Sacred Cows:

~By Anu. Just a few weeks ago, I took a visiting friend to the National Gandhi Museum across from the permanent memorial to the Mahatma, on the banks of the Yamuna River here in Delhi. We gazed at the Mahatma's little round glasses, his eating bowl, his watch and the blood-stained clothes in which he was assassinated.
    Or so we thought!
    Apparently the real stuff has just been bought in auction for $1.8 million by India's flamboyant liquor and airline tycoon, Vijay Mallya, in Manhattan. That's ironic enough- given that Mr. Mallya told me in an interview a few years ago that he did not feel Gandhian ideals were relevant to modern India. Mr. Mallya doesn't apologize for his wealth, or his flaunting of it.
    At least he's honest about it.
    So why then his interest in the few meager possessions of an ascetic, a man who shunned the kind of material wealth and power that Mr. Mallya proudly flaunts? I suspect it isn't a love of Gandhi, or a reverence for his ideals that have driven Mr. Mallya to scoop up the items auctioned... but a simple exercise of power and influence. He bought the items simply because he could afford to. Who knows where they will end up. Even if they go on public display in India, will anyone notice?
    Reading the details of the contentious and strange events leading to the sale, one has to wonder about the seller, Californian James Otis, a self-titled pacifist and Gandhian. If he's such an ardent follower of the Mahatma, why on earth did he sell the items in the first place? If he so wanted the items to go to India, why didn't he simply donate them? If he wanted the Indian government to spend more on the poor, why didn't he sell the artifacts and donate the proceeds to charity? Has he now happily pocketed his part of the proceeds?
    The only totally predictable part in this story is the delayed, ineffectual, 11th hour reaction of the Indian government... Whether it's patents on neem, Basmati rice, yoga positions or the sale of artifacts integral to India's history... count on the government to react once it's too late. Besides, they probably thought, like I did, that the real stuff was already on display in the musty cabinets of the National Gandhi Museum which they subsidise.

~By Anu. This is Kavita, my cook/ maid, standing in the filthy foyer of her son's school. For the past few months, while I've been taking my Indian economics class, I've been trying to understand why there's such a wealth gap and such lack of opportunity for so many millions in a country that has often touted itself as the world's next big super- power.
Through Kavita's eyes, I have learned a lot, especially today, visiting her neighborhood, her flat, meeting her children and going to their schools.

We hear a lot about India's middle classes and recently, about slum-dwelling Oscar winners... but what about the silent majority: those, like Kavita, who are literate, hard working, have aspirations for their children... but are falling between the cracks because so little of India's infrastructure -- health care, schools, transport -- is geared towards them?

I hope by illustrating her day-to-day existence, I can help others understand the reality behind the very badly-reported story of India's phenomenal growth (at least in much of the western, English-language press).

Kavita is 27. She is married to an unemployed driver, has two sweet, conscientious children, a 7-year-old boy, who studies in this squalid little classroom... and a four-year-old girl who spends her days in a small, sunny private creche. She works three jobs at the moment, earning roughly $300 per month. But in April, she'll be down to one job and less than $100 per month. Like millions of Indian workers, she has no job security, minimum wage guarantee, or social welfare support of any kind. From her fluctuating salary, she must pay rent, electricity, school fees, transport, buy clothes, eat and because of the unsanitary conditions she lives in, pay for doctors and occasionally, a hospital stay.

Until last year, Kavita didn't even exist on paper. She possessed no ID, could not vote, or even open a bank account. Thanks to one of her employers who helped her sort out the paperwork, she now has a voter ID card, as well as her own bank account and is starting to squirrel away some savings.

Kavita's day begins at 4 a.m, seven days a week. She and her daughter sleep on bedding on the floor, while her husband and son take the double bed in her immaculate but tiny, tin-roofed room at the top of a narrow building in south Delhi, just a stone's throw from one of the city's impossibly glamorous mega-malls. She forcibly rouses herself, knowing it's her only chance to stock up on water. For 30 minutes, whatever precious liquid flows from the tap on her exposed veranda will have to sustain her family's needs until the following morning.

Dawn chores include boiling drinking water and cooking breakfast and a packed lunch for her children in the miniscule makeshift kitchen literally tucked away at the foot of the family bed. Then, she'll wake the children, ready them for school, get ready herself and leave to catch one of several buses which will ferry her to her first job, cooking and cleaning in one of the city's posher neighborhoods. If no water flows from her tap that morning, she will have to fill several buckets of water from a garden hose in the dusty municipal park across the road and lug them up four flights of stairs (all of which pass through her downstairs neighbors' tiny sitting rooms!)

During one of his rare bouts of employment, Kavita's husband bought the family a fridge... but electricity is too expensive, so now it functions as a bookshelf and storage space.

From Job 1, she goes to Job 2, cooking and cleaning for me, and then onto Job 3, which involves nothing more than tidying away the clothes and belongings of a middle-class family every afternoon. On Sundays, they pay her extra to come and wash their daughter's hair (god knows why a 20-something woman needs someone to wash her hair... but hey, it's work!) In April, she'll lose me (when we go back to London) and the afternoon job, as the daughter's getting married and leaving town.

After a full day's work, during which she often doesn't get to eat lunch though I always implore her to, Kavita heads home. The kids have been collected from their creche by a local girl whom Kavita pays to act as an escort. In the evening, she often climbs four flights of stairs only to find she must go back down and buy some vegetables for the evening meal. She cooks dinner, eats, helps the kids with their homework, and then washes the family's clothes before slipping into what must be an exhausted sleep in preparation for another day.

What strikes me most about Kavita is her personality: she is irrepressibly sensible, kind, hard-working, sensitive and cheerful despite what she endures (there are many family problems and pressures which add to her grief). Second, I admire the fact that she has very strong ambitions for her own future and that of her children's, even as she despairs of ever being able to achieve them. When I see her room and neighborhood, I'm struck by how isolated she is and how cut off from even the most basic information. While I can use Google Earth to gaze upon minute corners of the globe, Kavita isn't even familiar with the basic geography of her own city. I showed her a map of Delhi the other day, so she could understand where her home is in relation to mine. If I need to find out where something is, or how to get something done, I can surf the web, or call one of a dozen friends and ask. Or, more crucially, I can rely on my own independent experience. I can summon a taxi and be driven to any part of this vast metropolis to track down an office or a person in authority. I can use my English, my education, my confidence and bearing to side-step a million invisible barriers that would stop her in her tracks. None of this has ever been an option for her, nor millions of others like her.

The things that upset her the most are her husband's unwillingness to hold down a job...If he did, they might be able to move to a better flat. She hates the baking oven of a room she pays a large chunk of her monthly salary to rent...and the fact that when it rains, water pours in through her meager window on the world and soaks her bed and belongings.

She's desperate to learn English (we're working on that)... and would love to work at the 'Embassy', though she doesn't necessarily know what it is.

But more than any of that, what upsets her most is the lack of good schools for her kids. The cross-eyed old bat of a care-taker at her son's private-fee-paying hovel of a school won't even allow the children to use the toilet... If they really need to go... they're sent home! The teachers are average, the education basic. Despite all this, he reads English and Hindi well. And because Kavita also pays for the creche, he gets his hands on a desktop computer every once in awhile for basic typing lessons. Government schools in India are a joke. Most lack a proper buildings, toilets, teachers and books. In any case, compulsory education seems to peter out by class 5... and those who try to go on to a private institution often find themselves struggling to keep up with their better-prepared counterparts... In frustration, the majority drop out.

The bitter irony is, there are a multitude of posh, private schools on Kavita's doorstep and a constitution that supposedly guarantees compulsory education for all of India's children until the age of 14. But the lack of decent public schools, and the crush of well-connected, middle-class applicants willing to pay high fees at the private ones, mean her kids don't really have a chance.

Still, we're trying (well, she's trying and I'm putting up the cash and encouragement). Through her own doggedness, she's managed to get her daughter into an afternoon session for poor nursery children at one of the posh local schools. And the search is on to find an inside connection at a suitable school for her son.

(Please email me if you happen to know someone high up in the Indian Air Force!!)

Meanwhile, she's found a local college girl to tutor them every evening (it's a bargain at just over $10 per month for both children). And with any luck, her son will get admission to a decent school by next year. Then perhaps, if she's also found a job that pays her enough, she can start looking for a proper place to live. One where there's water in the tap, a dry roof, and enough left over so she can plug in that nice, red fridge.