Lynchings Wrong, Selective Outrage Equally Cringe Worthy

http://www.news18.com/news/india/lynchings-wrong-selective-outrage-equally-cringe-worthy-1447091.html

Let us be clear that lynch narratives in India are never secular — they are impassioned and lopsided either one way or the other. This is why the discussion on Jantar Mantar protests cannot be done in isolation as a purely people's movement - for it may have begun as one but it is not anymore. 

The problem with the world we inhabit today is polarisation. The issue is either pro or anti. Black or white. National or anti national. Secular or Communal. 

The death of nuance is what pained me last night in the debate at Bhupendra Chaubey’s show Viewpoint on CNN-News18 when a recount of serial and systematic silence on brutal and heart rending cases of violence against non-Muslims was loudly interpreted as a vote justifying mob lynching of Muslims. The more such selective outrage happens, the clearer the various writings on the wall are. 

You cannot talk logic and debate in a sustained fashion today, for the fear of uttering or writing something which is 'politically incorrect' - a term ideologically defined and defended by a group of elites in this country. Unfortunately, it has become imperative to wear an ideological cloak even while discussing moral questions, either because you have to defend selective secularism or because you have to expose the selective ideological amnesia and dementia. In the process, one may want to be as balanced as a weighing scale projecting two sides of the arguments, but one has to often choose 'touchy', 'politically incorrect', 'untouchable' issues for articulation. Balance can come only when there is equal and equitable, responsible and balanced articulation of reasons for and condemnation of all cases of human rights' violation, violence, rapes and riots. 

There is of course no doubt that lynchings are inhuman, unfit as a marker of any human civilisation. And because all lynchings are wrong, the reportage of Muslims being killed by Hindus and Hindus being killed by 'some' people, in case the killers are Muslims, is as communal and targeted as lynchings themselves. For far too long narratives of organised hatred against the majority by the elite intellectuals and English media editors' guild in India have been defining a skewed and dangerous idea of secularism in this country. 

Not everyone in this nation has the luxury of such incisive and piercing verbal articulation against violence or selective outrage. But their inability to capacitate the building of a verbose written or spoken narrative cannot be an impediment in a socialist democracy to dismiss their actions by a group of an entitled and intellectually elite mob. 

A reaction can be and must be pulled out and called out for its socially debilitating ramifications. But a silence to even address the action which facilitated the reaction is as much a part of the lynch mob herd mentality. Unless we accept this reality, the facade of looking for solutions is optimistic hypocrisy. 

I was expecting the 'organic' outburst of 'collective' anger at Jantar Mantar to protest against the recent humiliation of a Meghalayan woman by a part of this same English speaking colonial and feudal elite that has no qualms in calling a PM candidate unfit for his tea selling background. 

I was expecting a protest against the murder of two males in the household of Kerala CM's home village and the pattern of lynch mob in Kerala. I was expecting a strong protest against Muslim lynch mobs who have brutally raped and murdered women in Hojai and Marghareita in Assam. 

But I was expecting too much from the media perhaps who focused on Jantar Mantar and gave prime time slots to articulate what some elite groups comprising of some same faces who have made protests their way of overstaying their interests in Delhi. 

Having said what I have said, I reiterate, all lynchings are wrong, abhorrent, a blot on humanity. And similarly cringe worthy is selective outrage. More pathetic is Congress-Communists clandestine combine that spills over its jugalbandi in such opportunistic free loading in protests like these.

(The author is assistant editor, India Foundation Journal, and project head, northeast operations. Views expressed are personal)

http://www.news18.com/news/india/lynchings-wrong-selective-outrage-equally-cringe-worthy-1447091.html

Don't Dismiss Criticism As "Internet Hindus" Or "Online Bhakts"

https://www.ndtv.com/blog/when-journalists-complain-about-online-sexual-threats-1682298

An English media journalist in India who appears to have visceral hatred for Mr. Modi has rightly made a hue and cry about online sexual threats against her.

Her abuser was kicked out of his job in the UAE and is to be deported back to India. The journalist has chosen to emerge as a champion for women rights ever since. She has also been, among others in her fraternity, indulging in propaganda describing UAE's legislation as an exemplary precedent.

In the aforementioned case, journalistic ethics were kept hostage. In her insatiable hunger to emerge as a hero and a feminist, the journalist chose to deliberately withhold crucial information with regards to the case which punished the perpetrator in the end. It has been alleged by some sections in the local media in the UAE that the legislation which evicted the online abuser from his job was not based on a feminist's appeal to protect the dignity of women, but a theocratic Islamic state shutting down a voice of dissent against Islam.

For my discussion in this article, I choose this incident as a base to talk about the larger issues surrounding online hatred, bullying, abuse, manipulation and violence, which demands more nuance and less noise. 

It is dangerous, shameful, unprofessional and manipulative on the part of journalists of repute to erroneously conflate and confuse issues like feminism, in this case, with religious intolerance. Not only do they successfully dilute the ramifications of outrage that must accompany violence against women, they also ensure that issues of religious intolerance are drowned and dismissed in a cacophony of mutual incitement to slur and abuse. While I most obviously dissociate from this manipulative act of concealing comprehensive information by a fellow media person, I unequivocally denounce any act of violence - verbal included.

This brings me to address another suppressed issue. It is an indisputable fact that online debate in social media is sharply divided across opposing political camps. Unfortunate as it is, you are either on the side of political dispensations, or are against the espoused views by overenthusiastic political representatives. This phenomenon cuts across party lines. There has been a merciless murder of nuance and, in effect, democracy. It works both ways. If you oppose a government policy, you are an anti-national, and if you support any positive move, you are deemed a bhakt.

English-speaking, articulate, Anglophile journalistic brands on Twitter often dismiss dissent against themselves with labels like "Internet Hindus" and "Modi bhakts" when called out on misreported facts and beguiling intentions. These journalists do not just spew verbal venom against those who express concerns over politically biased reportage that informs their career spans, they also ensure that voices which question are silenced and blocked.

On the other hand, there are self-appointed certifying agencies of nationalism on Twitter who judge the 140 characters on handles populating the social media on the basis of some unknown matrix of nationalism alert. The certifying agents allege, and in part, they are right, that media editors' guilds at large have been spewing an organised hate campaign, often rhetorical, against the new politics of the day. It is unfortunate that in this highly-charged atmosphere of political polarisation, violent threats from online abusers are met with epithets like "dumbass fuckwit eunuchs" from acclaimed authors and journalists who have come to gain an intellectual brand, thanks to their legitimization by mainstream TV studios and the established editors' guild in India. 

An English media journalist in India who appears to have visceral hatred for Mr. Modi has rightly made a hue and cry about online sexual threats against her.

Her abuser was kicked out of his job in the UAE and is to be deported back to India. The journalist has chosen to emerge as a champion for women rights ever since. She has also been, among others in her fraternity, indulging in propaganda describing UAE's legislation as an exemplary precedent.

In the aforementioned case, journalistic ethics were kept hostage. In her insatiable hunger to emerge as a hero and a feminist, the journalist chose to deliberately withhold crucial information with regards to the case which punished the perpetrator in the end. It has been alleged by some sections in the local media in the UAE that the legislation which evicted the online abuser from his job was not based on a feminist's appeal to protect the dignity of women, but a theocratic Islamic state shutting down a voice of dissent against Islam.

For my discussion in this article, I choose this incident as a base to talk about the larger issues surrounding online hatred, bullying, abuse, manipulation and violence, which demands more nuance and less noise. 

It is dangerous, shameful, unprofessional and manipulative on the part of journalists of repute to erroneously conflate and confuse issues like feminism, in this case, with religious intolerance. Not only do they successfully dilute the ramifications of outrage that must accompany violence against women, they also ensure that issues of religious intolerance are drowned and dismissed in a cacophony of mutual incitement to slur and abuse. While I most obviously dissociate from this manipulative act of concealing comprehensive information by a fellow media person, I unequivocally denounce any act of violence - verbal included.

This brings me to address another suppressed issue. It is an indisputable fact that online debate in social media is sharply divided across opposing political camps. Unfortunate as it is, you are either on the side of political dispensations, or are against the espoused views by overenthusiastic political representatives. This phenomenon cuts across party lines. There has been a merciless murder of nuance and, in effect, democracy. It works both ways. If you oppose a government policy, you are an anti-national, and if you support any positive move, you are deemed a bhakt.

English-speaking, articulate, Anglophile journalistic brands on Twitter often dismiss dissent against themselves with labels like "Internet Hindus" and "Modi bhakts" when called out on misreported facts and beguiling intentions. These journalists do not just spew verbal venom against those who express concerns over politically biased reportage that informs their career spans, they also ensure that voices which question are silenced and blocked.

On the other hand, there are self-appointed certifying agencies of nationalism on Twitter who judge the 140 characters on handles populating the social media on the basis of some unknown matrix of nationalism alert. The certifying agents allege, and in part, they are right, that media editors' guilds at large have been spewing an organised hate campaign, often rhetorical, against the new politics of the day. It is unfortunate that in this highly-charged atmosphere of political polarisation, violent threats from online abusers are met with epithets like "dumbass fuckwit eunuchs" from acclaimed authors and journalists who have come to gain an intellectual brand, thanks to their legitimization by mainstream TV studios and the established editors' guild in India. 

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It is a situation of a perfect fix. A few anonymous abusers become branded as trolls by media and "intellectuals" as ones who represent and define online hate culture. At the same time, acclaimed and articulate elites showering social media users with choicest abusesgain in stature by being invited on prime time shows. On the one hand, a leader following the hate handles - not retweeting or endorsing abusive content - is accused of encouraging violence. On the other hand, there is a subtle yet organized censorship to even discuss the journalist-editor-author-intellectual trolls who are verbally violent and subversive to the very idea of democracy.

It is impossible to miss the intellectual dishonesty in embracing a puritanical attitude on the one hand when it comes to dissenting against the government, but on the other, donning a vicious, abusive and verbally violent demeanour to shut down (often less than one's self's) voices of factual and ideological challenge in crass terminologies. We don't even know if the handles that outrage or instigate are a part of a larger political conspiracy, or represent a genuine outburst of marginalised issues, sharpened at the alters of anger and frustration over prolonged bouts of non-addressal by the clandestine combine of media editors' guild, academia and civil society.

We must not forget that a Bharat exists beyond our elite cocoons of privileged modes and spaces of articulation where there are real cases of abuse. In a make-belief world of social media, by resorting to hyper-victim mode, we endorse and initiate certain issues which may have scant bearing on the ground. We need not mention states like Kerala, our North Eastern states, West Bengal, etc. among others. These are states where issues of actual rapes are suppressed, issues of real cases of political lynching are obfuscated.

With liberal democratization of space, non-factual, emotional, rhetorical and ideological positions have been exposed to the realities of data, counter-emotions-rhetoric and contrarian ideologies cemented by democratic electoral mandates. Direct democracy in terms of access to someone as high in office as the Prime Minister of this country has taken away the aura and fake elitism of privileged access to Lutyens' seats of power. Today, leaders and even acclaimed media persons are just a tweet away for anyone - the elites and the "trolls".

Publicly active and engaged profiles must be open to being challenged and being humbled by factual or argumentative course corrections. A 15-minute panel discussion with five panelists and ideationally pompous moderator, or a 140-character tweet, cannot sharpen the vibrancy of democracy like India. The debates have to move beyond the AC rooms of India into the lanes and gullies of Bharat. And most importantly, however incorrect they may sound or read on the well-fed ideas of political correctness, issues need address, not violent or subtle suppression or clampdown or block and subsequent murder by non-availability.

(Shubhrastha is Assistant Editor of the India Foundation Journal and Political Consultant at the Office of BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav.)

https://www.ndtv.com/blog/when-journalists-complain-about-online-sexual-threats-1682298

What The Congress Should Have Thought Of Before Walking Out Of The Rajya Sabha

https://swarajyamag.com/blogs/what-the-congress-should-have-thought-of-before-walking-out-of-the-rajya-sabha

When a speech is made in the Indian Parliament, two types of politicians speak – one who hold government positions and the other who just represent their constituency or state in the House. For the latter, the responsibility is rather simple – to express the voices of those they represent in a rather politically driven speech. For the former, however, the responsibility is multi-fold – to address and justify the politics he/she represents and to attend to the questions, submit reports and pacify opposition voices. In the case of the latest speech made by the Prime Minister (PM) of India in the Rajya Sabha, the predicament of the second category of politicians seems to be more amplified.

Among many other things that the PM spoke on and about, the central theme of the address happened to be about fighting the menace of corruption, charting out the progress being made through the measures being taken by his government and re-emphasizing the underlying intent behind the measures. One among the many things that were spoken was a political jibe at the ex-PM and now a Rajya Sabha Member from Assam, Dr Manmohan Singh.

As usual, nuances, details and comprehensive totality of things got lost in the political conundrum that Indian politics has come to represent these days. The zoom- in happened on a statement made by the PM on Dr Manmohan Singh. The PM said that Dr Singh has managed to emerge taintless from all corruption cases as if someone took a bath with the raincoat on. In response, the opposition staged a walk out.

Just as it happened in Bihar on the DNA comment, prior to elections, the comment is being campaigned against by the opposition with the argument that the PM has lowered the level of political discourse in the nation. And it is repetitively hilarious because the opinion makers in the opposition party, who are speaking about this lowering of the discourse, had no word to voice, whatsoever, when the PM was called a psychopath, ‘maut ka saudagar’ and accused of doing ‘khoon ki dalaali’ by their very same intellectual and/or electoral counterparts. Do these people who are standing in opposing voices against the PM’s statements have the moral fulcrum to even talk of a concept like propriety of a political discourse?

The opposition has shied away from serious discussions on issues like the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in the past (later conceding, of course!), demonetization, Uniform Civil Code among many others. Does it even have the right to speak about rules of a decent political discourse when it does not even add substantially to debates in the parliament? Does it even have the authority to talk about rules of politics when rather than representing the voice of the people who have sent these politicians to the various Houses, they are more interested in talking to the cameras? Let us see how the opposition expresses itself within what it calls a political discourse.

It stages a walk out from the prestigious parliament wasting millions of public money in the drama. It resorts to pure optics by taking to social media to outrage with paid social media trolls in order to trend a hashtag. If the politics behind the walk out was to not indulge in mudslinging (that is what they feel that poetic expression or analogy was), it clearly lost its meaning as soon as the members walked out! Their game was on and their well-oiled machinery in action. Let us not stay in the dark about this. The opposition wanted to talk but in the political akhada outside and not in the prestigious House.

Placed in parallel to such a melodramatic and undemocratic opposition, can a politician in the House defend his stance for once in an equivalent if not the same measure? The PM gave figures to back up, how more than 700 Maoists have surrendered since demonetisation and how nowhere in the world has an exercise of this scale happened before.

And what did the opposition do? Instead of giving decent, structured and/or contesting claims to government figures, it chose to stick to a political personality’s speech and let the seriousness of a political discourse be overtaken by the frivolity of opposition optics.

Sometimes as a citizen, I even wonder if at all the Congress wants to sit in the House. Their party Vice President is mostly absent when opposition leaders speak, the party never raises or contributes to issues of national interest being discussed in the House and most definitely it prefers media and social media more over the well of the august House. It is also telling of how and what the political discourse in India has been reduced to.

The limited point is this. In a democracy, no one but the electorate decides what is politically acceptable and what is not. No one decides on moral issues unless there is a mandate or a sustained back up of arguments from all quarters. And no amount of high-handed pseudo-intellectual arm-twisting should be allowed to steal away the flavor of democracy. What is Prime Ministerial or not cannot be decided by an elite few drunk on established codes of conduct and failing utterly to contextualize the behavior or speech.

Democracy is about free speech, free expression and free exchange of ideas. If at all the opposition cares about this institution and concept, it could have stayed and made its point and not done a childish walk out from the well of the House.

https://swarajyamag.com/blogs/what-the-congress-should-have-thought-of-before-walking-out-of-the-rajya-sabha

Mainstream Media Conveniently Twists Vaidya’s Statement To Push Their Own Agenda

https://swarajyamag.com/politics/mainstream-media-conveniently-twists-vaidyas-statement-to-push-their-own-agenda

It is that time of the year again. Politics is at an all-time high. Five states – Uttar Pradesh (UP), Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur – will decide their next rung of state leadership when India celebrates its New Year in March-April.

The vibrant Indian democracy is gearing up for its ritualistic dance yet again. The three pillars of democracy – the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, embroiled in the mess that the parliamentary system creates, become an extension of the poll battle in their own right. Legislators get into election mode, trying to regain their coveted thrones. The executive springs into action to ensure free and fair elections. The judiciary suddenly swells with cases that have the potential to affect poll verdicts and poll battles from all over. In this conundrum, the one hope that democracy offers to the public is the fourth estate – the media.

But when mainstream media itself fails the test of fairness, honesty and ethical standards, what hope is left for this nation? Let us take a look at the recent case.

Jaipur hosts an annual literature festival. It is a meeting ground for all kinds of intellectuals who debate and discuss issues beyond their books, entrepreneurs who are flourishing in their social endeavours, political analysts who are shaping the discourse in this country, and so on and so forth.

At this year’s edition of the annual festival, after a lot of protests by self-certified ‘liberal intellectuals’ of the country against sharing the dais with Manmohan Vaidya, Akhil Bhartiya Prachar Pramukh of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), one of the largest organisations in the country, Vaidya spoke at Jaipur Literature Festival.

In a context very different from what and how electoral politics is played out in the battleground of UP, Vaidya spoke about the need to consider B R Ambedkar’s legacy on reservation, which talks about a time-bound implementation of caste-based positive discrimination by law, to allow opportunities to reach the disadvantaged and weaker sections of society. Vaidya elucidated clearly and lucidly the need to look at reservations from a fresh perspective, and see if the practice has yielded results in tune with why it was introduced in the first place.

Immediately as this discussion began, the mainstream – Delhi-based, North-India-centric, byte-preferring, agenda-driven – media houses in the country churned out headlines after headlines painting Vaidya’s statement as a policy recommendation to end reservations in the country. Editors openly displayed a lopsided preference for the issue, twisting what Vaidya said to mean what they expect a leader of the RSS to say. It did not matter, it seems from the popular media reactions, if the RSS leader in question believed in the media-constructed version of what the RSS believes. What matters, it seems, at this moment is how much the issue can be sensationalised.

With scant respect for public sentiments, zero sensitivity for how this reaction could impact politics on the ground, no nuance whatsoever to understand the implications of politicking that results with such news floating on the eve of elections, these editors and journalists hit an all-time low. It immediately reminded of that time in Bihar when Mohan Bhagwat, the Sarsanghachalak of the RSS, made a similar remark on the need to reconsider the parameters of reservation, a few days prior to the election in the state. It also echoed how the media then interpreted and twisted the facts, creating massive frenzy on the ground with votes being cast, as the media confessed, engulfed in fear and protest against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

What should an average electorate on social media deduce about the media’s credibility with repeat cases like these? That media chooses to create frenzy just like fundamentalists do on the eve of elections? That media chooses to twist facts in order to further its agenda? That media is far from being unbiased to push forward a certain idea of reportage than dispassionate reportage itself? But the follow-up question then is, whose agenda is it that media is pushing? These questions leave room for plenty of speculation and later, assertions reaped as a similar reaction to what the mainstream chose to sow.

Technically, the media should report from the ground and offer opinions over and above the reportage. Also, the job of the editor is to allow opinions and stories from all sides of the spectrum to feature in their space. But technicalities are lost in an age when news, by and large, has reduced to a product of unethical media trade, especially during elections when media buy-outs are no longer closed-door negotiations between the advertising wing of the media houses and political parties but include top editors in strategy chambers of political parties. To expect unbiased news and views from media houses that run heavily on advertisements paid for by political parties is to expect a mother to be a virgin. But is it too much to expect from seasoned and self-proclaimed journalists, camouflaging as editors – often consulting – to just report, even if they choose to cover select, political cases?

Otherwise, what explains the distortion of Vaidya’s statement? What does a tweet from a celebrated and established TV journalist signify when he chooses to not show the footage of Vaidya’s speech but a text version of what this editor or journalist thinks Vaidya said? What explains the logic of the premium media houses, which suggest that reservation should end in this country because an RSS functionary said so?

Whether the media’s priorities are correct in raking up a non-existent issue to making it the most important issue for one state election is for the lesser mainstream – the public – to decide. Whether the media chose wisely between picking up a remark and spinning it a certain way, or a two-and-half-month-long economic blockade in Manipur speaks volumes about the convenient ignorance and possible amnesia of the Delhi media.

It might also suggest a perfect collusion between the status quo of media honchos at the top and the larger political establishment that has ruled this country for far too long in order to let the ideological state apparatus be – oppressive, select, elite and furthering the cause of a chosen few.

The verdict is upon us, the public, to choose or reject the weaving of media meta-narratives or allow events and opinions to speak for themselves. Should one version of the story dominate as a better version without question, or should the power of words and power of politics decide what is good and what is not? This is a question that we as young, aspirational electorates need to think today.

https://swarajyamag.com/politics/mainstream-media-conveniently-twists-vaidyas-statement-to-push-their-own-agenda

Setting The Agenda: How The Young Jallikattu Supporters Are Taking The Lead For Change

https://swarajyamag.com/politics/setting-the-agenda-how-the-young-jallikattu-supporters-are-taking-the-lead-for-change

As I checked my phone later in the night to see the hashtags in trend on twitter, I figured #JallikattuProtests leading the way. One look at the tweets, and one could see that the spontaneity of the online movement coinciding with the offline infectious spirit at the Marina Beach in Chennai. As a youngster involved in socio-political endeavours myself, this was a moment of shared ecstasy with my brethren in the south, doing their bit to register their voices – this time in protest.

This article is not about agreeing or disagreeing with the factual and opinionated stances on Jallikattu. It is not about how Congress banned it and then today wants to gain mileage out of it by siding with the protesters in a hypocritical shift of political allegiance, or about a BJP minister pushing for a ban and then the party distancing itself from her statement. This article is a self-aggrandising pat on the back for youth - like the group at the Marina Beach in Chennai who literally took the matter into their hands to influence policy decisions at the top.

As often repeated at various forums, I believe that as one among the 65 per cent of India’s young population, with less than 11 per cent representation in parliament, we as a populous, aspirational section need to move beyond just being vote banks to ‘thought banks’ (as Sanjay Paswanji says in another context). Jallikattu protests led the way towards this transformation with elan at the beginning of this New Year.

It is very interesting to see how the opinionated, argumentative and aspirational youth of this country has been taking up issues of concern – national and regional – in its own hands and influencing the government to take decisions on the agenda it sets. Recently, we saw the row over Amazon selling objectionable doormats and how the young tweeple coaxed the people’s favourite Minister of External Affairs of India, Sushma Swaraj, into getting the online firm to fall in line. In the recent past, we have seen youngsters leading the way in deciding issues of interest - be it the Nirbhaya case or the India Against Corruption movement. These incidents suggest a defining trend.

India is on the cusp of a revolution at multiple levels, and as a youngster it is very refreshing and encouraging to see lot many more fellow citizens taking up causes and making it their own, while advocating a change in status quo. And this is a very positive development. In a country of a billion plus population, 55 years plus politicians should not be allowed to dictate what the youth wants. And in order to have our voices heard, we must intervene at various levels – electoral politics is one, but not the only way forward. The recent uprising at Chennai’s Marina with such a passionate appeal for a cause is an affirmation of this argument.

In any country, policy is the most important aspect of citizens’ interface with the government. Thanks to Right to Information (RTI) Act and the explosion of information and opinions on social media, setting the agenda is no longer limited to political parties putting out their priorities on their five-yearly party manifestos. Increasingly, through government programmes and/or citizens’ outreach module within political factions themselves, setting agenda for elections has been made open to public consultation to a large extent. In the recent past, we have seen the Bihar government, for instance, rolling out the BadhChala Bihar campaign to negotiate people’s aspirations, the Assam government initiating Mission Assam, Vision Assam to understand what the people want, the Jharkhand government leading the way in state-of-the-art redressal of citizens’ grievances, and perhaps, many more. But again, all these exercises are an act of preset priorities by those either in power or aspiring to be in power. Thankfully, a cross section of the youth has begun to move beyond these established engagements.

In that respect, the protests at Marina to clear the way for a traditional festival to be held, to help the farmers celebrate, and not let the ping pong policy of previous governments affect the decisions of the Tamil community, was more about a proactive setting of agenda by the youth of Tamil Nadu. And this development should be welcomed with open arms by youth activists across the spectrum.

https://swarajyamag.com/politics/setting-the-agenda-how-the-young-jallikattu-supporters-are-taking-the-lead-for-change

Dear Pratap Bhanu Mehta, You Disappointed Us!

http://swarajyamag.com/politics/dear-pratap-bhanu-mehta-you-disappointed-us

The latest article by Pratap Bhanu Mehta in the Indian Express on the demonetisation row describes the move as a ‘watershed event’ and a ‘new kind of politics that will redefine the relationship between citizen and state’. Agreeing partly on what Mehta says is a watershed moment for India and disagreeing on this move as being an ‘event’, I propose a humble critique to what he wrote in his latest article.

I choose to do this because his criticism seems to be a classic representation of what the detractors have been saying in different voices – some shrill, some caustic, some personalised and some delusional – all bound to each other in content but may be differing in form. What Mehta has attempted is a value judgment of a public movement that has started off with India Against Corruption in 2012 against corruption at multiple levels – government, media, intellectual space, politics and society.

He rightly analyses the step as a ‘gamble’ which I would prefer calling a risk – a sign of a truly entrepreneurial governance model. The article goes on to critique the step because of its ‘sheer audacity’ and because ‘it threatens to institutionalise a new kind of politics’. The rest of the article essentially builds up on this theory of emergence of a new political order and critiques it on the ground that it is puritanical.

I have multifold problems with this kind of critique, especially because it came from Pratap Bhanu Mehta. Unlike most other intellectuals in the country, Mehta represents a voice of sanity who has been known for his nuanced writings and analyses of questions of public interest.  But of late, his intellectual voice has been replaced by an agenda-driven voice, which is quite merciless in its assessment of issues from a point of view, which is definitely not grounded. It would have been still ok, if he cared not to cloak his writings with that sense of puritanical and pretentious wisdom on what the public feels.

In this piece for instance, among the din of opinionated and by and large, non-grounded journalism with respect to demonetisation, one expected Mehta to take a historical recount of things, compare what was written or said or talked about demonetisation historically, make an account of the pros and cons of this economic storm and compel the public to believe in arguments based on analyses. But what did he do?

He invoked a 15th-16th century literary motif in Europe – the Morality Play tradition – to talk about the economic scourge of corruption. It was not just odd but reeked of a genuine intellectual distance Mehta maintained to consolidate his hold within a certain coterie of Anglophile intellectual elites, who would have certainly had the English literary tradition under their finger tips, making himself oblivious and inaccessible to the general mass of readers, who often found in him an intellectual succor.

He did that purposely because the problems of morality and puritanical wisdom that Mehta critiques is a recount that can happen only in a certain class of Indian society. An average Indian is still run and directed by common threads of a moral tradition. We still respect elders and hence you saw instances being shared on social media, where youngsters came forward, stood in long serpentine queues and helped the elderly get cash. We still respect trust and social camaraderie and hence you saw in North East, how various societies easily and without any fuss, transitioned from being cash driven to barter or paper-driven. We still believe in the good versus evil worldview and hence not just celebrate Ravan Dahan each year and keep fast on every Eid, but also see poor women in my village happy that finally there is someone, who will come down on the feudal sarpanchs, notorious for his extravagant lifestyle on black money.

And this is an average Indian that Mehta does not want to talk to. Why just Mehta? There are the likes of Arundhati Roy, in the same vein, who answered me when I asked her why she does not support the India Against Corruption movement and she said because it is a middle class conception. She went on to explain how there are a lot of people at play always when such large scale movements happen. As an impressionable 23-year-old I was confused if such intellectuals really stand for defending democracy or a certain idea of democracy being nursed in selfish coteries of self-aggrandisement that helps maintain their relevance and their self-serving demands, which are hailed as frugal and moral because they are not in public view. What explains this attitude of shying away from public support of issues, which public endorses when all they have uttered and spoken of is about issues of public interest. Why such hatred for public wisdom?

When Mehta says that ‘the audacity of the move is breathtaking’ and that ‘this ability to translate a policy measure into a national project is unprecedented’, he exposes the vulnerability of the intellectual elite, who seem to have been shaken with their turf being taken away from them. It has been assumed for far too long that audacity must flow only from the pens of the rebels. It has been assumed that audacity must make heroism and heroic an ideal that none could achieve, because if it is achieved, the value of appreciation becomes invested in a life-size character replacing the value of their imagination. This hurried writing off of the move as an imminent danger is but a reflection of that threat.

If the problem, as Mehta says, is the mass moral appeal of this initiative, readers like me are confused. Were we to write off Batukeshwar Dutt, whose birth anniversary we ought to be celebrating today, because he along with Bhagat Singh, dropped a bomb in the middle of the courtroom to protest against the colonial rule and was audacious and bold enough? Were we to write off Raja Rammohan Roy because he also made a moral appeal against sati? Were we to write off Dr B R Ambedkar in the case of demonetisation, who openly advocated for change in currency every 10 years on moral and economic grounds?

On the particular issue of demonetisation, there are lapses. Implementation of any policy measure in a country of a billion-plus population is a humongous logistical exercise. But, perhaps, this is where the intellectual class must have stepped in. They must have offered practical solutions, guided a government built on moral support to help it carry forward an agenda, which they themselves call ‘pathbreaking’. They must have called the civil society and academia to step in for shramdan. They must have openly denounced the government for any ill doing but would have at least shown moral support for a movement, which has undoubtedly garnered public approval on all counts. They must have appealed to the media to stop misinformation campaigns and agenda-driven journalism, where either there is a GPS-enabled money bunch that will solve all issues, or there are people dying in the country because of long queues!⁠⁠⁠⁠

http://swarajyamag.com/politics/dear-pratap-bhanu-mehta-you-disappointed-us

Never the twain shall meet

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/know/of-india-and-us-democracies-never-the-twain-shall-meet/article8947286.ece

In my month-long Legislative Fellowship with the US Department of State, I interned with the House of Representatives and the Senate at Columbus, Ohio. The delegation to the US had members from India and Pakistan, briefly joined by a delegation from Kosovo. As a political entrepreneur, it was interesting for me to learn that despite the gap in citizens’ expectations from their states and the states’ response to these demands, the democracies are similar in how they engage with various questions of citizen representation.

A nation-state in its very inception is about asserting an identity; and identity is never uniform for people, systems, organisations or institutions. Therefore, nations that choose to be democratic willingly sign up for interrogating questions of competing identities within their territory.

In the US and India, competing claims of nationalities, and the building of sub-nationalities within the nation, introduce an interesting comparison between the two nations.

Akram Elias, an expert in international business and cultural-political networking, briefed us on the American system and said, “The US is not a nation in the way ‘nation’ is conceived when we speak of India. The US has 50 states and each state is a nation in itself, if you see how independently they work with respect to the federal government.”

This kind of autonomy for individual states is unheard of in India.

The US model of democracy is fundamentally rooted in individualism, as opposed to Indian collectivism. While India is a union of states, the US is a federation of states. In the US, each citizen, like each state, places his/her expectations above anything else in order to fulfil the expectations of the ‘Great American Dream’. In India, Indian-ness precedes any other declaration to a great extent. Socially and culturally, emotions, feelings and priorities of the self are preceded by the collective will of society. This philosophical premise may be the reason why the Presidential model in the US and the Parliamentary model in India have been successful in impacting politics and policies in their respective democracies.

Policymaking in large democracies is mediated, as against some democracies with smaller population sizes: a referendum ensures citizens’ engagement in the policy cycle. The conduits between citizens and state work differently in the US and India. While in the US, lobbyists create, deliberate and advocate policy concerns and pitch political communication on behalf of people and institutions (commercial and/or non-profit), in India lobbying is looked down as capitalist, corrupt and dirty.

This is not to say that lobbying does not happen in India. On the contrary, the subtle culture of ‘contacts’ and ‘jugaad’ in our country has given a cultural credence to the non-recognised but wide practice of lobbying in the most misleading of ways. Since networks and relationship-building define the contours of lobbying, professional ethics and personal interests often clash; the common good is sometimes obscured.

However, it is also interesting to learn how this form of issue-based advocacy (the garb of which shrouds lobbying) is flawed even in the US. As Ryan Lehman, the policy advisor of the Republican caucus, expressed, “Despite having run a successful model of legal lobbying, the US has institutionalised corruption in the political and policy set-up through very subtle and entrenched ways — often away from the prying eyes of the public and the media.”

It was insightful to learn, therefore, from my Kosovo counterparts, that transparency and access to open public records is the priority concern on the basis of which Kosovo is trying to legitimise and authenticate its struggle for sovereignty and democracy. While interacting with Catherine Turcer, policy analyst with Common Cause, on the challenges of making open records a norm in democracy, we learnt that, gradually, citizens are not only showing an increasing intolerance to prim narratives but are also becoming more demanding in laying bare a nation’s claim to being accountable.

After this rich socio-cultural, political and legislative masterclass, I have come back hopeful on two counts:

The ‘unity in diversity’ model of the Indian identity has safely averted the risk of a bitter cultural clash. On the eve of the Presidential elections in the US, the way in which the identity question is being negotiated with, one wonders if the ‘melting pot of cultures’ model of the US has really worked. Because, the casualty of homogeneity over heterogeneity is visible when one finds not an American but an African-American, Indian-American, Canadian-American, Ukrainian-American, Russian-American and so on, advocating their larger chunks in the ‘Great American Dream’. I am hopeful that we, in India, have perhaps cracked the model of defining equality and secularism beyond religion, as peaceful coexistence over ‘tolerance’.

The Parliamentary form of democracy in India has given us an intellectual privilege of prolonged and, therefore, sustained ideological exchange.

Because ideology has been institutionalised in the party system and commercialisation of the political space is a new and fluid phenomenon for us, we have the historical advantage of not letting politics become market products and voters become consumers.

The casual test of a working democracy is the peaceful switch of power between hands seven consecutive times.

I believe, in India, we have perfected this theoretical premise of democracy.

(Shubhrastha is a political entrepreneur and independent columnist based in New Delhi)

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/know/of-india-and-us-democracies-never-the-twain-shall-meet/article8947286.ece