"UPSURGE OF YOUTH" - A MEDIA HYPE

"The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society." Karl Marx

“We said 'no' to clients. We couldn’t work on the day of election,” a friend told me proudly that his management had taken a virtuous decision to announce holiday on the date of Indian parliamentary election. It surprised me, though I felt happy, since he was always a typically apolitical technocrat unconcerned in socio-political issues. My friend, pursuing a promising career in an International Bank, represents the ‘globalized’ urban youth, which is characterised by the indifference towards any democratic activity and an immoderate aversion to political parties. (Though most of these parties are apostles of a propaganda that materialized the financial empowerment of this middleclass.) What made him to change his opinion?

1. The propaganda behind the mass media campaigns

After 26/11, an outrage had burst out against mainstream political parties as the authorities failed to prevent the brutal terrorists from slaughtering 170 innocent lives. The affluent youth of our metros were shocked since they understood that the security they were provided was inadequate to protect their lives. Moreover politicians and corporate giants, with the help of mainstream media used this chance to put forward a fallacy of nationalism, which is based on emotion rather than reason. They tried to deviate people from core issues, which our country has been facing for hundreds of years and the causes, impact and remedies of recent economic recession. Corporate sector came forward with patriotic ‘Jaagore’ campaign, (the same firm had no guilty sentiments while evicting thousands of farmers from Singur and Nandigram. Are they not Indians?) ‘My idea’ campaign, etc which were targeting the elite middle class of urban India. They were disseminating a lie that only the upsurge of this class can save India from the abjection of our political system. A farce play aimed at enhancing the brand image of these companies and helping them pretend to be the saviours of the system.

Why do we say these movements are apolitical although they are trying to motivate the youth to participate in election process? They are also spending crores of rupees for educating and inspiring youth to engage in civic and political matters. But these campaigns were built exclusively for urban youth and both their form and content were incapable of reaching and influencing the rural India. Secondly they consider politics as a mere matter of governance and management. “The growth in disposable income of young middle class Indians has reduced the reliance on public goods – water, sanitation, telephone, public transport etc. and perpetrated a thought that the outcomes of poor governance can be replaced easily with private goods. However, there are many day-to-day realities that bring out the irrationality of this thought – broken roads and footpaths, erratic electricity, traffic congestion in cities, slow moving infrastructure projects etc..” This is how Mr. Jasmine Shah, the campaign coordinator of ‘jaagore’ perceives the poor governance as the supreme issue. “Politics and elections are seen as an ideological challenge, but young people see it as a management challenge,” Meenakshi Natrajan, one of the youth brigades in our parliament describes the attitude of urban youth towards politics. Management is a function to maintain the status quo while politics is something which interferes, questions and changes the status quo. These campaigns also promoted tech-savvy, 'oxford' graduate bureaucrats as the radical players without discussing the political ideologies they stand for. Education must be a quality, but that alone cannot make a politician. If number of educated MPs is the most important parameter, then the current Indian parliament will be better than the first one, since now we have more educated MPs than we had in the first parliament.

“As one of the 650 million young Indians under the age of 30 yrs, the year 2008 will stay in my memory for a long time. Born in the era of post-emergency India, the current young generation has rarely experienced such an adverse impact of the country’s poor governance on their day-to-day lives. A series of terror attacks across the nation ending with siege of Mumbai city on 26/11 made us realize how vulnerable we actually were at the hands of terror forces, and that there is no alternative to state protection. The global economic meltdown and its impact on local economy has further added to the despondent mood..” In this article Jasmine emphasise India's crucial issue as threat from terrorist attacks. Their campaigns highlight the increasing vulnerability of urban India to terrorist attacks and deliberately avoid other issues because those may turn people against their sponsors.

Why only terrorism?

These high-tech campaigns never spoke about the deaths of thousands of farmers in rural India. They never raised their voice against the homicide of Christian minorities in Orissa orchestrated by Hindu fascists. They didn’t remind us about thousands of people who were evicted from their homeland in the name of development. Nandigram and Singur issues never entered their enlightening campaigns (how can they, when Tata sponsors). Why can’t they include Ranbir Sena and Salwa Judum in the list of terrorists and naxals? Why don’t they utter a word ‘dalit’? They didn’t even bother about the recession, which is the cause of job loss for hundreds of their class all over the world. What is the dispute with nuclear deal? It was not necessary to think about all these issues. Thinking about 'traffic jam' is more important and easier and you can come up with your "idea” to resolve the problem. (The real issue behind traffic jams is the proliferation of private vehicles. Can we abandon our private vehicles and adjust with lackluster public transport? Who is destroying our public transport system?) Actually they broadcast the symptoms of the real social issues as the diseases. Why don't they discuss the roots of terrorism? What is the history of this post Second World War phenomenon? Are these terrorists imported directly from Satan's palace? Is military the only answer to this problem? Are these new generation campaigners brave enough to launch a protest against the Hindu fascists as with the same intensity as in anti-terrorism campaigns? Do they have the guts to make people aware of RSS and VHP involvement in Gujarat, Mumbai riots and Ayodhya issue?

These campaigns are not making you politically enlightened to question and change the system. They would never let you to wipe out the social inequality till they permit you to enjoy the fruits of this inequality. Yet they are asking you to vote. Why do you do that without knowing that politics is not just a matter of governance and management? Why do you do that, if you are not allowed to discuss what the 'politics' is? In reality, the corporates need castrated bulls to live mechanically to make the ultimate aim of capitalism – ‘profit’. These campaigns are castrating the urban youth by limiting their public sphere and political concerns. Their sponsors need a youth which is boasting of and celebrating a false euphoria of becoming the world economic power. They and their media will never let you know the fact that according to the United Nation's human development index India stands in the 128th position out of 177 countries. " And it shows that you are better off being poor in Botswana, El Salvador, Guatemala or the Occupied Territories of the Palestine - than in India", P. Sainath says in his renowned article 'The Feel Good Factory'.

What I find as consoling is the lower voters turn-out in Indian urban centres including Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore. Fortunately the big budget attempts have gone in vain and the propaganda to bring the educated Indian youth to vote for apolitical reasons hasn’t triumphed at least for this time. But they will go on with an evil aim to build a completely corporate controlled political system as in United States.

Bottom line:

Indian middle class still lives in a colonial hangover. The political strategy of neo-colonialism is too sophisticated and deceptive to identify and defeat. Yet I can hear the whispers of Thomas Macaulay’s ghost: "We must do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, words and intellect."