With the unremitting media focus on 2G, Arushi case, and now the nth resurrection of the Bofors, the CBI is drawing flak from all and sundry. But as Jean Paul Sartre said in a different context “they are half victim half accomplice, like everyone else”. I am posting an article that I wrote for the Indian Express way back in 2004 .Though a little dated, it has not lost its general relevance. A couple of words have been changed and some connecting words have been supplied.
                http://www.indianexpress.com/oldStory/59591/

                        That Pantomime Artist Known as the Police 
                         
The growing ineffectiveness of state police forces in the face of powerful offenders creates a demand for CBI investigation. This occurs even in cases which are well within the professional and logistic competence of the state police. The CBI itself becomes eminently vulnerable to charges of bias once the affairs of the Central Government become the subject matter of enquiry. The state police forces are well on way to being reduced to a level where they will be good for nothing but ceremonial parades and watch and ward duties and a day may come when the CBI too may face an erosion of credibility. Who shall we turn to then? Interpol, the FBI, or Scotland Yard?

In public perception, the police are regarded as partisan and prone to unlawful behaviour. The Dharamveer Commission (1978) had among many other things recommended the selection of top police leadership by a representative and impartial body to guard against opportunistic or expedient transfer and insulate police officers from undue executive influence. It had also called for a fixed tenure.

The political context within which the police functions has changed dramatically. Criminals with political clout and politicians with criminal connections have an increasingly large say in the system. The fate of political leaders holding responsible positions in governments sometimes depends on the outcome of the investigation of a criminal case. Hence for the political elite the control of the police has become more urgent than ever. Theoretically the police are independent in matters of investigation but by using the carrot and stick policy of transfer it can be made the handmaiden of the government.

Whether an officer will stay for three months or nine years at a particular place is entirely the employer’s privilege and “public interest” is invoked to justify arbitrary actions against which there are no forms of redress. Transfer and postings should not matter to an officer, but sadly in prevailing situation, they are all that matter. In the less developed states where even the barest amenities such as electricity, connectivity, medical facility and good schooling are available only in few places, a premature transfer can be a fate worse than suspension because the fate of an entire family is placed on the line. Benefits and opportunities often accrue to the same individuals. Some remain in perpetual disfavour and are consigned to redundant post while trusted ones are assigned several important assignments. Cadre rules simply become esoteric texts to be interpreted according to convenience of favoured groups; personnel policy, a sieve to create a committed following of believers. In these circumstances it is foolish to go on believing in the myth of independence and neutrality of the police.

The options in some states are stark. Either you are a man of the establishment or you are on the hit list of the establishment- you have to choose between co-option and outright rejection. It needs courage and conviction of heroic proportions to resist the temptation or ignore the risks. In the context of the police, a group of not more than a few score of ‘committed’ Indian Police Service officers can secure the control of a police force of several thousand officers and men. By selective posting of these pliant police leaders at various strategic levels, it is possible to convert the rule of law into rule of men. These puppets, jiggling on the strings of political patronage, command the obedience of their subordinates nevertheless, and are in a position to enforce obedience to improper orders. And if the due process of law is interfered with on a regular basis to suit the requirements of a particular individual, group or clique, the pretence of the rule of law wears thin. Incidentally or perhaps significantly, the All India Services Act has rules governing every service condition of an Indian Police Service Officer except his transfer! The counter factual however must also be stated. Immunity from fear of unseasonable transfers will not make saints of police officers but it will certainly make the saintly among them, and there are some, immune from needless interference.

Policing is increasingly being depleted of public spiritedness and accountability. The powerful can command the service of police, the rich can purchase it whenever, wherever they can. It is the poor, the weak and the vulnerable that are not welcome to the party. The developing asymmetry—police vis a vis the extremist groups, police vis a vis the crime syndicates—is among many other things, rooted in this lack of credibility and moral authority of the police. Public opinion, an important institution of the open society, ineffectual at best of times, rather than feeding the reformist agenda in institutional forums actually colludes in its anticipation of such behavior from police.



Large-scale transfers of police officers and costly deputations of the CPMF are made on election to eve, ostensibly, to neutralize the bias of local police and to ensure that those who want to cast their vote should do it without let or hindrance. But it appears that the citizen is useful only for his vote and once his vote has been extracted out of him his other rights are not cause of much concern to the ruling political elite because for the protection of his other rights he is left to the tender mercies of this same police for the rest of the five years? Democratic politics perceives it that way, because every shade of political opinion has had the opportunity to initiate reformist measures to insulate the police in the light of many recommendations. So when political parties make ritual pronouncements of misuse of the police by the ruling party, actually it is a coded message from one power group to another seeking an assurance that this highly versatile legal construct called ‘the police’ shall be available for illegal use when it is their turn to wield power .The instrument which was fashioned to uphold the colonial rule suits them fine , thank you very much.

Two Tears for Barkha Dutt

The so called Barkhagate controversy raging here is a pointer to two significant truths.  The first is that the Alternative Media seems to have come of age.  It is much the more a moment of celebration for it, because it has stood up to question the powerful and established mainstream media, which has the backing of corporate houses and unlimited funds.  The second is that “Scandal”, as a "growth industry" spawned by 24/7  cable news,   now threatens to engulf the creators themselves. 

To briefly establish the context: an assorted transcript of wiretaps of conversations between journalists and a corporate PR consultant, regarding many issues, some of which now appear to have a bearing on the 2G scam, were leaked by unknown people, for unknown motives, to the leading media organizations.  Yet, barring a few exceptions, no one raised the issue.  Viewed in a certain manner, these transcripts appear to indicate an abuse of the privileged position of proximity to people in positions of power and influence that the media enjoys.  Uncharitable bloggers and tweeter birds have described them as “lobbyists”, “fixers” and “facilitators”.  Barkha Dutt of NDTV, for some reason or the other, has become the emblematic figure in the whole episode. 

The transcripts were discussed on some blogs and the trickle soon became a torrent, especially on Twitter.  It viralized to such an extent that the mainstream media, which had imposed a conspiracy of silence for so long in deference to their secret covenant of “not naming and shaming their own kind”, have been forced to fall in line, and now appear to have been themselves infected by the mood of the slugfest.  Some of the journalists whose names figure, prominent telecasters and columnists, have come out with their long explanations through their columns etc.  But it is the larger media that owes an explanation; as to why they studiously ignored it for so long and have engendered the debate only under duress, compelled by the outrage in the alternative media that itself leads to an adverse presumption of guilt against them.  Thus our concern is why the mainstream media played shy of airing an issue which was not only of great public interest, but of overarching media concern as well.  Their magisterial stance was that the public was better off not knowing it.  The censorship is the issue, not the content of the transcripts. 

One must, at the very outset, disclaim any view on the authenticity of the transcripts, or the allegations of wrong-doing.  That is a matter for detailed investigation.  But a TV channel came to the defence of its iconic but beleaguered colleague not so much with a marshalling of facts as with an admonition, a reprimand to those who had dared form their own opinion.  The channel would like to educate its viewers in the art and science of decoding meaning from a given text.  Aided and abetted by the mass media, in this post-modernist age, whatever random insight the audience can bring to bear upon the reading of a text or viewing footage is considered fair enough.  One must not submit to the criterion of authorized reading of a text. 

The fundamental requirement of the successful communication of a message, says famous semiologist and novelist Umberto Eco, “…is a code, shared by the source and addressee.  A code is an established system of probabibilities…. ” The inept, ill-informed and inquisitorial handling of serious issues related to corruption and wrong-doing in the past has established the code that allegation of wrong-doing is in itself the conclusive proof of wrong-doing.  Media has for long appropriated the job of institutions of polity charged with the responsibility of investigating matters according to a fair and codified procedure.  Now the media itself is on the wrong side and the lynch mob cannot wait to make a kill. 

Barkha Dutt, ring master of many a confrontational live wire big fight and gladiatorial duel, was in the unfamiliar role of defending herself on NDTV.  To her repeated pleas against the nebulousness of the charge and her plaintive query, “Why am I being singled out when a whole lot of other people from the media figure in the list”, Manu Joseph quipped that it was because she had a pretty face.  I don’t know if he was being facetious, but I shall attribute full seriousness and gravity to his remark. 

How long can tongue twisting South Indian names, to which no face can be attached, hold the interest of the baying voyeuristic crowd?  Better to hook a story to a well-known figure, and better still if it is a high profile woman in the public eye.  Who cares if, in the process, the eponymous Barkhagate overshadows the larger story of acquiescence, manipulation, power-broking and pervasive corruption in high places. 

ELECTIONS AND ILLUSIONS

Watching prime time TV during the run up to elections is a valuable experience. To find one self – humble, anonymous, powerless citizen- being courted  by those who would rule us for the next five years, forces one to reflect on the whole electoral enterprise. “ ‘Free elections’’, says the maverick thinker, commentator and polemicist Slavoj Zizek,” involve a minimal show of politeness when those in power pretend that they do not really hold the power, and ask us to decide freely if we want to grant it to them.” The model code of conduct enforced during elections in our country, only serves to reinforce the illusion. The contestants are at their most “politically correct” behaviour. After the verdict, of course, they show their true colours.Is it given to the citizen to enforce a reversal of their behaviour pattern; they could be their natural selves before they were elected but an epitome of correctness after they had won the trust of their constituents?


Apart from the tired old generation, there are a host of younger “leaders” in the electoral fray now, who owe their rise to prominence exclusively by inheritance or political maneuvering or daring acts of criminality, begging us to allow them to be our masters. But their way of doing politics is the same as that of their precursors. The absence of greater variety by way of “new people” seriously impedes the possibility of political change and evolution. As if inbreeding in politics had not muddied the waters enough, retired bureaucrats and police officers, who could be described at best as closet politicians, reveal their true colours by seeking a role in active politics.

Reverting to the issue of voter participation and their freedom of choice. By what criteria would they decide that one or the other is more worthy of their votes and better suited to hold public office? Between hordes and hordes of people charged with various crimes, political charlatans and serial defectors which one is the least venal, which one is the most trustworthy, who can tell? How do they choose the kindliest of oppressors?  Is it a privilege to be forced to choose, one or the other from the available lot, against their innermost convictions? Should it not be within their rights to reject  them all?

It is perhaps axiomatic to say, that only those with lots of disposable cash can seriously contest elections Thus money- largely the ill gotten wealth of the contenders -makes a mockery of the  right to equal opportunity and equal protection that democracy offers by way of equal voting rights and equal right to seek votes for an elected office.In a situation like this the ordinary citizens with just enough to keep body and soul together can only make a symbolic fight. So what are they doing here on this table, where the stakes are so high that only the rich can play and win?

There is a deep narrative structure to the staged contestations and phony debates conducted by the seekers of office in “code language.” When in power they are wonderfully understanding of each other’s crimes and corrupt practices. When out of power they seek every opportunity to disrupt normal life by demanding that those guilty of self same charges be punished. The everyday spectacle of demonstrations and bunds which affect the life of the common citizen exemplifies this “strange symbiotic relationship between power and resistance.”

All this is made possible by Television, which is the most ill suited medium for debating serious issues because its primary concern is to deliver audiences to its advertisers. If corruption is the issue why should party A be made to answer the charges of party B or why should party C get away by accusing party D of greater misdemeanors? It is the honest tax payer who is the aggrieved party. The political actors are past masters at feigning conviction and the television is an accessory to their deception. Instead of the seekers of political power ,collectively, being made to account for the situation in detail, the TV manages to stage a fixed political reality show and we are reduced to be mere voyeurs of the antics of the participants in political arena .

But I still love elections. Howsoever illusory the nature of the experience- seated on the make believe throne in all ones phony majesty, playing king and granting ruling rights to all and sundry- is exhilarating while it lasts.

TRUST YOUR HEART! NEVER

( An invit piece which was written on the occasion of a seminar/ conference on Cardiology at Patna. The death of a friend recently gave it an immediacy, which I had not felt when I scribbled it in a lighter vein.)


    Posthumous  shame is likely to be heaped  on those those who die of heart attack . Only if they had taken enough precaution, they could have kept their deaths  at bay. Preventive heart care is attracting eager converts to its fold. Seminal to the dogma is the assumption that the heart is intrinsically unreliable and fickle. One shouldn't trust ones heart-not only in amorous matters but in the simple physiological sense of the term as well. It is essentially delicate and fragile; vulnerable to a hundred influences from our own mental landscapes as well as from the external environment.  If you are forty ( better still if you are thirty five) it, needs to be kept under constant surveillance. Abnormal heart sounds may indicate enlargement of heart; bifid impulse is the harbinger of evil tidings.Not seeing your doctor  will seriously jeopardise your chances of survival. There are no atheists or agnostics now. Few can ignore a chest pain, or palpitation or shortness of breath. Flatulence can scare most of us with intimations of disaster. The spell is inescapable.


Heart foundations are propagating the new religion of heart care with as much zeal, and ardour as the proselytizers ever did. In our time everyone-from policemen to politicians, from doctors to dream-merchants, from stock brokers to surrogate mothers- just about everyone, is believed to have a heart apiece, despite the compelling evidence of the heartlessness of many of them! People who   are overweight  they are living a state of sin and their hearts are in mortal danger of being claimed by the devil. Djuana Barnes sounded the alarm bells when she said, 'We are adhering to life now with our last muscle -the heart."

The sickness of the heart we are told is caused by our personal life style, (diet, activity, addictions etc.) and the harmful things in the personal environment. The classical medical wisdom that disease is the result of infringement of natural laws has come full circle. "Diet" says Deepak Chopra M.D, oncologist turned T.M exponent, "is destiny". (Revising Freud's dictum "Anatomy is destiny".) .To buttresses his point he enlists the authority of the Taittereya Upanishad. No less!



"Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shalt be no more cakes and ale?" asks a Shakespearean character rhetorically, to which the answer of the virtuous must be a firm and unambiguous, "Indeed, there shall be no more cakes and ale". Cholesterol, rich food, red meats, ice creams, condiments and cookies, in short whatever tickles your palate are temptations placed in your way by the devil himself to which the standard response should be the upanishadic Neti, Neti (Not this, not this).



Salvation lies in plain salads, sprouted beans, and frugal diets. When it comes to eating, altruism is the best policy; charity a strategy of survival. Eat the lean portion yourself, and give the succulent bits to your neighbor (especially, if you covet his wife!) The yolk of the egg, the fat in the milk, they are all dispensable and deserve to be gifted away- to your enemies! Traditionally men have sought the solution to their nagging problems at the bottom of a bottle. The standard excuse given by tobacco addicts is that they try to smoke away their worries. Some relaxation may be given in case of alcohol and one may imbibe it occasionally-preferably under medical supervision- but smoking is absolute blasphemy. If things get too tensed up, well! swallow an Alprazolam. But I find the stunning piece of wisdom offered by the once stunningly beautiful Brooke Shields more comforting. "Smoking kills" she says "If you are killed, you have lost a very important part of your life".

 

The narrow and straight path in the new ecumenical faith leads to the gymnasium’ and aerobic clubs, swimming pools and jogging tracks. The third commandment requires you to renounce the comfort and the warmth of your blanket in a cold winter morning, get into your sneakers and track suits and head straight for the Sanjay Gandhi Biological Park or some such place. Five days a week, through fog or rain hell or high-water; all the year round.



There are some more prohibitions and one wonders, whether it is the heart which is at the centre of the doctor’s concern  or is he bent upon turning us all into saints. Late night bridge parties are to be abhorred; instead pranayam and yogic postures are to be practiced early morning, behind closed doors or better still in the open. Meditation is chicken soup for the soul, all right, but it is even better for your blood pressure and your heart. Viipasana and Yog Nidra have been appropriated as therapeutic tool for idiopathic angina. In fact there is a whole ritual no less esoteric than that of a holy anchorite who has renounced the world. The devout of this sect are to be seen walking on spiked sandals, clapping their hands away to no purpose, or laughing away to glory, under the banyan tree in the local zoo.

The most important ritual of the cardiological rite, however, is  the routine checkup, for those who want to keep their body and heart together. A consultation with your doctor assumes the gravity of a confessional session. Alone with your doctor you are prepared to reveal all, in a mood of repentance and tell-all. Through percussion and palpation he prizes out the rest of the secrets out of your heart. His stethoscope probes it from every conceivable angle. You are wired to the ECG machine; you jog on the treadmill. Meanwhile you keep confessing, uninterrupted, a long list of mea culpa.



"Doctor actually I overindulged myself during the last couple of days. I have been smoking lot lately as I am going through very difficult times". “I was spotted with a women friend in the club by a common acquaintance. Had a row at home. That is when I felt a stabbing pain in my chest, on the left side". And so on. The list of woes is endless. The cardiologist, like a kindly priest presides at the confessional and listens with amused detachment. He is indulgent towards these fallen souls. He knows the way of all flesh and reassures the patients, and asks them to be good and responsible.



But there may be greater peril lying in store-the judgment may be severe. The man in white may pronounce with appropriate gravity the condition to be tricuspid regurgitation, peripartum cardi-omyopathy or heart valve pulmonary stenosis or some other disease with equally sinister name. It falls on the affected victim and his family like a tonne of bricks. The sinister sounding name kills before the disease does. The cardio thoracic surgeons, especially, those who perform the critical suture are to their profession what the aviators (not mere pilots!) are to the vocation of flying- the elite of an elitist club. What they love best is finding excuses for performing the cardiac bypass surgery. In a consummate display of their skill they saw you down and then sew you up, as a tribute to their Olympian gods like Christian Bernard Denton Cooley and others.



But "The heart has its reasons", as Blaise Pascal said (or was it Emerson?)" that reason does not know" and ever so often confusing evidence keeps turning up which inspires skepticism even fatalism in the humble uninitiated fold. This heretic has broken all the commandments, flouted all the injunctions of the sacred text. He is a doctor himself (was, alas! he is no more. Death claimed him in his late nineties and certainly the heart was not the culprit. ) around ninety, already and has ambitious projects up his sleeves. A lover of good food he can eat his breakfast, lunch or dinner at anytime of the day-and several times, at that. His dinners are invariably washed down with copious amounts of good whisky and he gave up smoking out of sheer fatigue and boredom rather than in deference to the prevailing orthodoxy. If ever there was a convincing rebuttal to prevailing orthodoxy, it is him.



And this friend of mine. Forty-eight, athletic and young, lived his life by the book. Almost like Rousseau’s noble savage. Definitely not the type A personality. He died on way to airport of a massive heart attack. The chauffeur discovered him, dead as a dodo, at the airport, in the back seat of the car. I was told there was a frozen look of mild surprise on his face.What had he done to deserve this? Milton though blind, justified the ways of God to men in unreadable and boring poetic texts. The cardiologists, however, were not at a loss for explanation.It seems that he had a genetic predisposition. Was born of the wrong sort of parents.So there you are. You cannot trust your heart. NEVER!

Bringing up Father

It was a Sunday and, while surfing the World Wide Web, I noticed on the net my daughter, who is generally unavailable to speak to us during the day time, available for chat.  Normally she likes to lurk in the “invisible mode” or her presence is sternly marked in a forbidding red, warning obtrusively solicitous parents to stay off.

It seems we stay in different time zones; on different planets, almost.  Even our biologies, it appears, are different.We are the 9:30 to 6:00 people while for them the day begins when we are preparing to call it a day. So we generally manage to put in a word or two edgeways and get the standard reply ‘Dad I’ll call you in a while.”  If it is 12:00 PM then may be at 12:40 AM, if her shoot gets wrapped up early, and at 4:30 in the morning if things did not go as per schedule, she would like to pick up the threads.  In a state of total stupor or somnolence we end up getting all confused and tangled.  We beg ourselves, hoping to sort out the matters tomorrow.  My wife has been trying to conclude a conversation in respect of my daughter’s marriage for the last two years. It still goes on - simply because she has not been able to advance her most cogent and clinching arguments. When the summit actually takes place she is at her fuzziest and most confused, while her interlocutor is in a state of heightened clarity.  No prizes for guessing the result.

We got started after the customary hi and things like that.  The drift of conversation was in no particular direction, but what bugged me the most (dear me, my English is really getting all screwed up!  Are children such bad influence on parents?) was a string of consonants, like proper nouns of Balkan or East European origin.  In a kindly fashion my daughter took to educating me in the new language with all the consideration due to a nouvau admis.  I had heard that "LOL" is the shorthand expression for laughing out loud.  But there was the ASAP, for my benefit it was explained as soon as possible ,then BTW cropped up, which I understand is "by the way".  In the middle of a raging conversation you could just hang up, leaving the other fellow high and dry with a BRB - be right back. Then there was this neologism NTW, not to worry, but I am told it is catching up fast.  Or viralising, I should say.  But more economy was available.  On the chat you do not say I am happy or annoyed in words, you just hurl a smiley - annoyed, delighted, intrigued, puzzled etc. There are a dozen of them nicely organized in columns, in half platoon strength.  And yes, even in their world there are etiquettes, clearly recognized protocols.  Capital letters and punctuations are screaming bad manners.  Internet has forged its own sociology of private and public manners, new and dynamic forms of community.

We had a long conversation and on almost every issue we had different views.  Since my daughter has studied literature in one of the best colleges of the country, the cultivated illiteracies of the text messages, the brutal abridgement of the capacious and rich English language, the deeply alienating influence of internet, pop culture and high art figured recurrently.  I am afraid we could never ever come to a common ground.  The chat came to an end with a parting shot from her.  She quoted Jacques Lacan’s famous quip with its proper spelling, Les Non-Dupes errent. (‘The undeceived are deluded’).

My daughter excused herself.  After all, the young of her generation are so hard pressed for time!  They have to remain in touch with each other, the 450 friends on Facebook, the 1100 followers on twitter, the streaming e-mails on their Blackberry, blogs, the new cool video on you-tube!

But long after she had left, I wondered if this is the first time people of two generations are trying to start a dialogue.  The children have been forever in a state of holy war against their intrusive, ignorant parents.  It is something that is perhaps, in the nature of things.  So what is different?

I just venture the proposition that the pace of change in our generation was perhaps slower, therefore, obsolescence set in much later, the shelf life of parents was much longer. In our time I guess, and more so in the time of my father and before, two generations could be part of the same adult world but with clearly defined roles, well defined territories.  In their prolonged period of childhood they became conditioned to look up to the adult for guidance and advice. The parent child relationship - essentially one, between untrusting-self and the regulating other - was one of authority.

But now we have worked up a rapid, vertiginous pace.  Now the secrets of adulthood or the ways of the vile wicked world are open to children much earlier.  Parents no longer hold the key.  They trust themselves, their own judgments, opinions and capabilities, and they have moved the internet in loco parentis.

Instead of curiousity and wonder, a certain world weariness and cynicism is the hall mark of the precocious adult. Riding the wave of technology, especially the TV, internet, the iPhone, they have renounced the community of real men and women and retreated to the virtual communities where they have discovered new modes of participatory activity and leisure, new ideals of shared experience, new sites of protest and resistance.  The generations seem to inhabit different worlds with different rules, mores conventions and morals.  Relationship, marriage, paternity they all stand liberated from the immemorial taboos.  People of my generation tend to put too much premium on experience.  But I now realize experience has its down side.  With age comes not only the erosion of physical capabilities but also stiffness of mental fibre, the incapability of appreciating the new and the unfamiliar. I think the best strategy is to have trust – trust in their judgment and ability and pray to God that your trust is not misplaced.

But reverting to the core issue, the debilitation of genuine literacy in favour of the digital, the deliberate renunciation of the vast resources of language in the interest of expediency, economy of both time and money (I am told mobile service providers charge per character instead of words), the dumbing down by way of homage to the intellectual democracy, has a direct bearing on the whole issue.  We live inside the language of our discourse.  And as Wittgenstein once said, “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”.  A few lines from Romeo and Juliet, the emblematic symbol of romantic aspirations in our less unhurried times in the world that has gone by, juxtaposed against two lines from the chart buster song “You and Me Baby” which inaugurated the third millennium for us, would perhaps illustrate the point .

ROMEO
[To JULIET] 
If I profane with my unworthy hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

ROMEO
Have not saints lips and holy palmers too?

JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

The great ceremony of the courting ritual, the obliquities of speech, the passionate yearning and that awful daring of the proposition that demands but a kiss, will be thrown into sharper relief by this direct and uncomplicated exhortation of the Bloodhound Gang pop music group of this Brave New World:

You and me, baby, we ain’t nothing but mammals.
So let‘s do it like they do on the discovery channel.

Romeo and Juliet would be left stranded and speechless, in this world of naked apes and instant gratification of desire.  But I am not worried about the plight of the iconic lovers, nor about the elimination of all possibilities of romantic love.  I can rationalize my own little dialogic problems with my children.  We will soldier along, since we must.  My worry is how their generation and the succeeding generations will be able to strike even a conversation between themselves, each a separate island , seated or strapped variously, to their laptops and iPhones or playstations and desktops.

Democrary and the Great Disconnect

The news papers carried this morning  a fervent appeal by the newly appointed Chief Election Commissioner urging the Bihari youth to vote in great numbers. The item evoked my interest so I wanted to know more. I am normally done with four newspapers in close to two minutes. If my reading glasses are at hand well and good, if they are not, I make the newspaper adjust to my myopia. But I don’t miss very much. Glasses or no glasses, I manage to get the flavor and I thank God for giving me that day, my daily fix of sleaze and scandal, high-minded rhetoric and promises galore, privileged intimation of forthcoming political defections or new alliances in the making. Sometimes I find my name figuring in there. Seasonally, for the last couple of years the odds of my being appointed to some post or the other has been discussed. Then I reach out for my glasses. I like to be enlightened on these matters. Otherwise two minutes is all that I can spare. But today I made an exception. For a public cause, I called to the aid of my failing eyesight my pair of reading glasses.


Why have the youth of Bihar voluntarily renounced their right to vote? By not exercising their right to vote are they making a subtle political statement? And thinking of the their alienation and withdrawal the martyr’s memorial, just a few hundred meters away from where I live, floated before my mind’s eye! The statues of the young students frozen in their stance –marching into a hail of bullets yet holding the tricolor aloft- cast derision on death and mock the might of the empire over which the sun never set. They paid for with their lives to secure for us our independence and the right to vote. Would they consider sitting somewhere in the heaven, wearing their halo of martyrdom around them, their sacrifice worth it? Was the hard fought right to self-determination worth the price after all?


I wondered if this abstention is due to the fact there is an absence of worthwhile opportunities for raising their political awareness before they acquire the right to vote. The traditional modes of participation like student union elections are largely nonexistent. Student politics has always mirrored the concerns and preoccupation of national politics and is a report of what is happening in the broader society. For the youth it is a period of apprenticeship in the culture of parliamentary democracy, a recruiting ground for political cadres, and it incubates the future political leadership. The JP movement of 1974 is a case in point. One may not agree with either the agenda, or the philosophy behind the “Total revolution” but who can deny the reality of the ‘radical youth’ with their unabashed enthusiasm and utopianism or the momentousness of the occasion?


Or is it because the nature of politics today offers no scope for romantic idealism to the youth? What is there for them to be passionate about? There are no radically different visions of society on offer-visions which can captivate their imagination or inspire hope. All the parties dish out the same trite agenda whose similarity and repetitiveness emit a stale odour which you can catch from miles away. Nor for that matter the farcical change of the hearts and minds which compels large scale migration of members from one political club to the other holds their interest. The youth know they would be better occupied following the fortunes of their favourite sports stars –their movement from Milan AC to Real Madrid or from Kolkata Knight Riders to Chennai Super kings.


Arthur Miller had once observed that our political life, thanks to 24/7 TV is now “profoundly governed by the modes of theatre, from tragedy to vaudeville to farce.” The television is both a powerful ally and a useful tool through which the politicians try to project themselves as characters that they are not. In the live telecast of the proceedings of the houses representatives appear to have very few stakes in what goes on in the house. At their most radical, they can only throw a couple of chairs taking care not to cause hurt to their assumed adversaries or get hurt themselves. Even as a spectacle it comes out a loser in terms of audience preference for programmes like WWF.


But even if the youth somehow overcome their aversion there are not very many of them left to vote. A very significant section of them has been forced to become absentee voters out of dire necessity. They have joined the exodus to Delhi, to Poona, to Bangalore or wherever they see opportunity for decent education. And those not endowed with wealth or work are similarly forced to migrate in search of livelihood.

I realized that I had only questions, no answers, only hypotheses and speculations no hard theories. Obviously, I could not get under the skin of the young generation, I could not think like them. But I tried to make an effort of imagination, a nimble leap across the years. What would I be doing, say, if I were eighteen today? Would I listen to the elderly rubbish and make a beeline to the nearest voting booth? In the absence of ideology and idealism, faced to choose between hedonism and nihilism where would I be standing. I am ashamed to admit that I found myself merging into the character of that deeply connected youth in that interesting commercial, in spiritual communion with his mobile, knocking down kids and flower vases, ready to fall off malls. In that state of supreme connect, who would care for the vote?

Intellectuals And Their Idee fixe

[For the fellow travelers, people can] “be divided into two camps, one the incarnation of good and the other of evil”.
Raymond Aron in "The  Opium Of The Intellectuals."

Operation Green Hunt is perhaps the first determined and concerted effort at neutralizing the Maoist threat and it certainly has put them to notice about the seriousness of the intent of the Indian state.  It is too early to predict its outcome, but it has  thrown the domestic politics in a state of ferment. The ruling establishment itself, going by the press reports, is wracked by internal squabbles and dissensions. Some commentators have expressed the fear whether it will stick to its resolve to fight the Maoist menace or give in to the doubts and self criticism of many of its own allies, party ideologues and intellectuals. One gets a feeling that a significant section of the political opinion in this country wants not only the Operation Green Hunt stopped but some actually wish the Maoists to win. Never was the need for collective thinking to establish a consensus in accordance with the prevailing realities of the situation felt more urgently than today. In a polity dominated by violence in all its forms, in a society where legitimate authority is fast losing its grip over its constituents, the theory of the state as being the sole repository of coercive force needs to be made practical through sustained and purposive engagement. “I do not want to take names”, the Union Home Minister was quoted as saying the other day, “but many of them are highly educated …..They write very well”. This group is propagating the view that “the government is bad and has to be fought at every turn and every stage.” Arundhati Roy’s Gandhi with the Guns must take the pride of place in this form of writing.

In the view of a sympathetic blogger Arundhati Roy’s essay Walking with the comrades, “somehow manages to tread that very fine line of neutrality… she indicates her distance from her subject quite rigorously and repeatedly…..” Her case could not have been stated better— however as one goes along one will wonder whether this is the only reading possible - but the point is which ideal reader has Arundhati Roy in mind- only the trained literary critic with a fine ear and an alert mind for the modulation of the narrator’s voice? Or the common reader at whom mass media is generally directed the reader whose critical resources are not quite equal to the task of the fine distinction demanded by the text. In view of the widespread debate that this essay has initiated both in the mainstream as well as the alternate media, it is clear that people have engaged with it as a serious political text and it has been taken as an endorsement of the Maoist violence. Hence the issue for the debate could be formulated along these lines – is Ms Roy merely indulging her taste for literary exuberance and bucolics or is it a cleverly camouflaged Maoist propaganda?

Arundhati Roy’s fame and standing spreads far beyond her vocation as a writer and she is one of the foremost public intellectuals of our time. The public intellectual speaks on a wide variety of issues of contemporary concern to which he brings an oracular authority. Illuminating the issues in the light of his clear thinking, he analyses the situation dispassionately and objectively in order to situate the issue in its proper context. Apart from the value of what he says his writings are also remarkable for lucidity, reasonableness, and objectivity. Therefore with the enormous power to influence public opinion and shape up public policy comes a tremendous responsibility, especially in view of the fact that the likes of Arundhati Roy hold the monopoly to the creation and supply of emancipatory ideas to this world. No one denies that  she owed the debt of hospitality to those who are sworn to the destruction of the Indian state  but she also enjoys the trust and confidence of the civil society, howsoever ineffectual it may be. So “the fine line of neutrality” was a just requirement of the occasion and merging her voice with that of her temporary hosts an act of betrayal.

Ms Roy’s notions of the Maoist struggle are not only romantic they are a little infantile as well. “I am surrounded by these strange, beautiful children with their curious arsenal. They are all Maoists for sure. Are they all going to die …?” What does one make of this meaningless babble? Beautiful or not, children or adult, what other fate can befall those who are fighting a protracted war with the state. And should these young guerrillas for whom the cinematic killing of the hero at the end of the movie Mother India is weak ,maudlin stuff, the real “blowing up of policemen” is their quota of entertainment be referred to as children and kids again and again? The heavy duty sarcasm in the description of these guerillas as “internal security threat”, “Gravest Internal Security Threat”, “blood thirsty” should leave no one in doubt that the story is being narrated from a partisan point of view.

Her lyrical advocacy of the valiant Maoist guerrillas battling the Indian state for the rights of the poor is aided by some clever debating skills as well. First an ex parte hearing is given to the Maoists to help them build formidable case against the Indian state, as indeed it is possible to do so against any state, at any time of human history. The considerable evidence against the Maoists- formidable as it may appear to those who are not their camp followers- is not put up at all. Then all the clichéd and counterfeit universals of such a discourse are deployed to justify their wanton killings which are termed as just reprisals for brutal policies of the enemies they are up against. “The gruesome beheading of the policeman Francis Induvar is still fresh in everyone's mind” for which the Maoists will not even make a plea of diminished responsibility; the moral and spiritual blame for the beheading of the ill-fated cop must be squarely laid at the doors of the Indian state. Ms Roy argues “by institutionalizing injustice in the way that it does, the Indian State has turned this country into a tinderbox of massive unrest.” And yes! Maoists are very generous. They are ready to pay compensation to the family of the bereaved whom they kill with diabolic unconcern, or collateral damage that they inflict, a very capitalist solution! Ms Roy does not instruct us whether this should be made  the  rule of engagement?  Money for killings - on either side? For the record since Ms Roy composed her panegyric, "the beautiful children" have toted up an impressive figure of several hundreds of innocent anonymous civilians killed in trains and buses blown up in different locales in different parts of the country as a “specific solution to a specific problem”. To be sure the videos of these  would provide invaluable instruction and entertainment of the  future generations of the "beautiful children."

Arundhati Roy’s account, largely on the basis of her tutorial in the jungles of Dandakaranya, seeks to construct an uncontested narrative of the whole Maoist movement as also a part of our hsitory.So far so good. No one can dispute that these “comrades”-the adivasi foot soldiers- have been dealt a very bad hand. But what is sad and dispiriting is her conclusion that this binary world of the hunted and the oppressive state has arrived at a stage of social and political entropy that the possibility of change though any agency other than violence appears nonexistent, as if the countless democratic non violent struggles to overcome the local environments of oppression and exploitation through peaceful means throughout the country were not part of our time and place. The success of Indian constitutional democracy may not satisfy some absolutist standards but who can deny the fact that to it we owe the radical change in power relations that obtained  sixty years back and the subalterns and the marginalized have acquired their new character. But to admit this possibility would be inconsistent with the Maoist  strategy of invoking force to justify counterforce and  engender a vicious cycle of alienation of  more and more  people.

But Ms Roy will have none of it .She is convinced that the present system has outlived its utility. “I think of what Comrade Venu said to me: They want to crush us, not only because of the minerals, but because we are offering the world an alternative model.”But this “alternative model” was experimented with, in half the world, for the best part of the century, and it fell on its face not by the application of superior force but by the greater appeal of the liberal market democracy. Whether the resurrection of Marx who now indubitably belongs to the heritage of European culture is a viable project, whether the formidable edifice of Marxist reflection and analysis which dealt in certitudes would be as relevant in an age when there has been such a radical change in the character of productive forces, technology and human society, one cannot be too sure. The leftist discourse itself is such a mishmash of Marxist ideology, vague socialist leanings, phrases and ideas adapted from the neo liberal discourse, bourgeois political opportunism of the worst kind, and proletarian confiscation for the private profit, downright criminality and hedonism. And those who are running the show know that such projects thrive on impossible promises. So in order to keep the hope alive lies, deceit duplicity and force are important weapons in their arsenal especially when they are dealing with their own followers.

Not that Ms Roy is unaware of this, “When the party is a suitor (as it now is in Dandakaranya), wooing the people, attentive to their every need, then it genuinely is a People’s Party, its army genuinely a People’s Army. But after the revolution easily this love affair can turn into a bitter marriage. How easily the Peoples’ army can turn upon the people. Today in Dandakaranya, the Party wants to keep the bauxite in the mountain. Tomorrow will it change its mind?” This bit of thinking aloud should have been posed to the Gandhians with the Guns. As a public intellectual she owed it to the society to act as an interlocutor between the mutually hostile parties to the dispute but she keeps these doubts to herself and expresses the optimism, “But can we, should we let apprehensions about the future immobilize us in the present.” That is too heavy a price to pay for the salt of her hosts.

Her apologists say she is not obliged to give out a programmatic vision for the whole of India so long as she can write some stirring prose extolling the social bandits of Dandakaranya. As all her previous reflections have shown, she is good only at fulminations and polemics, grandstanding and high rhetoric. Perhaps it is we who have been dupes to our own optimism, pouring over her tiresomely long disquisitions hoping against hope that “A directionless dyslexic, capable of getting lost between my bedroom and my bath room” would show us the way out of the most serious crisis in our nationhood.