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)
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