IN his address to the All-India Safai Mazdoor Maha Sammelan in Delhi on Sunday, Mr Sanjay Gandhi said that safai mazdoors who were earning about Rs 100 a month had been offered better jobs with the government and other agencies. But, sadly enough, they chose to remain stuck to their present jobs. He asked: “If they do not help themselves, then who can help them?” The Congress President, Mr DK Barooah, in his message to the Maha Sammelan, said that by doing the job of cleaning dirt over the years, the safai mazdoors had lost the desire for uplift. He urged the need for society to change its attitude towards safai mazdoors and for them to change their attitude towards society. Sociologists the world over are agreed that social stagnation is very much more difficult to break than economic stagnation. In India, the caste system has prevailed over centuries. Caste involved social stratification. However much one may wish and try to break it, the legacy of centuries may not disappear in a day. Attitudes and institutions support each other, and both these continue to function within the inherited framework. Many people, therefore, become purely survival-minded, wanting nothing more than to preserve their customary low levels of living. Their aspirations are limited by custom and tradition. Such people existed also in pre-industrial Europe. It took some time for them to break their inertia and make their self-development as well as their self-improvement self-sustained.
