Do-it-yourself India

Do-it-yourself India
Jug Suraiya, 12 January 2010 , 08:45 PM IST
Times of India

India is increasingly a do-it-yourself country. And the government of India should give a medal to the residents of Tajnagar village, near Gurgaon, for setting a new benchmark in the DIY (do-it-yourself) scheme of things. Having waited a quarter of a century in vain to get their own railway station from a sarkar that seemed deaf to all their pleas, the enterprising Tajnagaris had a whip around among themselves, raised Rs 21 lakh, and set up their own railway station, certainly the first DIY railway station in India, if not in the world.

God is said to help those who help themselves. Our sarkar goes one better than God: it doesn't even help those who help themselves, but implicitly urges them to continue the good work and keep helping themselves some more because - as sure as eggs is eggs - the sarkar certainly ain't going to help anyone.

In that way our sarkar is eminently fair, and does not discriminate on the basis of caste, creed or gender. It leaves us all - irrespective of particular persuasion - to help ourselves to whatever it is that we think we require.

You want an uninterrupted supply of bijli? Fine, it's not an unreasonable request. But don't look to the sarkar, or any of its many agencies, to generate it for you; you've got to do it yourself. Get a genset. Or a kerosene lantern and a handheld pankha. What? No kerosene available in the government-run fair price shops? Haven't you ever heard of a do-it-yourself source of supply for kerosene - or for that matter for anything else you might require, like potatoes, and onions, and dal and rice - which is called the black market?

No municipal water to be had? Stop bellyaching and get on with the job of digging a community bore well in your area. Set up a rain harvesting system. Push comes to shove, buy bottled water. To drink? No, dummy. To bathe in. It's either that or don't take off your clothes before sending them to the drycleaners.

Government hospitals and healthcare centres either non-existent or full of rats, disease and infections? Go to a private - read, do-it-yourself - nursing home. What do you mean you can't afford it? Of course you can. What do you think do-it-yourself medical insurance is for, for which you have to pay those humongous annual premiums?

There are no textbooks, blackboards or teachers at your local sarkari school? Send your kid to a school set up by a do-it-yourself entrepreneur who charges swingeing fees for the services provided. Almost everything in India is on a do-it-yourself basis. Electricity, water, health, schooling.

With the virtual collapse of the governmental postal system, the sarkari postman has become an endangered, if not a near-extinct, species, spotted only at Diwali time when he rings your doorbell to collect his yearly baksheesh. The rest of the time you deal with a do-it-yourself delivery system called a courier company.

Rising incidence of crime in your neighbourhood and the cops unable, or unwilling, or both, to do anything about it? Employ do-it-yourself security guards to protect your property and your person. In some parts of the country you have not just do-it-yourself cops but do-it-yourself armies, like the Ranvir Sena, or the Salwa Judum. And to provide competition to these, you have another do-it-yourself army called the Naxalites, who are said to run a parallel do-it-yourself state-within-a-state in over 160 districts across the country.

Each day, in every way, India's do-it-yourself capacity increases, as exemplified by the resourceful villagers of Tajnagar who got themselves their own DIY railway station, thus relieving railway minister Mamatadi of an onerous chore. The sarkar should recognise and honour such do-it-yourself enterprise.

The residents of Tajnagar deserve a medal for the DIY spirit they've shown. Trouble is, the medal will also have to be of the DIY variety, because the sarkar can't supply even that.