The Dawn of a Global Neo-Fascist Polity

It is tempting to see amongst all this doom and gloom in the world today, that the: demonising of civil rights, the extraordinary intimidation of the global fourth estate, the unmasking of an age-old white-supremacist and religiously chauvinist immigration policy around the first world, and the rise of extreme right-wing political parties across great, and not-so-great, democracies, as some last gasp hurrah of a failing metaphorical spectre of racist paranoia from erstwhile colonising countries that will momentarily overcome their predatory pasts, and are about to step out into a beaming, post-homogeneous sun when all this is over. That assumption is the intellectual equivalent of burying your head in the sand with only your ears sticking out, and mistaking those burrowing noises getting closer to you for dolphin calls from the deep ocean.
Unless you have lived in a rich, consumerist, and apparently meritorious economy for the entire duration of your adult life so far, with breaks in-between to marvel at those amazing distant cultures where women are perpetually graceful and men are forever righteous, it is obvious that people around the world are born unequal. What your name is, where you come from, how you look, and how much wealth you have backing you, determines your experience of life, and always has. In a world that has always been this way, it is easy to ridicule the idealism of those privileged protesters who don't have to worry about putting food on the table, dressing up their school-going children appropriately, and getting to a job under the watchful eye of that supervisor who needs the flimsiest possible excuse to dismiss them. But, it is also easy to assume that life goes forwards not backwards, that head-down sweat and toil hard-nosed hard work will get you and yours ahead, that your children will fulfill their potential with more opportunity than you ever had and be happy in the revealed knowledge that life is more than just surviving. Neither of these manifestations of living is the whole picture. Democracies around the world are facing a backlash from fearful, hateful, misguided, and misdirected local communities, sometimes sacrilegiously supported by recent immigrants, that are constitutionally bound to adhere to the choices of their electorates. Whatever we may think of the choices being presented to us, our levels of awareness and education, and whatever eugenic sympathies we harbour, people have every right to want to be governed by popular mandate. It is, after all, something the world fought bloodily for, over generations, at great cost to homogeneous and ethnic communities, in a world where it was thought that the divine right of kings and queens, and brute force, trumped all. To get riled up over the short memories of ignoramuses, history-deniers, and walled-off racists, who do not see the light when confronted by the horrors of the second world war, or the brutality of colonialism, or the historical crimes of slavery and genocide, is reactionary and denies the responsibility of national political systems that  have neither encouraged a holistic view of the world from a global perspective nor given credence to apparently self-evident interpretations of world history. How could they? Politics is the pursuit of power, and objective facts and subjective empathy and situational context is so far removed from that pursuit as is the idea of 'representation' about getting the plight of the broken-down, homeless, hungry, and agency-less human being on the street into the national discussion.
Blinkers are good for horses being maneuvered through the streets, and for human beings when the task at hand is direct, complex, and clear-cut in its projected outcome. We cannot continue to pretend that democracy in its current avatar is sacrosanct - it cannot be when all that is needed to subvert its beauty, poetry, and goal of freedom, is a law enforcer in uniform taking the law into his/her own hands based on their proclivities.
It is time to change our focus from the institutions that we thought were duty-bound to enforce our hard-won emancipation, to the structures of those very institutions. The need for governments to better reflect what we expect for ourselves and our fellow human beings across the world, through inequality, war, and daily struggle, is paramount, if we are to safeguard the global community from the predation of a few of us who think of winning as an end in itself.

The Importance of Being Brazen

Remember that time in your childhood when you were out on a drive with your dad and something happened just when you were distracted by your toy car or a beggar in the side window? The sequence probably went like this: Just when your eye is not on the road, the car heaves suddenly to a halt – your father gets out of the car after warning you to stay inside – he yells at a man cowering in front of the car – he gets back in the car and resumes driving without saying a word to you and stays silent for the rest of the ride.

Now imagine that a political party which has never been in power in a certain state is finally granted, by popular mandate, the opportunity to govern it for a period of five years in what is a very interesting time in the state’s history. It is in the process of trying to capitalize on the decades-old goodwill it has earned by virtue of its reputation as a technological hub with a beautiful capital city and valuable human and natural resources. Infrastructural development is much needed in the state and so are jobs, housing, education and power. The chief minister relies on his inner coterie to bring about the institutional change the state so desperately needs and hosts lavish industrial conclaves with captains of industry where land and a conducive investment climate are promised to private sector players in the hope that the state’s resources are utilized to the maximum extent possible. Certain members of the chief minister’s party, though, are not counted among his inner coterie but are hugely invested in the government’s stability on account of them being, by far, the richest men who comprise it – they are given largely symbolic posts within the cabinet in an effort to appease them, and the chief minister believes that he can now fulfill his self-proclaimed dharma i.e. the ushering in of peace and prosperity for all. 

The stars (and the CM is a great believer in astrology), however, are not in his favour – the aforementioned non-inner coterie members suspect that the CM is plotting to attack them where it hurts the most; investigate the source of their wealth and render them impotent when their carefully nurtured empires are exposed as blatantly illegal mining syndicates for the ore that China is willing to pay an arm and a leg for these days. They require that members of their own inner coteries be given important portfolios in the government so that any threat emanating from the CM’s suspected sympathies is neutralized even before it emerges. There is now a crisis. The CM does not want to let down his ardent supporters. The Honourable Miner-Members  of the Legislative Assembly are equally adamant, refusing to let their private fiefdoms be compromised by an untrustworthy cabinet. The CM backs down with a sigh and inducts the miner-faithful members into his cabinet – he needs to stay in power, after all, to be able to fulfill his dharma, no?
A time of uneasy peace follows, but all too soon it is smashed when various members of his cabinet, those within his inner coterie as also those without, are implicated in all sorts of scams ranging from the sale of much-desired government medical college seats to the highest bidders… to the de-notification of prime land in the state capital for personal profit. The CM faces his trial-by-fire (his words) again. He is forced to undertake a cabinet reshuffle once more and this time, brooking no nonsense, fills up the most important portfolios in the new ministerial cabinet with his most faithful followers. At exactly this point in time, another scam is unearthed; the beleaguered CM himself, it is reported, has de-notified prime land within the capital city which has been quickly and quietly bought up by his own son (another inner-coterie member of his cabinet, by the way) at a cost that is outrageously lower than prevalent market prices. Other members of his party (those not part of the ministerial cabinet so far and those recently reshuffled out of it) are now up in arms – “If you guys can make money while in power, we guys also want to be in power to make money”, they all but say. The Opposition parties take note of all this, meanwhile, and rub their hands in anticipation. But it’s a no-go from the CM. His inference is unmistakable – ‘Fuck off’, he all but says, ‘… and go sulk some place else. You’re scaring away the private sector institutional investors’.
But they do not fuck off. They persuade (with all the implications that term provides for) certain non-inner coterie members of the CM’s cabinet as well as certain independent members of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly to stand by them when they demand a no-confidence motion in the present government on the floor of the Assembly. The CM now does not have the numbers to survive the motion. His government is about to fall. He is now desperate. He demands that the Speaker of the Assembly (another inner-coterie member, of course) dismiss the dissident MLAs on the grounds that they have violated a law that allows for ministers of the Legislative Assembly to be dismissed when they defect to an opposition party while or after they have been part of the political party in power (the law was formulated precisely to dissuade bribery-based horse-trading) and the Honourable Speaker complies. The dissident MLAs are dismissed while being held back at the doors to the Floor of the Assembly by a sympathetic police force. Their votes cannot now be counted and the total strength of the Assembly is therefore reduced, which means that the party in power can stay in power. The Governor of the state weighs in, ‘... the last vote for the confidence motion was a farce’, he actually says, ‘Do it over on Thursday’. The dismissed MLAs meanwhile take their case to the High Court of the State, challenging their dismissals…. & so it goes on and on and on.

For all of you who are wondering what in God’s name all this has to do with what happened when you were a child in your Daddy’s car... here it is - The current Members of the Legislative Assembly of Karnataka were also in their respective daddies’ cars when they were children, just like you… but the difference is: they weren’t distracted when their fathers suddenly pulled over in the middle of the road, and saw and heard exactly what happened next… and kept quiet about it all these years.

Run, Bharat, Run

So... 
The Delhi Commonwealth Games 2010 are off to a great start - the Indian contingent won their first gold medals yesterday, on only the 2nd day of the games, and the country's Great Emerging Economy pride was palpable through the exploits of those bright young luminaries: Abhinav Bindra and Sushil Kumar... Towards late evening, though, the focus shifted back to the Indian cricket team, pulling another one out of the hat, so to speak, with yet another great national debt accrued to the evergreen VVS Laxman who snatched victory from within the mandibular molars of defeat against those damned Aussies. Poetic justice, even... some might say - "Didn't those damn Aussies diss us the most with those humiliating exposés [sic] of seemingly lax security and hugely exaggerated infra-fuck-ups in the build up to the Games?", they say.

All this, while... 
"Budihalli village of Chitradurga district is a live example of caste discrimination and bondage. Here, landlords hold sway. They allegedly rape and torture women of lower castes, while men work as bonded labourers, paying off debts accumulated over generations." 
Full story: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata-/Chitradurga-villagers-flee-rape-bondage/articleshow/6436517.cms


&... 
"A mongrel dog brought up in an upper caste home in Morena was kicked out after the Rajput family members discovered that their Sheru had eaten a roti from a dalit woman and was now an "untouchable". Next, Sheru was tied to a pole in the village's dalit locality.
Full story: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Dog-caste-away-after-dalit-touch/articleshow/6617039.cms

& from that crazy woman...
"It was early spring, the sun was sharp, but still civilized. This is a terrible thing to have to say, but it’s true—you could smell the protest from a fair distance: It was the accumulated odor of a thousand human bodies that had been dehumanized, denied the basic necessities for human (or even animal) health and hygiene for years, if not a whole lifetime. Bodies that had been marinated in the refuse of our big cities, bodies that had no shelter from the harsh weather, no access to clean water, clean air, sanitation or medical care. No part of this great country, none of the supposedly progressive schemes, no single urban institution has been designed to accommodate them. Not the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, not any other slum development, employment guarantee or welfare scheme. Not even the sewage system—they shit on top of it. They are shadow people, who live in the cracks that run between schemes and institutions. They sleep on the streets, eat on the streets, make love on the streets, give birth on the streets, are raped on the streets, cut their vegetables, wash their clothes, raise their children, live and die on the streets."
Full article: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/03-the-trickledown-revolution-ss-05


& what is done unto those who dare to do otherwise ... 
"Besides his caste, what makes Mr. Gaikwad vulnerable is his activism. Over several years, he has staged andolans, led morchas, busted rackets and courted arrest. He demanded a CBI inquiry into the Nanded blast of 2006, which upset the right-wingers in his locality. Incidentally, the house of one of the blast accused is close to Mr. Gaikwad's."
Full story: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article791132.ece


Just a cold-shower-type reminder, people, about how far things have to go before they ever get better around these 'ere parts.

Caesar's Shadow

Politics seems to surround us these days in ways that never seemed possible when the world was a nicer, cleaner, generally more agreeable place to live in – I am referring, of course, to that time in most of our lives when we were younger and therefore thankfully oblivious to the workings of a multi-party and mutinous democracy. Commentators would point to the historical eclipse of the national hegemony of the political party that emerged from the spoils of the independence movement, as a cause. Other movements and more diverse persuasions have now emerged onto a stage from which they espouse their right to represent a million diverse peoples in this country. Another reason would be, of course, the emergence of the calumnious media brigade – an entity that is as divorced as possible from the ideal of one of four necessary pillars of society, and doesn’t resemble anything like that mythical vanguard of the people through which citizens might reach up and grasp a rainbow of enlightened self-rule. 

I propose, though, an alternative reason for this sudden interest in the affairs of representation. When the rate of social change itself is in geometrically multiplied freefall, misrule by government must therefore be blatantly obvious, because Government, by definition, is a behemoth institution – one that by its very nature must accommodate the needs and aspirations of a diverse electorate and adequately represent the baser fantasies of an upwardly mobile, but patently impatient following. Before I appear to be so, please let me state forthwith that I am not in favour of that famous idea marvelously referred to in the first person as the ‘Republic of One’. That was an idea of a much more conscientious human being than I who was railing at the inertia of this nation from a much broader perspective. Neither am I supportive of the basic tenets of what I know of the United States’ ‘Tea Party’ – such multitudes of human beings as we have must necessarily be guided by a strong set of laws and safeguards lest the naturally occurring impulses of a few good men at the top of the food chain drain the rest of this country of any hope of a better life. What I am stating here is a preference towards smaller self-governing regions within this dominion of ours, one that is administered much less federally in which ethnic sections of the populace have a greater say in their immediate affairs. We are constantly reminded of the travails of the Kashmiri people, so too the rights of tribals in the hinterland, not to forget the completely opaque conditions of life of our brethren in the North-East of the country. By slicing up the economic and political pieces of this great national pie, we would be giving ourselves more of a chance to return to those times of lesser strife, when everyone knew what resources they were entitled to and that they were finite, and when a junior member leaving the household was treated as an occasion of reverence and awe. The evils of constant migration, disparate understandings of rural and urban life, the blight of poor education and the standard lack of survival skills to succeed in the professional world, would at once be pondered on from a respectful distance and prepared for with less unrewarding haste… I speak of a time when a high school graduate from Himachal Pradesh views a college in Chennai as distantly as he would view one in Massachusetts, and compares the benefits of studying in either based on what he would eventually hope to achieve professionally. The world sadly is not getting smaller, that illusion persists only in our minds. Perhaps our understanding of the world should consider its real size and its concrete divisions – A world where a young student studying in Tehran is taught that a neighboring country with a military arsenal on a proven short fuse should not exist, where the only God a child soldier in the Congo knows is his commandant, where a Tamil refugee in a camp across the Palk Strait is regarded by a resident in Rameshwaram as a foreigner, where the Government of India does not offer a single paisa in aid to the countless millions of suffering flood victims in a country in which it has the largest incentive to win hearts and minds.

News Update on Aug 14th 2010 - The Indian Government finally gives birth to a conscience.