The state of parenting in India, when seen through this lens of resource deprivation, shows us the darkest side of unequal economic growth. In a fast developing economy that lacks equality, the risks for the most vulnerable sections are cumulative. The greatest burdens fall on those who are disadvantaged to begin with, and the greatest threat is to the development of young children in families who feel pressured and disadvantaged.
Children are influenced by their experiences, actions and interactions, as well as by broader environmental influences, including the values and feelings of their parents, which in turn are coloured by the condition they grow up in.13 If parents feel pressured by societal expectations and financial constraints, their angst is reflected in the upbringing of their children. The quality of children’s social, emotional and moral development, especially their sense of identity and self-worth, is shaped by how they understand this, and their interpretation of their role in causing pain to their parents. This is how children gradually gauge their relative social position, competence and access to opportunities for personal, social and economic advancement. And so, growing up in an atmosphere of the parents’ real or perceived resource deprivation has adverse influences on a child.
For India’s economic growth to benefit our children, we need equitable access to jobs, effective fiscal regimes, and policies to support families, especially those that have been consistently excluded till date. We need growth that promotes good health, a safe environment, law-abiding employers, and a strong social security net, provided by the government and the private sector, which eliminates absolute poverty and reduces feelings of relative deprivation.References
Boyden, Jo, and Stefan Dercon. 2012. Child development and economic development: Lessons and future challenges. UNICEF, p. 1.
Census of India 2011. http://censusindia.gov.in.
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Kingdon, Geeta Gandhi. 2005. Where has all the bias gone? Detecting gender bias in the intra-household allocation of educational expenditure in rural India. Economic Development and Cultural change, 53.2, pp. 409–52.
Lakshmi, Rama. 2016. A spate of suicides highlights the pressures on students in India. Washington Post, 23 January.
Malhotra, Aditi. 2015. What Indian parents want most for their children. Wall Street Journal, 13 August.
Poddar, Namrata. 2013. Female infanticide—India’s unspoken evil. Huffington Post UK, 26 April.
Rogoff, Barbara. 2003. The Cultural Nature of Human Development. (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Saha, Devanik. 2016. Nineteen million women in India have given birth to seven or more children. Wire, 10 May.
Sameroff, Arnold. 2010. A unified theory of development: A dialectic integration of nature and nurture. Child Development 81.1 pp. 6–22.
Singh, Mahendra Kumar. 2010. 82% rural India still lacks basic amenities. Times of India, 16 November.
Singh, Rakesh Kumar, and Saket Sundria. 2017. Living in the dark: 240 million Indians have no electricity. Bloomberg, 24 January.
Wachs, Theodore D., and Atif Rahman. 2013. The nature and impact of risk and protective influences on children’s development in low-income countries. Handbook of Early Childhood Development Research and its Impact on Global Policy, pp. 85–122.
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7Values
Over and above linguistic, religious and other diversities, we Indians also belong to more than a thousand caste-based communities. We can further be affiliated to various other groups based on kinship, political beliefs, love for a sport, personal wealth, shared interest in spotting Martians on Earth, and so on. An Indian could typically be part of more groups at once than anyone else in the world.
In light of this, the place for individuality in India is therefore supremely interesting. How do we manoeuvre between societal and individual values and beliefs? If we do manage to balance the two, where does that balancing act lead us? Ultimately, what are our values? These are the main questions I will investigate in this essay.
As individuals, a particular value might be very significant to you, but unimportant to me, and there might be some values that are crucial to the entire group that you and I both belong to. Further, you might have a certain value that you are—often not consciously—obstinate about, whereas about others you might be more flexible. This creates your own hierarchy of values; it’s as if they are stacked right at the top of your head, and the most important ones make you react with feeling as soon as they are activated.
For example, if freedom is an important value for you, you will fight when it is threatened, feel despair when you are helpless to protect it, and be ecstatic when you can enjoy it. If you value freedom less, you will be less affected by its presence or absence. This hierarchical structure of values ascertains which beliefs we consider more or less important. And the group that you and I both belong to could demonstrate a completely different hierarchy of values than yours or mine. Ultimately, your actions depend on the strength of your own individual beliefs as well as the flexibility the group practises in allowing individual members’ values to dominate the group’s values.
This manoeuvring between individual and group values is significantly more so in India, where we put a great deal of effort into retaining our relations with kin and clan. More than people in most other parts of the world, an Indian will be likely to place greater faith in his personal ties with family and community than in the state or other institutions in general. Why?
First, in India, there are no state-level policies offering significant unemployment dole or health insurance to all. The government does not provide us any substantial social security. And so when the chips are down, we have few options besides relying on kith and kin.
Second, the implementation of labour laws across all sectors in India is alarmingly weak, and even corporate employers have poor employee protection mechanisms. In the absence of governmental social protection and with the high attrition rates at corporations, private insurance companies in
