Aam Aadmi Party - here to stay?

- Mohit Jindal

It has been nearly 20 months since he first captured the attention of the Indian populace with his advocacy of the Lokpal Bill with the iconic Anna Hazare. His transition from a renowned planner to a more strategic tactician was evident from the way he formed a minority government in Delhi.
Borrowing the ‘aam aadmi’ label of the Indian National Congress, Mr. Kejriwal has been looking for all possible ways to familiarise himself with the Hindi heartland as his party gears up for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The Magsaysay awardee, regarded as the chief architect of the Right to Information Act, has the boldness of aspiration to offer a substantial alternative to both the principal national parties through development politics.
While his efforts to transform the political scenario have been admired, people have begun to question the solutions and methods he offers reach his political objectives, and the recent political turmoil in the Delhi State Assembly bears testimony to this. For the first time in decades, we had a movement driven by an urban phenomenon that did not resort to violence. There was no shutdown in businesses, and the protests symbolized the Gandhian area prior to the Independence. The solution to the issue was also not complex, nor was it politically appealing to any religion, cast, language, region, etc.
The idea of a Lokpal is deeply flawed but the movement it has generated is legit enough for us to believe that it is quite possible to construct a new political movement without resorting to practices that have continued to divide us over the past so many decades. The birth of Aam Admi Party gives us that hope and it is the hope that the AAP is trying to capitalize on.

After having an unimaginable run at the Assembly Elections (and as the Delhi Government), AAP has now entered the political minefield. Its 49 day tenure as the Delhi government has been controversy ridden, and there has been decline in people’s faith the party enjoyed during the pre-election period. The manner in which Kejriwal presented himself and his party when it came to law and order situations might seem innovative but at the same time it is impractical and problematic for the community in general. His dharna has become a featured form of protest against anything he finds ‘corrupt’, which is not expected from an effective policymaker. Lack of political experience plays a definite role here. However, it must be understood that such moves would generate cynicism amongst the public, a disadvantage they cannot chose to ignore. Aam Aadmi Party may have the right motives, but its way of pursuing those is unjustified and in all probability will not garner any public favoritism.  

In order to brace for the challenges being created by Congress and BJP, Mr. Kejriwal has to build its appeal beyond megacities and at the same time, prove that his party can attract new participation by drawing more urban citizens to vote. It is apparent that AAP’s political success lies on how well it is able to differentiate form the other political parties, something which BJP has been trying to do.

For a movement that transcended many deep fault lines, AAP is on the verge of creating new fault lines with its mantra of ‘my way or the highway’, something that disturbs the business class of India (such as their recent decision to scrap FDI in Delhi without giving proper justification).

If the movement of India against Corruption yielded no new urban political formations, AAP’s political expose of scandals to give rise to new political fault lines was merely a necessary ‘evil’ to bring his party to the public with media glare. However it must be understood, that the real test is how Mr. Kejriwal and his party make the transition from the tactics that perhaps were needed to get where he is, to the strategies that will get him where he aims to go.

Evidently, it is right to call this period the ‘silent revolution’, and it will be Mr. Kejriwal’s future strategies which will give us the chance to assess whether his party will rewrite the way political parties govern or whether it would be a mere footnote in the history of Indian politics which has already witnessed tons of such political experiments.

Given its recent ‘success’ in Delhi, AAP has a long way to go. Its birth marks the new culture of politics in a country where after seven decades of democracy, the concept of development politics has for the first time become a voting issue.

  

Communally Yours

-Harsh Arora

India is the single largest stereotypical representation of a country divided on almost every single parameter that forms a part of demography – be it gender, religion, caste or class. It's not this division in itself that lends India a unique identity, but it is the politicization of these differences that make our country's different co-existing groups uniquely placed at the cusp of turmoil almost every second day for almost every small issue that would barely ruffle a feather in a simpler, less complex democracy. Be it Varun Gandhi's remark on cutting the arms of Muslims or Arundhati Roy's perceived secessionist remarks – motivations that public figures have for flaring the communal set up of the national fabric are diverse, ranging from the need for media airtime compensating for bad policy making and just being a bad politician in general, to satiate certain inner values and inherent notions of empathy for suppressed classes.

In this piece I wish to examine the idea of identity and its association with habitation in a community. Is it necessary for us to exist in a society with a diverse set of identities? Why is intuitively assumed that Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Christians all living together in one nation is the best kind of nation we can have, when history has time and again proved us wrong? Is there any abstract value of the national fabric or the idea of India in isolation to the inevitable clash of civilizations that is bound to happen? Is it possible for a nation state to exist only on the idea of communal homogenization? To be able to comprehend even the more plainer nuances of these arguments, one must drop any notions they have of identity as a tool of defining communal existence. One must reject the notions with which we have been systemically indoctrinated with – that living together is the best possible way; that all identities necessarily must co-exist together.

My principle idea is crystal clear – I believe that mere existence of different identities is not the reason for conflict in society. It is only when you assume a sense of utility in cohabitation that you allow the scope for the differences in these identities to turn into conflict. To understand this, let us examine the kind of value that people attach to their notions of identity – be it religious or cultural. Religious beliefs and values are extremely intrinsic to the average religious individual, to the extent that they start to define every single aspect of his life at some point of time – the clothes he wears, the schools he goes to, the food he eats, the person he marries, and the values he espouses.

Parents today irreversibly pass on their religious identities and notions to their children through numerous manifestations of these beliefs in the way they shape their child's identity. It is essential for a devout Christian to get his son baptised at birth, and for a Jewish or Muslim person to get his son circumcised at birth, or for Brahmins to tie the sacred thread on their child's body. These ideas are so fanatically manifested in a common man's mind that they take precedence over everything – either the respect for the law, or the value of even their own life.

The fact that you see Muslims burning French flags for its policy decision to ban burqas or Islamist clerics issuing fatwas against the Swiss administration for banning minarets in the public sphere, or even the mere act of refusing to be frisked at American Airports for the purpose of national security clearly displays people's association with their religion first and the law of the land later. The fact that devout Muslims are ready to whip themselves to a death like pallor in the name of Allah during Muharrram, or the idea that fanatic Catholics would rather let their lives be changed forever by bearing unplanned pregnancies than resort to abortion supports the assumption that life is considered to be a derivative of God, with religion being his gift to people.

The same arguments can be extended to issues like race and class – the only differences being that in these cases, people's motivations to hold on their identities is based on the idea of self preservation instead of a greater god telling them to do so. Self preservation here implies having a sense of association on the basis of material similarities – like how you look, how much money you have, what the colour of your skin is, what common ancestors you come from, what areas you have traditionally inhabited etc. People attach more value to people who have similar material status and aspirations in society which forms the basis of the race and class divide.

Let us now put the above analysis in context of what we're talking about. When it is clear that one's  identity is fundamental to an individual, two things happen – firstly, one can begin to appreciate how counter intuitive it becomes to promote virtues like tolerance, respect for all identities, and mutual peaceful existence. Second, (and this explains my assumption that a conflict must necessarily arise out of co-existence of identities), that the politicization of the differences of identity for personal gain or mere empathy is A) inevitable in a democracy where flaring communal set ups to establish vote banks is an important strategy to become an elected representative which is the end goal of all politicians and B) the main reason why different identities are bound to clash when pitted together in the same environment.

The final link in my argument is the analysing the causation between the politicization of identities and conflict in society. It is not my burden to prove that every single conflict between identities and communities has political undertones, but my aim is to only prove that politicians in our country have a direct incentive to harp on communal sentimentality to achieve their end of attaining political office, which directly results in a higher propensity towards conflict in a heterogeneous society. The ramifications of the intermingling of identity divisions and politics are analyzed two fold.-

 A) Politics removes the scope for organic discourse to happen in society to reduce friction between two communities which may be at odds at a particular point of time. Take the example of the Godhra Riots. When the horrendous slaughtering of Muslims first happened back in 2002, it was obvious that there would be a huge divide created between Hindus and Muslims nationally, but more specifically in Gujarat. One would assume that over the years, through awareness drives, government initiative, intellectual engagement in media channels, meetings of representatives etc, a the level of animosity between the two groups would have reduced gradually and organic and hatred would be replaced with acceptance and closure. Yet none of this has happened adequately, because the issue has been picked up by politicians from both sides as a constant reminder to their respective electorates of they are the right leaders to A) exact revenge on the other side (read- Varun Gandhi) and B) instil a sense of pride because on being communally represented, or being represented by one who is from amongst them and of their own identity. This kind of interference with organic discourse hampers communal relations.

B) The kind of stature that politicians like Jayalalitha, the late Bal Thackeray, Mamta Banarjee amongst their common party cadre is literally that of Demi-gods, where these people are literally willing to put their life on the line at the beck and call of their political and literal masters. Often this mad ascription to a particular individual and his destructive ideology leads these politically brainwashed sheep to do the worst kinds of things in the name of their leaders, the most glaring of which is inciting riots. (be it the 1984 anti-sikh riots, or the 2002 godhra riots, or the numerous cases of violence by the Marathi Manoos in Maharashtra). The problem in such a scenario is the

inability of legal mechanisms to hold the top level political leaders accountable for motivating and ordering such wrongful actions, as they have a plethora of  disposable young party cadres who have been entrenched with propaganda for years and years just waiting to take the fall in the name of their god in the hope of furthering their own political aspirations and getting an implicit approval from their own personal god.

I would do injustice to my ideas if I do not leave you with an idea of what could have been if there was no abstract value attached to an overarching 'Indian Identity'.  Imagine a society where separate electorates were granted to the dalits at the time of independence, wherein only dalit leaders could stand for election from those constituencies as against the compromise that was eventually reached in the Poona Pact wherein the reservation was given for nomination of candidates and not for their election. I believe there is no legitimacy in the idea that such a move would create a divide in society and isolate other Hindus, because I don't believe that such a divide is bad thing if it was the only way to have ensured complete dalit empowerment right from that point of independence. Draw a parallel to the black movement – blacks across the world today have embraced their suffering and used it as a source of unity and pride. Their are classes in black majority schools where they are taught about their suffering and suffrage for rights to ignite a catharsis – wherein they think they deserve equal treatment not because they are also humans, but because they're an identity of their own and that the source of their power is their suffering. It is for this idea of association that many blacks still prefer to live in downtrodden, economically backward areas called 'ghettos' in the USA even when the government provides them affordable and better housing elsewhere. It is for this reason that blacks prefer to marry within their own race and live in established black communities. One might argue that this kind of an existence, like in the case of separate electorates for dalits, fuels social exclusion as it isolates them from the rest of the world. But the metric for evaluating exclusion or inclusion isn't physical as much as it is the psychological evaluation and perception of people's choices. Social inclusion in these two cases is derived from the fact society as a collective conscience has begun to respect the choices of the blacks worldwide and the dalits in India, recognizing their cohabitation as collective pride and not collective suffering. They respect the fact that dalits and blacks want to marry dalits and blacks only. They respect the fact that dalits and blacks want to live with dalits and blacks only. They respect their cultures more, and society as a whole makes an effort to integrate them as much as possible into mainstream discourse in various forms – be it culture courses in universities, reservations in political as well as normal offices, special privileges given to certain individuals from within their communities, etc. This is a clear indication of how you can promote tolerance and respect even when the physical distribution of your demography is homogenized. In simple terms, imagine an India where states existed on the basis of different religions or cultural identities alone. Then, instead of preaching such values of tolerance and respect to every individual within one state, you would teach them to different states as collectives. There is a greater scope for success in the latter case as A) people will be generally happy with the idea of self representation extended to the highest level and B) politicization of such differences will no longer flare communal or identity differences as homogenization would ensure that, well, there are no two discourses prevailing in one society to clash with each other.

Of course, my ideas are fairly radical and may be susceptible to many problems – most of them being unique to the mass homogenization and cultural isolation of people. But that is the beauty of good governance- that there is no foolproof system. Every single system of governance has many fundamental flaws, which signifies the diversity of our nation in the fact that it is impossible to accommodate every single interest at any given point of time or in any one policy decision. But then again, my aim with this piece was not to convince you of the irrelevance of communal cohabitation, but to merely introduce the idea of a counter narrative, that an existence purely on the basis of communal similarities may just be possible, something that 9 out of 10 common men today would intuitively reject.

Media Matters: When Owners Become Editors

The following commentary piece is written by Mrithinjai Srikanthan, it was printed in Yamuna 83rd Volume.

Over the last six months, we have come across many reports and incidents involving the media. Be it the WikiLeaks, the CWG scam, the Spectrum scam, or the Radiagate, a role of the media is conspicuous. A real transformation, one would note, has occurred in the overall importance and semblance of the media, and news in particular, especially over the last decade or so. Remember the old days when we had to simply do with Doordarshan on the black-and-white television sets?

Compare it with the ‘responsible’ journalism today. The massive availability of information has brought about a radical shift in our perspective. There is an increasing responsibility on us, the public, to vet what is available to us, ‘to separate the wheat from the chaff,’ so to speak.

Looking back in time, newspapers have always been instrumental in the dissemination of information. Not just this, they are instrumental in shaping public opinion. During the Indian Independence struggle, newspapers like Young India and Amrit Bazaar Patrika played a big hand in the mobilizing people’s sentiments. Given its huge power, traditionally the press has been acknowledged as the Fourth Estate.

Over the years, there has been a marked change in the role of the press, world over. From being passive reporters of goings-on around the globe, they have started playing an active role in unearthing the problems in society. The Watergate scandal marks the emergence of this tendency.

India too has witnessed a rise in investigative journalism and sting operations. While there is a right of the public to know everything, there is this question of what is needed and what is not. Of late, what is being shown by the media has also become questionable. The ownership of these media houses is increasingly becoming complex and shadowy. Owners are becoming editors. This has led to a subtle bias in the coverage of issues, especially those involving these owners. This bias is very much blatant in the regional languages, especially Tamil and Telugu, where strong factions within political parties wield considerable control over both the print and electronic media. Just imagine, on the same day, a channel owned by the ruling party shows people hailing the state government’s anti-poverty program, while another channel shows people lamenting about depravation and the ineffectiveness of the same policy. This kind of coverage drastically affects public opinion. One can argue that the impact is trivial. But in matters like the 2G Spectrum scam, the Radiagate scandal, CWG scam etc, this becomes dangerous. Quite often false reports in the news media have damaged the reputations of innocent people. Reports, hastily gathered in order to be the first to publish a “breaking news” story have, in fact, impeded the process of deliverance of justice. A case in point is the media reports in the Aarushi Talwar murder case.

While typically, in terms of economics, one expects that increasing competition would lead to a rise in efficiency of all the players in the market, in the case of the media, the opposite has occurred. There is a mad rush to grab people’s attention, both in the print and the electronic medium. What used to be reserved for the ‘Page 3’ section has invaded all the other sections of the newspaper (including the sports section!)

But let me clarify, I am not saying that we go back to the age of the ‘Doordarshan News.’ This change in approach is refreshing, but it can’t be at the cost of journalistic ethics and principles. There is a fine line between investigative journalism and the trial-by-the-media. However, we can’t really put the entire blame on these media houses, can we? We too, to some extent, are responsible for this. If something is being supplied, then there must be a demand for it. Surely some people must be interested in knowing what happens in the Big Boss house or even in which room M. S. Dhoni stayed during his wedding. No one is being forced to watch something they don’t relish, are they?

News has become just like any other commodity in the market. Everything that is reported by the media is not sacrosanct. It is up to us, the consumers, to pick and choose what we want. We must know what is relevant for us, distinguish between right and wrong, and, of course, separate the “cherries from the lemons.

An Article: The Telephone

The following piece is by Niranjana Narayanan, a member of the Cover Story team in Yamuna '10.

What would you do if you had to live without your mobile phone or your landline?

Try to exchange a kidney for your phone? Run around in circles because you simply don’t know what to do? Spend the rest of your life trying to re invent the greatness that is the phone?

Yep, that sounds about right.

The mother of all communication, the divine technological reincarnation of God, has assumed the status of a necessary appendage to the quintessential man.

Apparently, the human race did survive without these gizmos at one point of time. They didn’t get lost without GPRS, they weren’t anti-social, they managed to get through long commutes and classes without texting or listening to music (God knows how) and basically did very well for themselves. This leads to the question, are we the clever ones for using such advanced technology, or were they smart enough to live life without depending on a piece of metal and plastic?

Don’t get me wrong, I adore the phone, and believe it rubs shoulders with the likes of penicillin and the space shuttle when it comes to greatest inventions of our time, but how did our ancestors get by without them, and how did we fall so madly in love with them?

Letter writing was quite the hit in those days. They said it was an art, and that the power and beauty of the written word flourished. Grandparents have boxes of old letters, marked with memories. Telegrams were the fastest way to communicate and the easiest way to communicate was face to face, if you had the luxury of the person with whom you wished to talk in your vicinity. If you take a very Jane Austen view of the whole thing, it does look so very romantic with people writing long letters with a quill pen, and conversing in flawless English and local dialects, but to be really honest, I must say, that a tiny part of me thinks that all of that is just an excuse for not coming up with the telephone in the first place!

The fact remains, that while the black and white era certainly did live fabulously sans telephone, they still couldn’t talk to whoever they pleased, whenever they pleased. They couldn’t satisfy a worrying mother with a missed call upon reaching a certain destination in one piece, but had to let her worry for a couple of days till the letter reached her. They couldn’t keep in constant touch the way we do. They definitely couldn’t find the mass of the sun by looking down at a screen in the palm of their hands.

But then, they didn’t have to have a minor heart attack the way we do every time we realize something s missing in our jeans pocket or have to lock their phones away before exams to prevent being disturbed. They didn’t have to frantically search for a power outlet at a restaurant to charge a phone. And they surely were not kicked out of class for using a technological marvel.

Small price to pay, you say, for owning a life source? I agree.

All said and done, we’ve evolved. We invented something that changed the way we function from the very core. In this day, the world would practically lose its mind if all the telephones and mobiles stopped working. Such dependence on an external device is probably not the safest idea, but I believe we should celebrate this new appendage (which is a lot more useful than an appendix) while we’ve got it.

Viva la Telephone!