Child Labor on the 18th Green

“I work outside for nine months a year as a construction laborer and survive on daily wages. Going to vote means loss of three days of wages and an expenditure of Rs. 350. How can I afford that when I am not sure where my next meal will come from?” Varsinbhai, a worker quoted in The Indian Express, December 16, 2007, when asked if he was going to vote in the state-wide elections

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This was the last place I expected to play golf. India, the land of 1.2 billion, the Mahatma, Taj Mahal, non alignment, the third highest number of HIV/AIDS affected persons in the world, spices, Bengal tigers, countless languages, yoga, caste, the hundreds of millions of rural poor, weddings, saris, the Kama Sutra. Going to Scotland, the home of golf, it made sense. Here, it just wasn’t in my mind; the first -- and second -- set of associations of India, its culture, tourist destinations, non tourist destinations, likely don’t involve golf and for most people here life and golf rarely meet. What’s golf? Few know and fewer play. But, this morning I saw the face of the 7, 8, 9, 10 percent growth rate investors in the West fawn over, of the relatively small but growing (in number and in wealth) urban upper class, of ‘development’ and its dumbfounding complexity.

It is winter in Ahmedabad and it’s cold. Before and after the sun, shawls make nocturnal appearances, caps come out and this is not the kind of weather that makes you want to wake up. Momma pajama doesn’t jump out of bed, let alone at 7 a.m. on a Sunday. It was more like a roll, stirring only at the second alarm and even then wondering if it wasn’t too late to make the call – I am just too tired, sorry. No shower, quick transition from pajamas to pants, switch the shirts, glasses no contacts, jacket and into the elevator.

My fault for being on time; I wait. Rahul pulls up half an hour late. Since arriving, he has been the most gracious of hosts in his city, welcoming me warmly, inviting me to family events, giving me shirts, always asking if there is anything I need or that he can do. He is going to lend me a blanket. Twenty four, he and his older brother work at the textile company started by their father. In time, it will be theirs. They own 4 cars; conspicuously on the dashboard are his Burberry sunglasses. Golf clubs on the back seat. Digging in his pocket, he takes out and answers his iPhone. Their company survived the decline of the textile industry in Ahmedabad and they are surviving well.

Ahmedabad is growing and it is growing fast. It is growing out, not up, without a plan, in concentric circles of mega malls, cinemas, office parks and 10-story apartment compounds. Residents who grew up here no longer know when the city starts and when it ends, the landmarks they once referenced gone, parks for an ice cream on a Sunday subsumed in the belly of the beast, remodeled, renovated, now a hotel or a parking lot. Two-year-old malls, with only half of the shops rented, cower in the shadow of the newer, bigger, brighter mall going up immediately next door.

Behind both those malls and every construction project in the city are the shanty towns where the men, women and children who do the work live. Following the construction like the harvest, they live where there is work, unskilled, cheap to hire and easy to fire. They don’t shop at these malls and they don’t play golf. On their backs buildings and profit-margins are built. Developers want their projects up as fast as possible, money is the end goal. The demand for developments is high, the demand for labor is high and cheap labor is the best kind. Respect, fair pay, the legal working day are absent. Labor laws exist and NGOs scramble to keep up, but the pace of growth is too fast.

“Do you like Ace of Base?” Rahul asks. Sure. I don’t see any signs, but the roads are smooth, two lanes going in each direction, divided by a concrete wall, street lamps every 30 feet. Long haul trucks zoom by, delivering the concrete that will build the malls. For these truck drivers, the roads are good. The roads are good for the person they are rushing to meet. For the worker who is following the cement delivery, the roads are good. Easier on the hooves than a rocky, dusty, potholed, uneven road, the camels and elephants also appreciate this road. It is faster and easier to ride a bike, push a lorry and drive a car, motorbike, rickshaw, or donkey on a smooth road. Potholes help no one. Roads that do what roads are meant to do are really helpful.

Without that road it would have taken us two hours to get to the golf club. Instead, it takes 40 minutes. We take a left turn into the gate and are greeted by two men in uniforms and crisp salutes. They look like toy soldiers. This is not Westminster. They are not actually soldiers, they are cold. But, the boss obviously told them every car that comes and goes must be met by a crisp salute. He probably holds an MBA and this is the business culture he is going to create in his club, how he is going to increase brand equity and establish a strong reputation, the guard is the first and last thing members will see, what they will remember.

Construction is still going. When it is ready, Rahul tells me, this will be the most happening, exclusive club in the city. The driving range, club shop, Tee Off Café are complete; the course, clubhouse, pool, two restaurants, tennis courts, track and gym are still being built. Some of the landscaping is done, some fixtures have light bulbs, some merchandise is stocked.

Immediately upon parking – we are going to build our reputation on service -- two boys open the car doors. In t-shirts made in Mexico during the mid 90s, sold in the US, used for a year, donated to the Salvation Army and barged to India, they’ve been cast as Bellhop 1 and Bellhop 2. No starch, no uniform, no khakis. This Sunday is not their day off from school – they don’t go to school; mom is sweeping the steps and dad is climbing the scaffolding of the clubhouse. They are good boys and do their best to play the part. One of them awkwardly removes the golf bag from the back seat and slings it on his right shoulder, walking to the driving range on his tip toes. The bag is taller than he is. The other boy stares at me, blinded by the light.

Rahul drops his membership number nonchalantly and we saunter in, shoulders back, head high, looking around a little, stopping in the shop never with the intention to buy. He’s got the walk down. At the club.

His golf game is not as good as his walk. In fact, he can’t hit the ball. Visibly embarrassed, he takes his time in between swings. He is a beginner with really nice equipment. His clubs are from the US, a friend of his from school working in Chicago brought them home from his last business trip. Swooping to the rescue, the golf pro comes over. Now Rahul just looks like he is having a lesson, working on his game. Saved. His shirt is from Ralph Lauren, new, not the Salvation Army, but he too is playing his part.

In between swings, a woman reaches with a broom to wipe cobwebs from the rafters. Some of the staff stop working and stare. Snapped at the waist, their knees locked, women pick weeds from the landscaping. Off to the right the clubhouse is being built, ensconced in bamboo scaffolding and catwalking workers, a poured concrete skeleton, a Frankenstein of exclusivity that will soon be finished with oak panels and big egos, handshakes, bets, and gentlemen’s agreements.

Fifty balls later, we walk the walk and have breakfast at the café. Rahul’s phone rings, he answers, and two minutes later we are joined by a man with a pointed, scrupulously waxed moustache. It is his trademark and the trademark of many others from military homes. His father is a hot shot in the Army, a man with a moustache and public appearance of starched uniform, shadowed, glassy eyes, and expression of Spartan duty. Privately, behind the walls of the Army club -- a club only high ranking officials are allowed to join -- he is a different kind of man, a whiskey drinking, gambling man looking after his own interests. The one constant, public and private, are the orders he gives. Rahul belongs to this golf club and the mustached man belongs to his father’s. They want what the other has.

We finish eating and bullshit our way to the practice bunker, strolling, making sure the trees see us, our hands in our pockets. It is supposed to be sand. It’s not. It is a mud pit. Two young men are working on their short game, their crisp, new, white Nike sneakers muddy, no longer as white as their crisp, new, white Nike golf caps. Tots in the sandbox, they just hack away, mud going farther than the ball. “Hey yaar, you can’t touch the sand before your shot,” one tells the other in impeccable boarding school English. His friend doesn’t like being coached, contemplates the advice for half a second, shrugs his shoulders, and goes right back to punishing his clubs.

Short phrases, whispers, pats on the back, discretion, favors, the charade of importance.

Off to the side, leaning casually on a pitching wedge, moustache man walks Rahul through the policy of ‘introduction’ at the Army club.

See, even though I am not in the army, I gain my father’s membership. No one, absolutely no one who is not from a military family can get membership to this club. Wishing he were Bond, he takes a long, dramatic drag on this imaginary cigar. Unless, of course, I introduce you and my father makes a phone call.

A break in the action for a couple of swings. You have these two introductions, now it is just a matter of formality, paperwork, etc. Don’t worry.

Hundreds of thousands of rupees will change hands.

Ready with his touché, Rahul politely thanks him for all the trouble, adequately patting the moustache’s ego, then begins. I’ve been talking to my friend here and he is going to give me the membership forms this week. When I get them I will give them to you. He’s agreed to the discount.

Rahul’s father is one of the most esteemed members at a different club in Ahmedabad. The man who owns that club is opening this golf club and agreed to give the waxed moustache a Rs. 50,000 discount as a favor to Rahul’s family.

Go right here, then left, and just before that roundabout near the Reliance Supermarket take another left – our office is the pink building on the right. It’s easy to find.

There are no street signs. This is normal. Giving directions is not easy and things are not easy to find.

If you get lost or need directions just call. Great. Call you next week.

Still in the mud pit, the two young men continue to hit balls out of the bunker. When they are finished, they chip them back into the bunker, and then do it all over again. The man with the moustache joins them. In between shots he talks to me about his friends in Jackson Heights. We trade formalities. I am working for an NGO here that does sewage worker organizing. Great; I did my schooling in social work, specializing in rural and urban development but now I run a security company. He bashes a ball. It flies out of the bunker and onto the putting green, barely missing the man and his son practicing there. They are standing in the direct line of where he is hitting and he is not holding back, again and again bashing the balls like grapefruits and cantaloupes, vengeful, punishing, rapid fire right at this man and his son. They putt on.

He tells me he just wasn’t cut out for it. You don’t say.

Rahul and I head out. No one is at the driving range at the moment. Two boys scamper around collecting balls.

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Growth is not inevitable; growth and ‘development’ are the results of policies, of business, currency, markets, speculation, government, investment, intentions good and bad, selfish and selfless, nationalistic and humanitarian, tariffs, trade agreements, acquisitions, loans. Capitalism demands growth but it doesn’t demand how that growth happens, it is guided, steered, and controlled by the decisions of real people, real people with hearts, children, families, reputations, ambitions, careers, hobbies, dreams, boards, stock packages, interests. The influential are influenced by human concerns the same way we all are None of this is inevitable.Their decisions affect real people.

This golf course is proof of the very difficult task of counting in the billions and trillions and not loosing people, at any level, to the system. It shoes that we have far to go in how we think about and do ‘development,’ that India’s growth rates are helping few, failing most, and lacking nuance. India’s growth is not considering the people or how it grows, it is focusing on the easy part of building buildings and roads with temperate success, ignoring the hard part and failing.

India is playing the game without the etiquette.

Technocratic schemes are easy to cook up on paper but they don’t work unless they consider the reality of the ground, the people they will most impact and it is by these people that these programs ought to be judged. Building private golf clubs and shopping malls is not ‘advancement’ (ever?) when they are built by displaced, homeless, illiterate, tribal laborers. Child labor on the putting green is not a success.

Human indicators are the ones that matter most and by these metrics India is failing.

The importation of Western values on exactly this topic is creating a critical mass of affluence that cares about nothing but indicators of their own wealth. Actors playing a part. Men who act as they think they should, as their Western business colleagues do, but have no idea what they are doing. The influential easily influenced, in power but not in control of the values they are driving their country towards, a dangerous materialism and inequity implanted in their minds as a just end goal. A proliferation of MBAs who want to build brand equity while employing illiterate middle age men as security guards. Business deals on the golf course. At the club on a Sunday. Desires to be Western, iPhones, but still way behind, Ace of Base blaring. Mud pits. Men who have studied the problems, are aware of them, but have been coached into a preferred lifestyle, not cut out for it.

There is no effective coordination at any level, no sense of equity, a variety of different actors playing towards the same hole but unconcerned with the other actors on the course, swinging away in their interest. Maybe the economic indicators are improving, for a few, but the social ones are not. Some of the roads are getting better, some jobs are being created, but the upper class urban elite, comfortable behind their gates, in their clubs and A/C cars, the face of the booming India the West adores, doesn’t care about the people they’ve left in the wake of capitalism’s growth, become more ‘developed’ than.