Rise of the middle India (...contd.)

The importance of the growing middle class both as a beneficiary and therefore as the intellectual champion of the robust growth of the pro-market economy under the post 1991 liberalized regime has always been recognized and was welcomed by ruling parties and their backers both in India and abroad. But this was a conveniently wishful view of the role of an emergent constituent of the Indian polity, the youthful face of our democracy. The latter was testified not only by the progressively dipping average age of the people but by the rapidly increasing number of young electorates exercising their franchise during 2009 parliament election and many of the assembly elections thereafter. The influence of these young (many first time) voters in helping other disenchanted sections to seal the fate of the incumbent left front government in West Bengal during May 2011 election has been noted in published statistical analysis.

It has been an euphemism resorted to by most established political parties that these youthful voters everywhere voted for ‘change’ and ‘development’. It is conveniently forgotten that under the glow of the same youthful idealism (innocence if you like) they also expected the operation of the rule of law, an in-your-face honesty both in political and non-political spheres of our social life. They did not expect to see scandals and financial scams tumbling out every other day from within the immaculate corridors of power. They also expected an end to the endemic small micro-level corruption at almost every interface of the public with the government. Anti-corruption movement in 2011 thus found a ready constituency in the educated middle class, students, young professionals, entrepreneurs, etc. It gradually dawned on the ruling classes, going by the turn out in Anna’s meetings at Delhi and in rallies taken out on his call on the streets of metro and other smaller cities, the Indian middle classes mattered no longer just as consumers of pricey, sleek goodies in the malls. That enlightened public opinion against corruption started to matter in the election was writ large on the defeats of the congress party in Goa and the congress supported DMK in Tamil Nadu assembly elections earlier last year.

Apart from the electronic media in this anti-corruption crusade, the emerging technology of the social media and electronic networking was lapped up by the young middle class India and used, probably as never before in a totally public cause, to inform, interact, agitate and mobilize the minds of such a large number of people with relative ease, eloquence and speed that the cacophony in the cyberspace almost resembled and paralleled the slogan-shouting and roaring crowd in the Ram Lila Maidan in Delhi. New means to go with a new movement for achieving a cleaner, more transparent and accountable democratic functioning of the government. Indian middle class thus has acquired a public-spirited voice and a means to make itself heard and be counted. Even numerically it is no longer a push over.     

The unspeakably brutal assault on a young girl (leading to her eventual death) on a cold December night in Delhi was probably like the straw on the camel’s back. Delhi residents, women, young and old, needed no more persuation to say ‘enough’ and hit the streets. Hundreds of young women and yes, young men as well, students from universities, colleges, even school children, women activists, older citizens, congregated from daybreak till night every day at India Gate and an impromptu tableau of collective grief, anguish and anger swelled and brimmed over the majestic path more used to a staged annual display of state power and a cavalcade of phony inclusiveness. Except on that appointed date and time the government found it difficult to be seen to go to the India Gate, and meet the citizens to assuage their grief, to find words of assurance that it understood the real meaning of their ‘we want justice’ outcry which would have carried conviction to the protesters. It was not easy bridging the gulf of trust deficit built up over years of misgovernance and inaction against the gangrenous organs of the state machinery, which has cumulatively over a long period of time created this atmosphere of impunity in which the criminals and their apprentices seem to feel at home and be emboldened.

 

In time all roads to the India Gate were sanitized with canisters of gas and cannons full of water, some young skulls broken in ‘unfortunate’ collateral damages.  But the sound of their footfalls on the empty streets may yet start to sound menacing like Banquo’s visitations in the strategy and plan meetings within stony august buildings reminiscent of raj.

Movement for ensuring dignity and justice for women last year as much as the anti-corruption movement a year ago might be signs of the rising middle India. All power to them.

(concluded)

Rise of the middle India

Though middle classes usually have been perceived by the political establishment to have only marginal importance based on its numerical sparseness vis-à-vis the electoral politics, the centerpiece of a mass democracy like India, they have always played a significant role in shaping the public opinion on a number of issues that affect Indian society, politics and economy.

Till recently, political parties, leaders and their apparatchicks, sympathasiers, apologists in the media generally believed that no matter how much vocal the educated, city-bred critics from among the middle classes appear to be, neither the party ruling the government nor the major opposition parties (harboring an intention to topple it and come to power after the next election) have anything to fear from these agitators because of their own strong ‘mass base’ which in the Indian political lexicon is sometimes pejoratively termed as the ‘vote bank’.

The twin advantages that the political parties had derived (and continue to do so) by sticking to their comfort zone are (a) the numerical preponderance of their support base and (b) the awareness about the lowest common denominator that binds and cements this base, namely, narrow sectional, sectarian, regional, religious interests in the context of winning the electoral battle (which, sadly, has become the be all and end all of the Indian democracy). Indian parties have by and large, over these last sixty five years since independence, found in the issues related to reservation of caste-based job and education quota (with further religion-based sub-quota being attempted recently) much more emotive appeal for the mass electorate they identify as their major constituency, and therefore put their weights behind such slogans and political actions, rather than enlightened measures for bringing corruption under control or to usher gender equality or dignity and justice for women. Also over the years the mainstream parties, often solely governed by populist tailism (not to forget the calculation of the eventual accrual of the electoral benefits) have unwittingly pandered to pressure groups fighting for the recognition of the various regional (even sub-regional or tribal) aspirations and ethnic identities. So much so that today there is a genuine fear of marginalisation of the so-called ‘national’ parties and their increasing irrelevance in major states and regions of this sub-continental nation.

However, over the last decade or so a wind of change has become slowly but surely emerging in various parts of the country, especially in major cities and towns which, somewhat awkwardly, may be described as an awakening of a liberal conscience of an under-performing democracy and it is the middle classes that are taking the lead. Broadly there were four notable developments that could be said to provide a backdrop to the new assertions to reclaim democracy in this country from being hostage to petty party politics.

The landmark public protests by large sections of concerned citizens in respect of the travesty of justice in the Jessica Lal murder case (and the Priyadarshini Mattoo rape and murder case in almost contemporaneous time frame) brought about a new non-political space where students, youth, women, senior citizens, activists, NGOs could publicly articulate their anguish and dismay at the apparent miscarriage of justice. Though limited in scope the successful outcome of these protests in creating enough public pressure to cause revisiting these cases at the higher courts and eventual sentencing of the accused suggested a template for the citizenry to articulate their justified grievances against the non-performance of the machinery of the state. More pertinently, the activists on the streets and their silent supporters in homes and offices saw that money, political connections, muscle power need not invariably tilt the scale of justice in favor of those who flaunt them and ordinary people could get justice from the judicial system which otherwise looked inefficient and ineffective.