The metaphor of a boat rising with the tide was indeed well put. Speaking to business leaders last week, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi talked of how India was brimming with energy and how we were sitting on a tide of transformation. But there were many who didn't have a boat, and Gandhi suggested that India Inc should help provide them this boat.
Gandhi defines the boat as the basic minimum that an individual needs to fight his battles in life. In reality, the tide of development in the last nine years has seen folks get submerged by it given the displacement and loss of livelihoods -- and even lives -- caused when the police fired on behalf of businesses, for example.
In other places, this tide has come as a curtain made of polluting dust particles from power plants, covering them round the year, or as hordes of sand miners who turn rivers shallow, or as governments who sell even the rivers.
As for the boat, he said, the government had tried to provide for it: through food subsidies, education, employment and now cash transfer. The only problem here is that these boats had holes, so people sitting in them found they were left to their fate most of the time. Food subsidy is not available if you are too poor, or living on streets or a migrant. For benefits need an identity and address.
Education takes place in classrooms that don't have teachers. Even if a few days of employment is guaranteed, wages are not.
Cash transfer is the newest boat for the people, and it threatens to jeopardise benefits currently available to whosoever they are available to.
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