Dr. Ambedkar, widely admired as the father of the Constitution, was right. “What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism,” he observed way back in 1948.
But Dr. Ambedkar could have added another debilitating feature of village India: deep-rooted corruption. The disastrous rule (1947-64) of patrician Harrow School and Cambridge University graduate Jawaharlal Nehru who grafted Soviet-inspired socialism quickly reduced high-potential post-independence India to a “ship-to-mouth” economy pathetically dependent upon grain exports from America. Subsequently, Indian politics especially in the states, was swamped by ignorant, narrow minded, communalist rural politicians who also imported the casual routine corruption of village India into the Central and state governments.
Half a century on, several rural titans catapulted into chief ministerial positions, are struggling to hold on to their shaky thrones because of corruption charges against them. India’s rural politicians riding on the backs of an ignorant rural majority have transformed Indian politics into flourishing family businesses. Worse, they have infiltrated their kith and kin en masse into offices of governance. As a result, no document moves from desk to desk without ‘speed money’. And the latest gambit of this tribe is to extend affirmative action to OBCs (other backward castes), who rule rural India with an iron hand, beyond the 50 percent ceiling imposed by the Supreme Court, a blatant conspiracy that has the support of Rahul Gandhi, Nehru’s champagne socialist great grandson, Leader of the Opposition in Parliament.
Dr. Ambedkar was right, but not right enough.
