The Welfare State-Fact or Hoax?
AS AGAINST dead or dying English politics it was a genuine surprise and pleasure to find that the Welfare State was a reality. I had not expected that at all. Almost all that I had read about it had sounded like election speeches, and unfortunately the phrase has been used as a party cry. Besides, whenever I find that a political or economic formula has been taken over from the West by our politicians I become suspicious of it, and the discredit into which it falls is reflected on the original. So I did not go to England with any faith in the Welfare State, far less with any ready-made admiration for it. But after seeing it with my own eyes I came away with a genuine respect for it. I hope, however, that the thing for which I acquired this respect is the same as that which is called the Welfare State in England.
This may or may not be the case, for the term has never been very clearly defined. Those who speak about it most often are politicians, who prefer ambiguity as an aid to deception, and deception is of the very essence of politics. The man who described religion as the opium of the people never tried to define what kind of dope, political and economic dogmas were, because he was interested in the popularization of a particular drug of his own. At best-politics makes use of lies as a thin film of lubricant on its bearings, at worst it is all lubricant. The great majority of the peoples of the world are, unfortunately, used to the lubricant alone. However that might be, when I speak of the Welfare State I understand two things: first, a government which is trying to promote the welfare of the people and making contributions to it; secondly, a general state of welfare of the people, which may or may not be due to the government and its agencies. I saw both kinds of welfare in England, and shall set down my impressions about them, without attempting to determine how they are inter-related. I am unable to do that.
To see the government and the public bodies connected with it making a contribution to the welfare of the people in actual fact, and not simply claiming to do so as a matter of political propa- ganda, gave me a strange sensation. In the first place, it was something to come upon a government at all disposed to give value for the money it was taking from the people by taxation. In India, more than anywhere else in the world, the money that we give to Caesar is regarded as Caesar's, and as the bribe to keep him from taking more. If anybody says that this is not the view of taxation among the masses of India even today, he simply does not know India, and I had come from India.
But the main reason for the sensation of strangeness I had was that I was used to the old personal method of dealing with all the problems of living, including funerals. When a man is used to seeing these solved only by the individual's own efforts or not at all, he is bound to be struck by the unnaturalness of finding them taken out of his hands, if not wholly, at least partially. Yet this unnatural state of affairs exists in England. If anything convinced me of the reality of the Welfare State more than anything else, it was the National Health Service. In India it is not semi-starvation, to which most of us are inured, but illness that sets the most harrowing personal problems. Good treatment is expensive, and free treatment in the public hospitals most often casual and unsympathetic, and not infrequently humil- iating as well. I had no need for medical attention in England, but I know the case of a young countryman of mine who was only passing through the country on his way to the United States. He went to a hospital for a check, and it was discovered that he had a touch of tuberculosis. So he was kept and treated in a hospital for some months, to the incredulous relief of his family and himself.
In India tuberculosis is either a catastrophe for the family or slow death for the patient. But so short are the memories of men that the people of England have learnt to complain bitterly if they have to spend even five pounds on treatment.
The building effort was the second thing which made me admit the existence of the Welfare State. What has been done in England may not be enough to meet all the needs, but I had never seen anything like that before and would not have believed that so much had been done unless I had seen some of it myself. I wondered why I had heard so little about this building activity. In our country so much is said as soon as some scheme appears on paper that people do not notice anything when a project is finished, nor do they blame anybody if it is not.
The phrase "English slums' is still symbolic of the condition of working men in England with most of us. Before I left India a friend asked me to make a point of seeing them, perhaps thinking that the experience would cure me of the chronic Anglomania with which they all think I am afflicted. I cannot say that in certain parts of London, Birmingham, and Bristol I did not see what are called slums in England, but they did not agree with my conception of them, which was formed from the slums of Cal- cutta and Delhi, of which I knew a great deal. On the contrary. the new blocks of flats for working men had the appearance of the blocks of luxury flats in New Delhi, in those parts of this upstart city which since Independence we have got into the habit of calling 'prestige areas' because foreigners, diplomats, and people of similar status live there. Even in those parts of the East End of London where the old working men's dwellings had survived, as for instance in Bethnal Green, I saw prams at the doors, and curtains in the windows, which instead of suggesting slums sug- gested to me the quarters of high civil servants of the Government of India.
One day I was taken to County Hall where I had a long conversation with a woman architect and town-planner of the
L.C.C. I asked her about her work, and she replied that her assignment was Lansbury in the Poplar Community, which covered an area of about 124 acres, and would eventually house some 9,500 people, or about 42 per cent of the pre-war popu- lation.
It is a question of rebuilding then?
Not quite, she explained, for they were trying really to reshape the area and make the people who would come into it live a different kind of life. To begin with, the scattered industries were to be grouped into an industrial zone. Then blocks of flats were to be built, and after that markets and shops, schools, churches, and other public buildings. Of course, these meant not only more amenities for the inhabitants, but also a different kind of life.
Had anything been completed?
Yes, the first stage. Blocks of flats, maisonnettes, and terrace houses for about 1,500 people had been completed. There were besides a shopping centre, a market-place, three schools, a number of churches, with a home for the aged, three public houses, three children's playgrounds, and a small amenity park.
She showed me a large model, on which the completed portions and those to be built were differently coloured. 'It does not look like an industrial area, though, I remarked.
'Perhaps not,' she replied, 'for we have adopted a new layout, which is different from the old. The main idea is to have a series of neighbourly groups linked together by open spaces. In fact, the open spaces form a special feature of the rebuilding. We are also giving the buildings different heights to avoid mondtoay; the open spaces are of different sizes too. Altogether, we want to give an air of spaciousness and variety to the area. We have nevertheless used the bricks and purple-grey slates which are traditional in this part of London."
That ended the conversation, and I left. But I am very suspicious of models and plans, so I went down to see what the place really looked like, and I found the rebuilt area exactly as it was in the model: In Birmingham and Bristol, too, I saw a good deal of this type of rebuilding.
I shall not try to list all the aspects of the state's welfare activities, but pass on to the appearance of welfare in the people. It was so decisive that even what was on the surface gave to me, who had come from India, an impression of extravagant luxury. The first effect of this is bedazzlement. Some try to recover from it by recalling the East's spiritual superiority over the materialistic West, others call nationalism to the rescue and try to convince them- selves that all this luxury has been made possible by the economic exploitation of the East. But in the end the facts produce their effect, and most Eastern visitors feel glad that there is so much welfare going, more especially because in the Welfare State there is hardly any distinction made between the natives and the foreigners.
But it would still be possible for us Indians to go wrong over the meaning of all the abundance and luxury that is to be seen in England. India is a country of very great disparitics of wealth, perhaps the greatest disparities existing in the present-day world. In our country there can be no comparison even between the ways of living of a middle-class family of average means and a well-to- do family. The two stand at wholly different levels of material culture, as anthropologists say. The peasant and the artisan in the villages live below the standard of livestock in England.
So an Indian might imagine that the abundance was only for a minority living in case on the exploitation of the majority, unless he took the trouble of looking closer at the life of the people at large, which would show that want and distress had disappeared from it. In India both lie on the surface, and no one can avoid noticing them. They are obvious in the first instance in the cloth- ing. Even in the big cities, for every two persons in clean and adequate clothing there are eight in an assortment of shabby, dirty, insufficient, and tattered clothes. In the cold season, as I travel in the public transport of Delhi, I often have sitting by my side men who have wrapped themselves with dirty blankets or quilts in which to all appearance they have been sleeping for years. In the villages it is virtually impossible to meet men in clean and adequate clothing.
After that the most painful impression is created by the presence of diseased, underfed and deformed persons everywhere. Again, almost every day in the buses I have to sit by the side of people suffering from all kinds of illness, including tuberculosis and chickenpox. The unfortunate lepers are everywhere. Even when there is no disease the impression is one of lifelessness.
To see this day after day for years in all public places creates a mental distress from which it is impossible to escape even in one's home. This mental suffering becomes almost physical pain when the children are seen to be in the same state, and except for the Punjabi children all children in India fare worse than the grown- ups. Upper-class Indians who cannot stomach this universal exhibition of squalor and distress run away from their people to live an artifically protected life in carefully segregated places like New Delhi, do not go about except in cars, and never visit the so-called 'city', where ordinary Indians live. And in India the helpers of people in distress are always people in slightly less distress.
The absence of all this in England made me believe in the Welfare State. Especially, it was a joy to see the children. I have .heard even Englishmen say that when they see the new genera- tions of children they do not grumble at the taxation. I could never distinguish between the children of the different social classes, though in my country I can place them within twenty-five rupees of the income of their parents. Whether they were playing in the Victoria Park in Bethnal Green or riding in Rotten, Row, all seemed alike to my inexperienced eyes. During my stay in England, in the course of which I saw hundreds of children, I saw only one in insufficient clothing. That was in an industrial quarter of Birmingham. The boy was in a shirt and shorts only, and his feet were bare. I do not know why he was dressed like that, but he seemed healthy, and he looked back and grinned at me again and again when he saw that I was noticing him.
I do not know, however, why I should have to collect evidence and set it forth to prove the state of well-being of the general mass of the English people. The news has reached even our masses. While highbrow Indians affect to believe that the English people are finished, humble and common folk all over the sub-continent of India are coming more and more to believe that they will no longer remain poor if only they can make their way to England. Who brings this story to them? Indian workmen and tradesmen who have been to England, of course. Before I left for England I went to do some shopping, and the owner of the shop said to me when he heard where I was going: 'Sir, you will see what the country is like. Please take your weight before you leave and again after you have returned. Compare the two.'
Another day, after my return, as I was going to New Delhi in a bus, a Sikh in very ordinary dress came and sat by me. He asked the conductor for some direction, and got no reply. Then he turned to me and said, 'See how they treat a countryman if he does not look rich. I have lived for years in London, and I have never seen anything like this." He explained that he had a business in the East End. Then we began to discuss living expenses in England as compared with those in India. I observed that rents were very high. The Sikh at once replied, "Why should you go on paying. rent? It is so easy to buy a house there. I have bought one for five thousand pounds. I paid a part of the price down, and then had the balance spread over years."
Such are the stories which are reaching the common people of India, and it is no wonder that hundreds and even thousands in my country and Pakistan are applying for passports. There is even some business in forged passports. If the Governments of the two countries had not been very strict about granting passports, the English people would by this time have discovered what a terrific reputation their Welfare State has built up for itself in the East. It is literally a fulfilment of the old song:
They say they scorn to tell you lies, That they are not mistaken, But the streets are paved with pudding-pies, Nay, powdered beef and bacon. You that are free to cross the seas Make no more disputation; In Lubberland you'll live at ease With pleasant recreation.
