E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

160 Contextualising Gandhian Thoughtindices, let us cast a quick look at where we have reached inachieving what were identified as the first priorities. Forty percent of our people are still below the poverty line. The basicnecessities of life are still outside the grasp of a very-largesection of our people. We have not been able to assure puredrinking water to every village. Only three per cent of villageshave facilities of rural sanitation. Forty-eight per cent of ourpopulation is still illiterate in spite of the fact that ourConstitution has imposed on the State the duty to providecompulsory primary education to all our children, and thisprovision has been in the Statutes for over four decades. Thereare many villages without primary schools, many primaryschools without buildings or teachers, many teachers who livein the headquarters of the tahsil or district and visit theirschools only to claim their salaries every month. Disparities inwealth have increased between person and person, region andregion. Nearly 3.4 crores of our people are registered asunemployed in the rural areas. The number of landlessagricultural labourers has increased manifold. Most of ourhandicrafts are getting extinct. Artisans who were proudcraftsmen earning their livelihood as smiths, carpenters,masons, metal workers, potters, cobblers and the like areunemployed. They have been thrown out of work, and their artsand crafts have withered, if not disappeared, as a consequenceof the ruthless and state-supported competition they have had toface from big industrial units, and now, from multinationalcorporations and their junior partners. Every sector, orpractically every sector of the national economy, includingthose related to the production of consumer goods or foodprocessing, has been opened to foreign enterprise.But failures on these fronts need not be looked upon asthe failures of the system itself. So, let us turn to theConstitution which was adopted to define the foundations, and