividend phase is definitely over. The number of old people on assisted living, with pensions and state benefits, is increasing and the number of working age people who can support them – not just personally as sons and daughters but as taxpayers funding the welfare state – is decreasing. At the same time, the number of youth entering the job market is also declining, which means less young people supporting more old people. This puts greater strains on the incomes of the working age population, which in turn means less investment and lowered standard of living. All of this does not bode well for the development of a country still counted as upper middle income by the World Bank and developing by the UN and other major bodies.

Another problem is related to sex ratio i.e. the number of women per 1000 men. In many countries currently witnessing a rapid decline in fertility rate, such as China, Thailand, Vietnam and even India, there is a strong preference for sons. China’s one child policy produced far more sons than daughters and has left millions of men with no prospect of finding a match. These “left behind” men are not good news for society, mainly because their pent-up social and sexual angst is likely to express itself in anti-social and anti-women behavior, which itself is normalized in the patriarchal societies of South and East Asia.

Thirdly, there is the problem of infrastructure. Capitalism presumes a basic expansion of the economy. When it doesn’t – as it cyclically does – recession or depression set in. But this phase is temporary because sooner or later, economic conditions and stimuli ensure that expansion continues. In the meantime, population has grown too. This means more investment in trains, buses, subways, highways, ports, etc. etc. All of this provides a major engine of growth to the economy, which in turn brings in investment and creates jobs for the youth. If population stops growing, there are less youth to take up the jobs but more importantly, such expansion of infrastructure is not fundamentally required. Sure, maintenance of ageing infrastructure would require some amount of investment and jobs. But as the US shows, maintenance can be spotty and expansion is not guaranteed even with moderate population expansion. You could argue that the developing countries would reach the US level of infrastructure at a much later date and hence may keep investing in infrastructure with imported labour for the existing citizens. But this begs the question – most of the investment is done by the state, and if the state is unable to generate more and more revenue through taxation because economic activity is slowing as a result of a lower workforce, where would the money come from ?

The effects of this are visible starkly in many parts of the world, but most starkly in the former Soviet puppets of Eastern Europe and in China. Following the collapse of the Iron Curtain, people fled the economic hardships of these countries to seek a better life in Western Europe or in the Americas. Population growth was severely impacted and in many countries such as Poland, Romania and Hungary, the effects have ensured that these countries will never again reach the pre-1990 levels of fecundity. Here, Soviet era apartment blocks, factories and other infrastructure gradually rust in neglect, no one willing to live there.

In China, expectations of population growth and continuing economic growth fueled a building boom funded heavily by debt. Many of them now sit empty and lifeless. Buyers don’t exist, and in many cases, the governments have had to cut back on supply of auxiliary services to these building complexes as the economic outlook worsens on the back of demographic stagnation and a trade war with the US.

If these stories are new, in South Korea and Japan, they are pretty old. Japan has many train stations which have only one train running – often empty – in the day. These used to be bustling suburbs but now are home to elderly people, with caregivers and tourists being the major travelers to and from these areas. In South Korea, schools lie empty as villages no longer have children to send to them. The children that are born are sent to better staffed and better served schools. Many of these schools have been closed down.

I know what you are thinking – how is all of this possible in India ? Here, the endless refrain is that schools be expanded and education be brought to the doorsteps of disadvantaged and often poorly literate sections. It is rather jarring then to read a government report recommending “consolidation” of government schools in order to accommodate the reality of a stagnating primary enrolment and the very real fact that many rural schools sit empty despite having teachers and infrastructure.

Yet in a country as large as India, nothing can be generalized so easily. There are regions like Bihar, UP, MP, Rajasthan and Haryana, which have been witnessing still high rates of birth. Bihar leads the country with a fertility rate of 3.3, which is on par only with some of the more backward Central Asian, West Asian and African countries. Virtually the whole of the Americas, Europe and East Asia is better off.

But look beyond BIMARU, and the picture looks rather different. Sikkim has the lowest fertility rate in the country at around 1.2. West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Punjab also stand in this low category with a range of 1.6 to 2, all of which are below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per female. In other words, while these states have fertility rates approaching or surpassing European and East Asian states, BIMARU and adjoining states have fertility rates approaching the poorest parts of the world. This imbalance has serious implications.

Firstly, there is a direct correlation between the development level of a state and its fertility rate. It is not surprising that states like Sikkim and Kerala have some of the best development metrics such as child care, literacy level, maternity services, etc. while Bihar is the absolute worst. What this means is that as the years roll by, the more educated and more prosperous people from the advanced provinces will decline in number while those from the less developed and more populous provinces will increase. In a homogenous country, such a transition may have occurred with little social impact. However, India being rich in diversity and even richer in its appetite for controversy around identity, this will have deep social and political repercussions. Already, regions which have historically been open to migrants are becoming more xenophobic, West Bengal being a case in point. Fears of cultural decline associated with decline in numbers, once a bhadralok staple, are now voiced in the open and become poll agendas.

It also means that we will get more poorly educated and unemployable youth than we get now. Already, surveys by UN bodies warn that Indians will increasingly lack the skills needed to give them employment at a level commensurate with sustenance requirements. This in turn, will lead to demands for regional reservation of jobs, which is already rearing its ugly head in Andhra Pradesh. Further, poorly trained people, as and when they get jobs, will enter the economy at lower levels and not find enough opportunities to skill up and rise on the economic ladder. This will not only stagnate the economy but also build up bitter anger. As movements from the JP movement onwards has shown, the wrath of the youth is something no government has the appetite to face.

Finally, there is the little matter of the most backward areas being also the most patriarchal. An exact correlation may not exist, but it is no secret that Kerala has the highest sex ratio in the country, with Sikkim not far behind. Punjab may be an outlier, but the situation is still better than in poorer Haryana, UP, MP and Rajasthan. What this means is the number of females available for a certain generation of males will decline. As the customary tendencies to marry of daughters declines and women increasingly choose their own matches or choose to stay single, it will be harder for low-skilled, low-earning men from patriarchal backgrounds (who typically lack sufficient social skills as well), to find brides. The situation will be similar to the Chinese scenario, but immensely complicated by the permissive attitude of the state towards a range of crimes against women, and the cultural differences that stand as deep gulfs between men and women of different castes, communities, regions, etc. etc. Expect a rise in crimes against women, as well as toxic masculinity arising from unfulfilled conjugal expectations.

And while we are on the topic of society and culture, let’s not forget that these backward states are also the hotbeds of Hindutva and the Hindi movement. With little capacity building for other languages in these states, the youth are almost completely dependent on the success of the Hindi movement to find jobs and maintain social standing in areas outside the core Hindi heartland. This movement can be expected to speed up as the pressure of youth in these backward areas increases even as the numbers of youth in the non-Hindi, better-off areas declines relatively. There is as yet little research on the correlation between the relative changes in demographic balance with the changing social currents and the growing preference for Hindutva among the populace of the country. And any change that takes place will have to be very gradual, since cultural mores are so deep set that percentage shifts in graphs do not immediately alter social proclivities. But the relative demographic dominance of the Hindi and Hindutva heartland is a fact that has to be faced, and states will have to figure out how to limit the impact of these ideologies without giving into regional chauvinism that threatens to weaken the foundations of the Indian Union.

All said, the future will be emptier. Emptier in terms of the seats in schools, the number of schools bustling with children, the number of offices with young employees and perhaps – and bear with me here – emptier local train compartments. The latter will also have more older people who are forced to work longer because they cannot be supported sufficiently in the old age by their children and/or the state. The compartments will also have more Hindi speaking people, who would have difficulty speaking other languages because of plain arrogance and a social education that never tried to integrate the languages of India beyond Hindi. The compartments will also have more men and less women. More and more of the men will be Hindi speaking with repressed desires. And above all, perhaps there will be lesser local trains, running at greater intervals, with less stoppages and lesser number of platforms. Will a day come when some of the bustling stations of today would have become old age homes, with nary a passenger boarding or alighting from a local that would run only a few times a day? Will we – the Generation X of the late years of the 20^th Century – live to see this come about, or will our children, now babes in arms, inherit what seems like a dream today? And will this society be a good one to live in, better than that of today, where the tired and forlorn faces are replaced by something more promising? Those tired and forlorn faces will not have the answer, but it is time they found out what is in store for their children.

The Tenacity of Plastics in the Mofussil

Years ago, when I was just completing my graduation, I was required to submit a survey project on environmental science. Back in those days – and I suspect till today – the modus operandi of such projects used to be a simple copy and paste with some fudging of data. Sadly, I chose the longer path of actually carrying out a survey in my area. The municipal councilor of the area had recently banned the use of single-use plastics (polythenes) and I felt confident that this would be an ideal survey topic. People would be highly discomfited by the withdrawal of polythenes and would say so, thus providing an interesting set of data. Over two weeks and countless questionnaires, though, I realized that most people were in fact, supportive of the ban as long as it was on record. Even off record, i.e. when the questionnaire was complete and the discussion veered into freewheeling territory, their arguments remained firmly anti-plastic. It was surprising to learn how educated many ordinary people were regarding the ill-effects of plastic and how they affect the environment. Many even suggested alternatives which we’d read of in our books – jute bags, paper bags, etc etc.

My project was complete, the data set providing a textbook example of an educated set of people who were willing to sacrifice their convenience for the environment. I don’t think all this effort brought me more marks than the average copycat, but it did leave in me an impression that environmental education had reached a point where administrative efforts would be supported instead of being ignored as is the norm in India. I also told myself that I was being overoptimistic, and that it was impossible that people would have changed so much. They were probably just wondering where this questionnaire would end up, and therefore were being highly circumspect with their answers. Yet I could not deny that they knew a lot of about the environmental effects of plastic, and support or no support, understood what the ban was for.

Three years later, I would be sent on my first substantial job to Tehatta (I made a whole series of articles on Tehatta about two years back). First impressions suggested that the people there would be less aware of the ill effects of plastic. After all, plastics were cheaper, and who had the time and energy to source bio-degradable stuff at higher cost when their lives revolved around getting the maximum amount of work done to be able to afford a decent living ?

Strangely, the NSS activities of the college proved otherwise. As part of the NSS camps, we sent students into the surrounding villages (basically the areas from where they themselves came) and asked them to carry out surveys. Despite the obvious observer bias inherent in this method, we found the students and their respondents were also remarkably well aware of the risks that plastic posed. We received detailed information listing out the various ill effects of plastic, including the accumulation of plastic in the local Jalangi river and other sources of water. The variety of responses told us that the people were acutely aware of the menace of plastic insofar as their daily lives were concerned.

This was refreshing, because unlike the respondents of my Honours survey, these weren’t textbook answers. Rather, they pointed out specific local problems and suggested specific local remedies. You simply couldn’t find such answers in any textbook, and given the education level of a good number of respondents wasn’t above high school, you knew these people hadn’t simply read or heard of these solutions somewhere. Long story short, my impression about city folk being aware of the risks of plastic was now extended to the people of the villages as well. Sample size of one region notwithstanding, I was informed that environmental awareness was now a general aspect of people’s knowledge.

The strange thing though, was that this knowledge and awareness didn’t translate into any sort of actual action beyond what was required of them by the questionnaires and regular environmental drives. Sure, they would clean up the campus and surrounding areas. But then they themselves would litter those areas again as they’d been doing since the advent of plastic. When quizzed about this quixotic behaviour, their simply reply was that they’d clean it up again, or that it didn’t matter much.

The standard explanation under such circumstances from the educated classes (and you get a hell lot of such responses as soon as you broach the topic over a coffee table tete-a-tete) was that these people had been taught only to respect the law and not to imbibe its spirit. They knew the law could punish them, and so they simply obeyed. What they were required to know, they knew, but what they were required to understand and realize, they did not. Further, given that the impetus for such efforts typically came from city-dwelling or city-minded higher administrative corps, it was not really surprising that the top-down approach resulted in a high-handed but superficial application that showed a few results and then disappeared. All of these explanations would end with a sharp critique of the ruling dispensation and how it was not doing enough for the environment.

After a certain point of time, you realized that these explanations were ones that the city folk needed for their own mental peace, rather than ones that actually brought about change, or explained the lack thereof. This was especially valid since the city folk themselves were often found to be less inclined to litter, or more inclined to not use plastic, than their village counterparts. This was partly due to their financial conditions allowing for the use of alternatives which often cost more than plastics. Further, the city had greater availability of alternatives as opposed to villages.

But what was happening in the villages ? This question returned to my mind during my recently concluded election duty. I was posted on the outskirts of the city, along a nice stretch of the riverfront. This area could best be described as the suburbs, rather than the city proper or the village. The people who lived there were in close proximity to both the villages and the city itself. Yet their actions and behaviour was more in tune with what their village counterparts thought and did rather than what the city folk would do.

The point was driven home by the curious use of plastics for packing food. Us city folk are used to bemoaning the multiple layers of plastic packaging surrounding processed foods like biscuits, etc. Yet when foods come in plastic containers, we don’t bat an eyelid. The argument goes that these containers aren’t strictly single-use since they can be used again. Plus, many of them lay claim to being eco-friendly in some respect.

Not so with the polythenes in which our food came. One plastic bag contained rice, another contained the dal and one more contained the mashed potato (alu vaate) and another the egg curry. Each of these plastics belonged to the much-vilified polythene category i.e. they were simple carry bags which had been tied carefully to ensure the food inside did not come out. Given the excess of water in Bengali cuisine, this was all the more necessary since these carry bags (the colloquial term for polythene bags) were often carried in larger shopping bags for transportation and unceremoniously dumped on the floor at their destination. Anyone who wished to eat would have to pick up the respective bags, pair them with a thermocol (or plastic) plate and head off to a moderately clean and quiet place to eat.

As someone who’d had such meals (the local term, not my own usage) I wasn’t surprised or discomfited by this overtly rough-and-ready way of providing and consuming food. Many a times the food which came to our college at lunchtime would be similarly packed. If the person for whom it was meant had a plate (stored in his locker), then the plastic plate would simply be taken back by the supplier. Otherwise the plastic plate would be used and thrown away along with the carry bags. Since none of my polling part companions had been minded to bring along steel cutlery with them, the only option was to use those plates. There’s a specific method for having food on these plates, unless you want dal and rice all over yourself and nothing in your stomach. You first held the plate down with a full glass of water, then carefully poured out the rice. Then you made a crater in the centre of the rice to pour out the dal. You then have as much rice as possible with the dal, before opening out the remaining bags and proceeding as before. In the end, you dump the empty packets and glass on the plate and throw them away.

You may well ask why I bothered to explain the process in detail ? After all, it isn’t exactly rocket science, and is fairly well known by almost everyone outside the core of the city itself. The reason is simple – at each stage, you have to use the properties of plastics to ensure things to flow when they shouldn’t and do flow when they should. Take for example, the fact that you have to transport liquids without spilling them on cycles through bumpy roads and up equally bumpy stairs. Any spillage would spoil the outer bag and also discolour the place where they’re kept before being consumed. Equally importantly, nothing should be able to go in and adulterate the food, since that would create a health hazard.

Then again, you have to be absolutely sure that the stuff doesn’t leak onto the plate before you want it to flow out. If that happens, you may well end up with dal-ified egg curry or some other frankenstein’s monster, whose taste would be the LCM of the already rather debatable taste of the individual parts. Finally, you want the stuff to flow well, and not get stuck in the bag itself when you’re pouring it out onto the plate. Spoons and other scraping materials are almost never included (unless it’s Chinese, and no one has Chinese for lunch or dinner), and scraping off dal and curry from the inside of the packet is an irritating waste of time.

Ergo, you need something that needs to be spill proof, water proof but also easily openable and pourable. Plastics alone have all these qualities, and polythene bags tend to be the cheapest of them all. In fact, polythene bags have two additional qualities as well – they are highly stretchable but also tearable. You just know how much force you have to apply to a bag to be able to stretch it to perhaps tie it well, and how much you need to tear a gaping hole in it. Other plastics, especially the denser variants, would need inordinately high force, and even then they may tear suddenly.

Given these qualities, it is not surprising that plastics are used in a large variety of food-related applications, from carrying meal components to even juice and tea. There was one instance when we got a large poly bag full of steaming tea, and had to pour it out into different plastic cups before we could have it. This tea itself had been poured from a large thermos which the owner could not spare because it was needed in another polling booth.

This brings us back to the question, where does the ordinary person in the mofussil stand on the question of the ill effects of plastic ? Given what I have seen and heard, it may be said that they are fairly aware of the risks posed, but not cognizant with how these risks translate from their own use of plastics. We are accustomed to seeing huge piles of plastic being recovered from bodies of whales. On the other hand, the actual amounts of plastic in any village or mofussil area would be only a fraction of the kilograms recovered from whales. We know that such small amounts eventually accumulate into the huge amounts but do they realize it ?

Let’s for a moment assume that they do. At least, let’s assume that the younger generation does. What then ? They have few alternatives, since the most common alternative – the paper bag or the thonga, has far too many problems, leaking being not the least of them. Others, such as jute bags, work only when the products being carried are somewhat costly, eg. Sarees. Plus, they again fail the leaking dal test.

This isn’t to say that plastics are used everywhere. In fact, the average villager would only use plastics when they’re on the move. Even then, instead of buying meals, they’d prefer to sit down at some hotel and eat from a hard plastic or metal plate. They’d prefer to have tea in the more durable burnt clay bhnar than in a plastic cup. At home, they’d be using durable stuff, which would include stuff made of harder and durable plastic, metal and glass, but almost never the thin polythene stuff.

Given this, the polythene challenge gets limited to the question of transporting stuff, especially leaky foodstuffs, using the rickety infrastructure that is the norm in mofussil areas. Neither paper, nor jute, nor any of the rather fancy alternatives that people tend to champion from time to time, will work here. Costs, availability and product features (such as non-leakage) will all work against such elite options. Something would need to be found that can transport meals, tea and snacks without making a mess at any point.

I believe that that something would have to arise from the mofussil areas themselves, or at least their usage would have to. Remember that the usage of polythene bags for transporting food was never a feature of the West, nor is it found in the big cities. Rather, it was how a product was adapted by the mofussil areas. Similarly, an existing or new product would have to be adapted (or even better, discovered) in these areas for it to begin replacing polybags.

Until then, all the educational drives, the NSS workshops and questionnaires will remain just paper tigers, satisfying the egos of babus and NGO workers but failing to address the basic requirements of those towards whom they are targeted.