Mismatched frequencies, unheard voices

When was the last time the prime minister of the largest democracy in the world was seen waiting at the airport to receive the body of a commoner? Never in India’s political history, to be precise! It was indeed a poignant moment as Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, and Sonia Gandhi, the Chairperson of the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), arrived at the technical area of Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi in the wee hours of the morning, braving the December chill, as a chartered flight was about to touch down, carrying the body of the 23-year-old paramedical student, who was gang-raped on a moving bus in Delhi on December 16 and subsequently succumbed to her injuries at a Singapore hospital. What Singh and Sonia did that morning was a deliberate and definitive break from protocol — not so much to mourn the dead, but to send out a stark message to the rest of the nation: ‘Better late than never.’

The sincerity of that path-breaking gesture notwithstanding, the uncomfortable questions still linger and will probably continue to haunt not just the ruling coalition at the Centre, but India’s political dispensation as a whole for a long time to come: Have India’s leaders done too little, too late for its aggrieved masses? Has the establishment failed to keep track of the verve and tenor of a population that is not on the same page with its leaders? The pan-India outrage over the rape and subsequent death of the victim has exposed the terrible disconnect between the governed and the government and has laid bare a political system that has far outlived its sell-by date.

And here lies the irony of present-day India. On the one hand, the Union government is hell bent on opening its doors to foreign direct investment under the pretext that it will generate more employment, more revenue and thereby boost the revival of an economy that is still struggling to keep pace with a targeted 8 per cent annual growth rate — all in the name of aam aadmi (common man).

On the other, there is a political system that has completely failed to fathom the mindset of a young India, an India that has marched way ahead in terms of its aspirations and goals … so much so, that the current political leadership has failed to keep pace with it and has failed miserably to live up to the expectations of a generation that has long ceased to consider khadi or the Gandhi cap as the be-all and end-all of socio-political activism. This is an India where 50 per cent of the population is aged below 25 — a generation that has not seen the dark days of the Emergency of the 1970s or the much-talked-about Green Revolution that catapulted the nation’s status as an agrarian economy to almost epic proportions in the ‘60s. This is a generation that rather considers 1991 as a watershed in the nation’s economic history and swears by its tangible gains. Yes, 1991 — the year Singh presented his first budget as the Union finance minister and introduced the term “liberalisation” in every drawing room across the nation.

Out of sync

From 1996 to 2012, Singh has come a long way as a politician and a Prime Minister. However, in spite of all his academic brilliance and sincere intent, the Oxford-Cambridge scholar has failed to communicate with the nation’s youth. His intentions have always been honest, but the execution part has almost always gone awfully wrong — as his staid, televised address to the nation in the wake of the mass outrage over the Delhi rape bears testimony. It was indeed his far-sightedness as the finance minister that enabled India to come out of the cocoon of socialistic jingoism and take mature steps towards being a serious member of the global village. So the McDonald’s and the multiplexes, the satellite TV invasions and mobile phone intrusions, the Gucci collections and Armani ensembles are all within reach of aspiring Indians, armed with their new-found confidence of consumerism and retail-therapy. But with that, a crucial change has taken place in society — a change that India’s political class has either failed to take note of or has wilfully disregarded. And that change is in terms of the obliteration of the dividing line between the so-called ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’.

With a proliferation of information networks and channels of communication, money is no longer a constraint to staying in tune with the latest ‘latest’. Possessing a mobile phone or having access to the internet is no longer dictated by one’s economic or social status. And as a result, there is no information lag between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. The channels of communication are open for anyone and everyone to explore.

An aspiring India now dwells as much in its villages as in its cities. As society has grown more open towards new notions, hurling age-old taboos out of the window, it has also brought the seemingly disparate elements closer to one another like never before — resulting in a lowering of the threshold for tolerance and patience. It is here that India’s political elites have gone out of sync with their immediate reality.

The six men who were involved in the gang-rape and murder of the young, ambitious paramedical student were all slum dwellers from Ravidass Camp, a south Delhi ghetto barely stone’s-throw away from the affluent, up-market neighbourhood of R.K. Puram. And this is modern India’s biggest danger — no matter how much it tom-toms the benefits of a liberalised economy and its concomitant easy-to-access comfort zones, the area right under the lamp continues to be the darkest. It is this aspect that India’s political leadership has failed to acknowledge and reach out to — perhaps smug in their belief that a Tahrir Square exists in outer space!

Instead of taking the issue of mass disenchantment head-on, what India’s political leadership has resorted to is mere anger management. But that is certainly not going to help in the long run. Instead of engaging with the irate youth, the government sought to douse the flames of anger through oratory and a mindless police crackdown on protesters in Delhi. It is high time the political leadership takes stock of the present situation through the prism of reality and desist from evasive action.