It is an act of self reliance. It is an act of self rule. It is an act of maturing from the short term to the short now – a period of the life of a person.
It’s the act of severing the umbilical cord from the mother and asserting an independent identity. The short term demands nourishment and support from the outside that we depend upon.
For example from Khadakwasla, Varasgaon and Panshet, that provides our city its water. Nourishment from the hinterlands that provides our city its food. Support from the villages away, like Devachi, Urali, that need to absorb our wastes. Support from the Mula-Mutha that carries away our sewage.
Nourishment from the lands far and wide that provide us our goods and services. Nourishment from the state government and the central government funds to make a city smart. Nourishment from FDI that our city’s economy can’t live without. Nourishment from the World Bank for projects like the metro rail that we claim we can’t do without.
Pune is the birthplace of the idea of India’s independence.
Pune’s own Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak was perhaps the first leader of the independence movement. He asserted that swarajya was his birth right and he shall have it. The Swadeshi movement that he founded with others across India sought to liberate India from goods and services that did not come from India.
Independence to accomplish self rule were not ideas to accomplish the next day.
They were acts asserting the end of support from the outside. They meant decades of effort. They cost the blood, sweat and even life of thousands of Indians.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the disciple of Gopalkrishna Gokhale (another leader of the independence movement from Pune), called for the self reliance of the Indian villages. He called for their ability to find self nourishment. He emphasised that the sustainable economy was one that was self-reliant.
India’s independence came by denying itself external support.
The support of the British Commonwealth. It came by rejecting imports, rejecting the East India Company and rejecting FDI. It came by rejecting videshi. It came by rejecting the jobs of the rulers. It came by rejecting the salt produced by the rulers. It came by acceptance of our own constraints. It came by valuing independence over growth.
It came by valuing our own self-determination over that imposed by those external forces invested in us for their benefits. It came by believing in the short now – a life time – over the short term.
It came by educating our men and women to be persons of character, not to be chameleons that change colour to seek their self interests.
The 73rd (mandating the creation of panchayats) and the 74th (creation of municipalities) Amendments to the Constitution of India in 1993 highlight the intent of declaring independence of villages and cities.
The Municipal Bodies yet have resistance to the idea of area sabhas or ward committees that stem independent of its elected representatives and establish local self rule.
In 2018, are we short of the act of independence?
To be smart means to be capable of independent action. The smart city program, however, is not meant to do any such thing for the ward sabhas or oven the Municipal Bodies. Quite to the contrary. It is to create joint ventures that take away the very independence 74th Amendment conferred on to cities.
Shouldn’t smart cities be independent? Shouldn’t they be self reliant? Shouldn’t they have self rule? Shouldn’t they be focused on 100 years – the short now – and not the next project or the tenure of an official?
Isn’t independence meant for cities and their area sabha or ward committee? Isn’t independence an idea that remains relevant today? Isn’t independence an act that we are willing to assert today?
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#All views expressed in this column are the authors and Pune365 does not necessarily subscribe to them.
He can be reached @AnupamSaraph
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