With so many Indias simultaneously criss-crossing our consciousness, often the mix becomes almost too complex to unravel. Television enacts late night catharsis by showing and shaming, gently nudging the middle classes into believing it, and the values it believes in, matter. The discourse of debates on news TV predicates on reason, fact, anecdote, logic, argument and repartee.
Therefore, those who posit faith in language and the laws of civil engagement are left with a sense of there being an independent corrective mechanism in the collective. Thanks to the Arnabs and Barkhas of the world, Indian democracy is safe, people believe! This is one India, manifest and broadcast, public and persuasive. It is a great salve for hurt middle class sensibilities over this and that failure of the State. It is also a chimera, a grand charade. We seldom get to see the macabre dances being enacted beyond the focus of TV cameras or the embrace of language and logic.
At the university, I talk to all manner of students. Many come from the rural periphery of Delhi. Some belong to well-connected and wealthy families. The language of patronage and pelf slide easily from their lips. Of course, they listen to the counter vice I present, but their assumptions about the India I talk about are totally different from the one presented by TV chat shows. For them, even at such a youthful age, the woof and the warp of another India are seen to be continually weaving quite another fabric. One boy’s father is a property dealer in Haryana. He has the confidence of top leaders investing in land in that State.
While I know much of anything the boy has to say might be pure speculation, what I am fairly sure of is that his family is, indeed, well connected. He tells me a leader from Bihar (the gentleman sitting in jail) is a dear family friend. His son is a keen cricketer but can’t make it anywhere because of the father’s political rivals. A top political party’s ideologue is fond of the Skoda Superb, so much so that he has 10 of them sitting at home. The boy in question wants to settle in the US. Daddy dear has the connections to get him a 10-year visa, he claims. The various politico uncles and aunts have enough homes and property interests there to get him going at the real estate business in the US.
The point here is not about exposing the shenanigans of the rich and the powerful. A stronger hand might do that. What worries me is the kid’s mindset. To him, the middle class India of aspirations, constitutionalism, civil rights and justice mean nothing. His reality exists at a total tangent to this world we cling to. Institutions, social engagement and a broad understanding of modernity are blissfully missing from his world view. In fact, his canvas is drawn from the privilege he has seen being traded and exchanged within the charmed set that comprise his family and the big leaders it does business with.
This other India is the India our political establishment has created for itself. People like you and I can’t really get inside this world, for its transactions are enacted inside fortified farmhouses and sheltered ashrams. Behind glass walls and in tax heavens, big games are played and high stakes placed on the table.
Money for most of us had the tag of morality attached to it. The big players exist way beyond the pale of morality. Big money is aphrodisiac and narcotic rolled into one. The lip service paid in public to nation and notions is a grand sham, spoken with a sincere face for the outer world, and accompanied by a self-congratulatory chuckle within.
I would blaspheme and perhaps be hauled up in court if I revealed a tenth of what my young student has to tell me, but knowing what he does, it does not surprise me to see him so cynical about my world. Worse, he passes no judgment. He just soaks in the glory by association of his inside stories and narratives. He can’t understand how, with my knowledge and brains (his opinion!), I am not seen driving a cruiser, or raking in the big moolah. I tell him, I’ll keep watching 9 o’clock news, and hoping.