The Mangalore Malaise

(25th April '09) P.S. - Samajwadi Party's much talked about manifesto, demeaning computers and English, only confirms what I had been talked about in this post earlier. Mulayam Singh, like most politicians, is not a fool (at least politically). His aim to exploit the inferiority complex and insecurities of his vote bank- the rural, illiterate and the backwards. And that is what he has been doing. But still it is surprising that he believes people will fall for that. If they do, we as a nation are headed towards for some real trouble!
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A recent article in Times of India (actually published today on 22nd March only) wondered about why the local Karnataka government was not acting strongly enough on the goons who assaulted women in a pub and bashed up young people, again mostly women, for 'daring' to talk to people belonging to other communities.

The reason political parties, namely state government in this particular case, do not seem to be acting strongly enough on the incidences that are happening in Mangalore is that they believe that the majority of the vote-casting public either supports or at least sympathizes by varying degrees to the perpetrators of these dastardly acts.

It surely sounds surprising. And the next logical question that arises in the mind is-Why do they do it?

It is not very difficult to understand that. Our society is really being divided along with various fault lines. The latest fault line is between the urbane/westernized versus the non-urbane/non-westernized. Add to this the prosperity angle, with the former appearing much more well to do and indulging in conspicuous consumption. Add even further the angle about the need of traditional India to keep its women under control and you will begin to get the picture. A description of women in Bangalore in 2006 by someone having an outsider's eye can be found here-

"...Another difference is the general lack of teenage girls on the streets. In California, it's very common to see groups of teenage girls, in two, three, or five, at the shopping centers, malls, and downtown, and usually dressed very provocative. But I saw very few teenage girls in Bangalore. Young unmarried women live at home and generally have to be at home by 9 pm. They're not allowed out at night by themselves. Popular culture (fashion and so on) is created by teenage girls in Japan and California, but India so far has managed to prevent their teenage girls from becoming the center of popular culture. Models in advertising are in their mid-20s and 30s. In general, society is middle-age centric: young people marry in their early 20s and studied hard to enter professions. The desired state of life is to be a professional and married with children. Nearly all Bollywood movies are boy-meets-girl and ends with a marriage..." (http://www.andreas.com/india2.html)

So it turns out that people on one side of the fault line- the ones who raise the bogey of 'Indian culture' and the likes- are the one who are really disconcerted about the loss of control over the women and jealous due to the lack of prosperity and 'fun' in their own lives. And the troublesome fact is that from the political perspective, where every person has only vote, they seem to be having more sympathizers.

To make matters worse, people on the other side- belonging to those particular class, which otherwise dominates our media and our intellectual strata, seldom displays any interest in voting and/or in politics. This makes them sitting ducks from a political point of view.

The first politician to exploit this public psyche was the indomitable ex-CM of Bihar and the current union railway minister Lalu Prasad. He understood that his vote banks read neither magazines nor news papers. Thus he could afford to treat the media on his own terms. Plus the more the elite in Bihar opposed him, the more the marginalized sections started believing that Lalu was indeed their messiah- without him doing anything concrete for them.

The problem in Mangalore/Karnataka and possibly in other parts of India is slightly different but has a similar template. It’s with people feeling like getting unfairly marginalized- economically, socially and may be sexually- more than they ought to have been. Let us hope that adopting different approaches, including more active political participation from today's youth/urbanites and maintaining a cultural and economic discretion- discouraging conspicuous consumption and making westernization/urbanization more attuned to the ground realities and not making them look like belonging to only the elite- should help address the problem.