“Only transgressors cross with ease
Those forbidden boundaries
Only the sinner defies the codes
Exploring forbidden roads
Words are truth and words are lies
In my dreams I see cat’s eyes…”
From And A Pattees In A Pear Tree by Bachchoo
Some years ago, travelling for two nights in a six-sleeper Indian railway compartment (out of a sense of adventure rather than thrift) I encountered a cross-section of fellow travellers that might have interested Rudyard Kipling, or at the least have accompanied his youthful hero Kim. There was a perfume merchant, a fellow who dealt in wild birds, a chef in a roadside caravan selling “Chinese” cuisine, two women, one of whom ran a vegetable stall and another who stayed mum about herself and me. We exchanged information about where we were going, where we came from and of course shared the rotis and packed food that most of us had brought with us. Towards the second evening the birdman asked me not to be offended if he asked me a question. I said I wouldn’t be, he could quiz me about my faith, my family, whatever.
He said since I had said I lived in England he wanted to ask me about something he had heard. No, it wasn’t about sado-masochistic practices or state-sanctioned gay marriage (though that came later in the night when the women had retired to bunks down the corridor). He wanted to know about the welfare state and said he had heard that if you didn’t work, the government gave you money every week. I said it was true. It was called unemployment benefit or in other cases disability allowances or social security for the poor. The poor? Were there really poor in a white country? All of them, including the women, posed the same question — why then did anyone work? I explained that the benefits were on the poverty line, probably just enough to survive on. The caravan chef said he was a simple fellow — a roof over his head and daal and roti would suffice. So how did one get to Britain?
I am sure my answers didn’t satisfy their curiosity. It was the same with the sado-masochistic practices and about gay marriage, which resulted in some bewilderment. There was no way anything I said could explain the fabric of British or Western society to my enthusiastic and even insightful and intelligent audience. I am sure there are gay relationships in every stratum of Indian society and I suspect there are prevalent forms of sado-masochism, though not the same as one may find in the House of the Setting Sun in London (no don’t Google it, friends, I made up the name!). But there is no social security in the subcontinent which, despite its burgeoning economic growth and rampant capitalistic development cannot or will not move political policies towards building a welfare state. I know India gives subsidies to agricultural workers and there are primitive forms of welfare through some free healthcare and free state education, but the construction of a welfare state remains a secondary question in Indian politics.
In the UK, the maintenance and improvement of it has taken central political ground. Britain votes in a general election on June 8. Theresa May and her Tory Party have concentrated their entire electioneering strategy on projecting her as “strong and stable” with a united party behind her, in contrast to Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, who they and the press barons who own the most widely-read British newspapers characterise as weak, as a friend to terrorist organisations such as the IRA and Hamas and a leader who had to surmount a no-confidence vote from his own MPs. The concentration on Ms May as a tough negotiator in the forthcoming talks with the 27 members of the European Union which Britain has now to leave, has been the Tories’ central and successful plank — so far. Their main strategist, the Australian Lynton Crosby, has turned this into a presidential contest. Other Tory ministers are in total political purdah. They are permitted no opinions, no campaigning on issues within their remit or within the Tory manifesto. When they do appear on TV they are ludicrously compelled to turn every issue about policy into a mantra about Ms May being strong and Mr Corbyn being weak. It’s comic seeing opinionated politicians such as Boris Johnson and David Davis muttering this shibboleth.
Labour and Mr Corbyn on the other hand have produced a manifesto which puts the welfare state, the National Health Service, the welfare of pensioners, the amelioration of university student debt, the renationalisation of railways, the Royal Mail and even some banks, at the heart of their strategy. It seems to be working as a few days before the election Labour has cut the Tory lead from 20 per cent in the opinion polls to three per cent. By the time you read this, even that lead may have melted away. Labour and the other Opposition parties — the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and the Scottish National Party — have all concentrated in their campaigns in opposing Tory attacks on the welfare state. Two more terms of Tory rule and these Opposition parties are convinced that Britain will run down the National Health Service, privatise parts of it, cut welfare for the most powerless and vulnerable and, as a result of their disastrous exit from the European Union, turn Britain into a low-tax haven for international capital and money-laundering oligarchs from all over the world. One of the consequences of the Tory assault on the welfare over the last two terms of the government have resulted in a shameful increase in people, even those who are employed, relying on “food banks” — places run by NGOs, churches and the like to distribute charity food parcels to those that would go hungry without them. There’s a food bank round the corner from where I live. Not a pretty sight and not one that my fellow-passengers on that railway journey would have expected to see.
