When I posted the Allama vacana last night, I didn’t realize that its insights were already being challenged by eminent people. My commentary on that vacana - especially on characterizing the world as the site of a wedding of dwarfs - can perhaps wait another day or two but I do want to briefly comment on the two elections that were held in India this week. I am a political animal and nothing juices me up like a good election, even panchayat elections back home, which keep me awake for weeks. Strangely though, Bihar elections didn’t register in my consciousness at all. I knew they were being held and Nitish Kumar led JD(U) – BJP alliance won but I was more worried about Paul Konerko re-signing with the White Sox (he did and so Paulie and Jerry, thank you both, for removing our anxieties) and debating whether the 2005 Chicago Bears defence is better than the 1985 super bowl winning, all time great defence. So yesterday and today, I find myself wondering about my own understanding of the world.
First, me and my pals discover things were things were going swimmingly well in Iraq, as reported yesterday in a major speech by our most excellent president. You too can educate yourself here and here. In the meanwhile, the most excellent ally Shri Blair orders his fellow countrymen not to visit liberated Iraq. Well, we now know that Iraqis are also being paid to write positive stories in their newspapers and so all will be well in the world.
Second, then I learn that Bihar wants to become Bangalore, politics of social justice is dead and middle class is taking over Indian politics. Imagine my surprise at not knowing this but to my relief the Indian Express OPED described this process as occurring slowly. I know of Bihari carpenters and software engineers in Bangalore, thanks to a software startup I worked for some years ago. But I didn’t realize Nitish Kumar had shed his Kurmi skin and social justice agenda to become S M Krishna’s incarnation in Bihar and the new darling of middle classes. Perhaps these are visions which could be seen only by the beneficiaries of new economy, such as the author (who is a Mumbai based business consultant) of the OPED. My home town Mysore is less than hundred miles away from Bangalore and I want to fight the good fight against Mysore turning into Bangalore. But apparently my country men think differently:
“No longer is the vast majority of the populace — be they farmers or industrial workers, backward or scheduled castes, poor Hindus or Muslims — primarily concerned with using the political process to achieve ‘dignity’, ‘social justice’, or linguistic or religious rights. Liberalisation’s children are less aggrieved than upwardly mobile.”
who are these people and where did they suddenly come from? When did they give up the quest for dignity and to make a decent living? P. Sainath has a different story for our analyst friend about Vidarbha.
Anyway, I had intimations of Midnight’s children from dear Salman (not the Khan, dear inhabitants of LOL, but Padmalakshmipati).
Now Liberalization too got kids! Damn! And they aren’t aggreived, just hungry!
Midnight’s children’s appetite itself was enormous but now I am positively scared of the Liberalization Bakasura (a demon who demanded enormous quantities of food from poor town people and killed by Bhima) kids. In one of the episodes of The West Wing, President Bartlet makes a telling point in a discussion on estate tax, which is a tax paid on property inherited. ‘The problem with the American dream is that even poor people are concerned about the day when they are millionaires.’ Now with the silver bullet that education (let us not forget opportunities created by the new economy) is anyone (but not all, remember) can become part of the middle class. So dream on, Kids. Our theorists of new empire have already declared: thanks to the the forces of globalization and capital, the old boundaries between the center and periphery have been obliterated. You could be part of the first world in the west and in India too. In the meanwhile, people like me and Sepoy will keep on searching for peripheries to plant our flags of defiance.
The other election was to elect a new group of office bearers to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). That’s a mouthful, ain’t it and so it shall be BCCI from now onwards. Cricket, at least for some of us, is about our soul and hence consequential. So I need to do some soul searching before doing any calm-entry on whether Sharad Pawar will be good for my soul or not. Until then this and my friend Krishna Prasad’s comments will have to suffice. Perhaps I will do a posting on the BCCI elections along with Harsha Bhogle’s take on Cricket and Indian economy . In praising free market spirit, Harsha comes dangerously close to questioning democratization of Indian cricket and in fact, some of the comments to his posting do so. But that needs more reflection, if not soul searching. Already there are shake ups in the national selection committee and I can not but be pleased by that.
An addendum to yesterday’s calm-entry on according classical language status to Kannada. K. Ramdas, my friend and teacher, spoke to the agitators about making Kannada the language of the every day and had to be escorted out by the police. This intolerance is symptomatic of an inability to deal with difference. Ramdas’s courage and commitment to dissent have always been inspirational to many of us and as usual, he stood up in the presence of those who had perpetrated the attack on the Mayor of Belgaum and condemned their act. Civility has always been something Kannadigas have prided on. That ought not be compromised.
Otherwise, Allama’s insight can provide only so much comfort. The world indeed looks like the site of a wedding of dwarfs and Shiva is nowhere to be found.
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