Urban middle class in India is often accused of armchair activism — always ranting against politicians and the ‘system’ from their drawing rooms but never taking the trouble to brave the heat and dust of active politics. Here’s a different take on this viewpoint. To elaborate on it, let’s start from basics.
If you cut through all decorative phrases about ‘serving people’, Politics in India is very much about money and power. Let’s leave power out of the equation right now and concentrate on money. Money comes from taxes. Taxes are what we pay the govt in expectation of some services like Law n order, Defence, etc. The reason why politicians are ready to lie and cheat and rob and kill in order to win elections is because this money is BIG — lakhs of crores every year. And as public ‘servants’ the politicians are at the top of the pecking order in the legalized loot of this money. ‘Loot’, because there is hardly any accountability as to where and how the money is spent. The citizens certainly don’t get the services expected. Swiss bank accounts of politicians and ‘benami’ properties of bureaucrats is one common destination where this tax money ends up. Anyways, this is common knowledge and the current outburst against corruption is a sign of the times.
Coming to the point now as to why the urban middle class is insulated from the political scene : Money is not just wads of paper — if it was, the government press would just print loads of it and distribute a few crores to every voter and and keep everyone happy and never go out of power. That however, is not the case. Money represents someone’s ( useful ) work. By ‘useful’ is meant that it benefits someone. Digging holes and filling them could also be technically called work ( and so also maintaining needless files in archaic government offices and a person assigned the ‘job’ of ‘finding’ them ) but is of no use to anyone. All those lakhs of crores that the government collects in taxes is ‘work’ done by people. For the money ( ‘work’ ) to be ‘looted’ by the politicians and bureaucrats, someone has to first ‘make’ ( do ) it. These so called ‘armchair activists’ are too busy doing that work and making that money. Their bosses are not very likely to give them an off to attend a political rally or to set up roadblocks or to dig up train tracks or to destroy and burn public and private property. Even if they did, the going rate for rally attendants of a 100 bucks a day or a bottle of liquor is simply too low for them to make it their worthwhile. Our so called leaders may try offering them Rs 10000 ( USD 150 ) a day and there’s a chance that some might turn up. But at this rate, they become simply unaffordable.
If every organization has a purpose and it can be summed up in a few words, then a very blunt but not inaccurate description for our government would go something like this : an organization in power due to brute force ( or in more palatable words — ‘majority’ — as in Democarcy ) with the purpose of ‘legally’ appropriating wealth from those who are earning it — all in the name of redistributing it to the ‘poor’. And it is just a matter of course that those in charge of making this redistribution get the lion’s share of the loot and proportionately down the pecking order. So people who actually earn the money ( do the work ) are forced to give a good part of it away in the name of taxes and get nothing in return — the public health and education system is a mess, the Police are as criminal as the criminals themselves, the judiciary takes forever to deliver justice ( if you can call it that by the time the verdict comes out ). The political class who cries itself hoarse over ‘common man’ of the country would not be found dead in a public hospital or send their children to a govt school or avail of any service provided by the government that is for the ‘general public’. Lutyen bungalows and red light cars are of course another thing !
So a minority India is working away for the majority of it who practically hold a gun to their head in this version of ‘Democracy’. Just that in olden times it used to be called Slavery.
This so called ‘minority’ can be anyone who is actually earning his money — be it the CEO of a big company, a businessman, an engineer, an army man defending the border, a banker, a rickshaw puller, the maidservant, a roadside paanwala, the farmer…Many of them especially the uneducated, may not be very articulately aware of the mechanics of systemic corruption as described above but, one way or the other, the exploitation they are subjected to leads to an underlying resentment that is increasingly finding a louder voice in India. The 80 % of public India that has so far ridden piggyback on the hard working private 20 %, will find it an increasingly bumpy ride.
15.08.11
