Lessons from Surat: No work is done without Modi

I went home to Surat last weekend. I was not surprised to find that it hasn’t miraculously become Singapore. Nor has Ahmedabad transformed into Amsterdam. I grew up in Surat, studied in Baroda and worked in Ahmedabad, and so I know these places quite intimately.

None of these cities resembles the utopia that many people seem to believe Narendra Modi has produced in our state. The cities of Gujarat look much like Indian cities anywhere: Dirty streets, chaotic and undisciplined traffic, corrupt police, lawbreaking citizenry.

Surat has its charms, but being paradise is not among them. Ahmedabad, a city lacking in any sort of charm whatsoever, is more representative of the Modi era - segregated, sullen and oppressively vegetarian.

The reason I was in Surat was a function to felicitate Mrs Homai Savai, founding principal of Sir JJ English School, from which my batch was the first to pass out 25 years ago in 1988.

In those years, parents who wanted to put their children through a proper English school in Surat had four options: Lourdes Convent run by Carmelites, St Xavier’s run by Franciscans, Seventh Day Adventist run by Presbyterians, and Sir JJ. Three set up by Christian denominations and one by the Parsis.

At the function I bring up this fact and ask whether all of us need to reflect on what the contribution of our community has been to our city. The Parsis are in decline across the country, but you could not have told that from my school, which had hundreds. We also had in our class two sets of Bawa twins - Cyrus and Shahrukh and Mahtab and Mahrukh - unheard of in any classroom in India.

The day after the event, Surat is in danger of being flooded from an overflowing Tapi river again. I say again because it happened first in August 2006 in exactly the same fashion.The Ukai dam upstream collected water in its catchment area during heavy rains and then, when it was sloshing full, was forced to release much of it, flooding downriver Surat.

Last time, this was managed by the government with such incompetence that my parents, living in the middle of Surat were stranded on their terrace without food or water for five days. This was the case with tens of thousands of Surtis and so stories of Modi going heroically to save Indians in natural disasters outside Gujarat always amuse me.

This time, there is not as much water released, but the people have no faith in the government. The flyovers are blocked by 7 in the morning with cars parked to avoid flood damage.

The local MLA tweets: “@sanghaviharsh: At Umra Flood Gate Dont Create Any Panic Inflow of Ukai Has Been Decreased our CM Office nd Department is Concentrating on it @narendramodi”.

Why bring the chief minister into this? Does he have a tap in his office that will switch off the flow? Doesn’t Gujarat have a bureaucracy that functions without his attention?

The problem of course is that when you set up one-man rule, as Modi has, the work and effort of no other is valid or believed. Unless the big man is working on your problem, it won’t get solved. Alas, as we found out in the 2006 flood, even that may not sometimes work.

Surat is the only city in Gujarat with a robust presence of non-vegetarian street food. Some of this is because of the presence of mercantile Muslim communities - Dawoodi Bohras in particular. Another reason is that, unlike in Ahmedabad, the lower caste (and so non-vegetarian) Hindus are empowered in Surat.

There are communities like Khatris and Ghanchis whose eating and drinking habits make the city a lively and entertaining place. Modi is from the Ghanchi community (of oil-pressers), but he is, of course, a non-drinking vegetarian.

For a city that has 4.5 million people, is Gujarat’s second largest city and is scheduled to be its largest in the next two decades, Surat has the smallest, most modest airport in the world. People who bang on about Gujarat’s great infrastructure should explain why there are a total of only two flights that come to Surat daily, including one from state-run Air-India, which probably comes because it is forced to.

The wit will answer that this is so because few people want to leave Surat. I do not disagree, and it is a fine city, but for some reason I am always happy to leave.