Elite Indians try out the democratic route

The news of successful professionals and businessmen, like Meera Sanyal and Gopinath, joining politics was unexpected yet interesting. The English language media as usual tried to portray these people as saints who will lift us from depths of misery and prosperity. As someone who keenly follows Indian politics, this phenomenon makes me happy and worried at the same time. The Indian middle class has often lampooned our democratic system. For them, democracy or power to the masses meant impediment on the path of development. Deep in their hearts heart they desired for a Pinochet style corporate dictatorship. However, the success of Indian democracy in the last sixty years has made them realize that Indian democracy is much potent and mature than its Latin American counterparts. This realization has ensured that the middle class no longer speaks of changing the system according to their needs; it rather tries to be a part of the system that it has despised for so long. This development is indeed encouraging. It is indeed heartening to see that the urban elite have finally understood the power and strength of Indian democracy. They realize that opening a thousand facebook groups titled “Make Ratan Tata the Prime-Minister” but that would hardly make any difference. If they want Tata to be the PM, they will have to ensure that the guy has the guts to contest elections.

However, as was pointed out by a journalist in today’s edition of NDTV’s “We the People”, the middle class in India has always overestimated is political power. The phenomenon of corporate honchos contesting elections might be a manifestation of that over confidence. This overconfidence owes it’s origin to the role played by the English language media in India. The English media has often tried to project the views of an elite microscopic minority as the view of the average Indian. We saw this at work when the anti-OBC movement started in 2006. The English language media portrayed the leaders of this casteist movement as revolutionaries and their views as the views of the ordinary Indian youth. The election results of major Indian universities proved that this was not the case. The newly formed upper caste association called the “Youth for Equality” contested elections and were routed by traditional student organisations like the NSUI, AISA, SFI and ABVP. It needs to be noted that all these student organizations had officially supported the government’s proposal on OBC reservations. However, students affiliated to upper caste organizations like the YFE couldn’t swallow these results as the English language media had made them to believe that most students agree with their world view. With their dreams shattered, they now tried to distort the system in place in most universities. They now started speaking (unofficially) against the democratic structure of student politics in Indian universities. This became more than evident when YFE became the only student association in JNU campus that came out in support of the administration’s proposals that sought to shrink the democratic space in JNU. This is what worries me. The 15^th Lok Sabha elections will prove that the Meera Sanyals of South Mumbai are irrelevant in Indian politics. I can bet that even in an urban constituency with high income levels, Meera will lose her deposit. It will prove that that the vote of a dalit agricultural worker in Bundelkhand is as important as the vote of an investment banker in malabar hill. The frustration that will come with the realization of their powerlessness in Indian polity will give them incentives to derail the engine of democracy. They will cry foul on talk shows. There will be calls for tax evasion like the ones made after 26/11. They will try to use their money poor to change the rules of the game. They will start dreaming of avatars in the form of Pinochet or Suharto to save them from this “mess” and this is what worries me.