India or Bharat?

On our 60th independence day, newspapers and news channels were full of opinion polls on how would people ‘celebrate’ their independence day, how would they want their country to improve etc.

The television was full of people who usually fill television screens talking about things that have nothing to do with their profession or matter of interest. But still they talk about it because they want to share the screen-space with other people who do the same thing for the same reason. By now there is a well-rehearsed ritual that we go through in our effort to congratulate ourselves. Over the past few years we have managed to create our own version of a country called India, a version we keep perfecting in our contrast accord with reality. This version is based on a few set issues and a fewer set of people who are allowed to represent these issues. If it’s about Mumbai, it is in terms of its spirit, lack of infrastructure, bad roads and local trains that are dead set on homicide and the people to go to are Rahul Bose and Prahlad Kakkar. If it’s about Delhi, it is in terms of water & electricity problems and men who molest women as a matter of habit and the people to go to are Suheil Seth and Shekhar Suman. If it’s about politics then there comes the lawyer brigade of Sibal and Jaitley.
Are these people anymore qualified than you or me to comment on the things that they comment on?

It is as if we live in a media created world with its own artificial sky dotted with manufactured celebrities.
This screen doesn’t adjust the rural India and 80% of India can’t find mention unless it gets caught in some senseless survey or, worse, some hidden camera. And, yes, the light should be good!

It is not that serious issues don’t get debated but they are made out in a fashion to increase the TRPs. Most of the surveys list poverty, corruption and terrorism as the key problems facing our country. It is revealing that illiteracy and population are not something we regard as a problem anymore. I agree that poverty is, in fact, a surrogate for illiteracy and population but this says a lot about how we see the world.

The city has displaced the village, the glitter has pushed the filth into the background, and the new indicator of growth is the total area covered under metro-rail and flyovers instead of rural electrification.
When we talk of water crisis, we talk of cities and we forget that in villages women have to walk more than 20kms everyday to fetch a pot of water. Why can we capture only the city housewives sulking over not getting 24-hr water supply? When we talk of crime, we talk about the lack of justice meted out to the families of Jessica Lal, Priyadarshini Mattoo and Nitish Katara. Why don’t we consider that even today women are forced to go Sati after their husband’s death?

The irony of the course is that even the politicians who grace our screens struggle to win elections and those who do are usually the ones who don’t mean a single word they say on-screen.

Politicians represent the India we have successfully shut out. Nobody writes about that India, Ekta Kapoor doesn’t include it in her serials and Karan Johar wouldn’t think about it in his entire life (except when he is asked to comment on it on-screen). We don’t seem to be ready to deal with the very real reality of that India.

Today the new India wants to get rid of Bharat; some would argue that it has already done so. But then, who are we to have an opinion; lets ask Shobha De what she thinks!

Mumbai Revisited

I have never been to Mumbai but thanks to the media revolution, one doesn’t need to go to any place to understand its people. Mumbai is not the capital of India as such but it is more of a backbone of India in many senses.
There is an old metaphor for Mumbai – the city where motion never ceases. Everything moves relentlessly in Mumbai. All the things that Mumbai is famous for has some form of mobility. Be it the dabbawalas moving with exactitude, or Tendulkar’s bat putting every bowler in this world to shame, or Agarkar’s ball which never shies away from hitting the wickets behind the best batsmen of this world, or the underworld, along and against almost everything, for most part, invisible, or the local train carrying lacks of people with amazing unfussy efficiency. A small strip of land crammed with pressures of a million exploding dreams. People from all over the world come here to move up and in the process keep moving around all the time.
Come rain or riot Mumbaikar moves.
It provides both opportunity and pressure so that it’s people metamorphoses into something better than they were meant to be. It forces to get along because it wants its people to get ahead.
But speed breakers are a part of roads. It is this speed breaker phase that Mumbai has been experiencing for the last 12 months. First the cloud burst last year, then the serial bombs planted strategically at places where it hurts most – it’s ability to move. This is what the terrorists wanted – to disrupt the joyful mobility of the city.
Did they succeed??
Fortunately not. All the city came out of their homes to help the stranded passengers offering to drop them home and taking the injured to hospitals; again putting the city into motion. But this time the much-celebrated spirit of Mumbai is crying for help. The city is experiencing a new emotion – the feeling of helplessness. For the first time they are realizing that being a superhero is not enough. When a city like Mumbai stops, it stops believing in itself.
India wants Mumbai, not only because it is the financial engine that drives our lofty dreams about tomorrow. It needs Mumbai because it is the only place in India where people can outgrow their pasts. It tells us that we can move ahead because of what we have inside us.
There are no limits to which it can be stretched. It is infinite.