Confusing consumerism with modernity

In a 2007 column, your correspondent worried about the confusion between consumerism and modernity and still remains worried.

Years ago, on a flight from Chicago to Pittsburgh, I sat across the aisle from a woman and her pre-teen son.

The son asked his mother if he could move to an empty window seat. “Just so long as you obey what the captain said: keep your seat belt loosely fastened at all times,” she told him. The boy sat by the window and fastened his belt as he stared out of the window, wonderstruck by fluffs of white clouds floating by and every now and then, another jetliner flying past in the distance.

Meanwhile, the pilot announced we were headed for turbulence. He instructed passengers to return to their seats and ensure their seat belts were fastened. The little boy quickly went back to the seat next to his mother and buckled his seat belt while I panicked silently at the thought of a bumpy interlude.

Cut to November 2007: On a flight from Goa to Delhi, I am sitting behind a family of four. The parents are engrossed in conversation while their two pre-teen boys run amok.

One of them stood right in front of me, noisily wolfing down a bag of potato chips while crumbs fell all over the aisle; when he finished, he blew into it, hoping it would pop, while his brother stood up on his seat, laughing at the older one’s antics.

They screamed and shouted with little regard for other passengers.

The boys’ behavior was irritating but they could be forgiven because they were both under ten years old; deeply offensive was the indifference of the parents. They mostly ignored the boys. The circus continued through the flight; the parents said nothing in admonition.

As the plane came in to land, the two boys got into a fight about the window seat. They raised such a ruckus that the parents were finally moved to do something: they asked the two to share the seat.

As the flight landed and the parents buckled up, the two sons shared the window seat, without seat belts fastened.

Observing such crass behavior, I began to understand why brats grow up to be boorish men lacking civic sense. They drive rashly, be it bicycles, motorbikes or cars; they cross the street anywhere they want; they urinate all over the place; they harass women; and generally make an all-round nuisance of themselves.

The literature says such behavior begins with the family and ends with the school. In India, both are dysfunctional.

The family is, by and large, a totalitarian setup in which children are made to conform to their elders’whims and fancies; schools reinforce conformism. There is no room in either institution for creativity.

Most children end up as nitpicking nerds or mindless conformists; above all, they become seekers of instant gratification.

Meanwhile, the media are pushing similar notions in which conformity is valued over creativity as is obvious from jewelry commercials; narcissism triumphs over civic values: just look at the motorbike commercials.

I once sat through a meeting wherein a senior adman made a presentation about the changes in India to an audience that consisted of senior executives of a global firm. He said India was modernising tradition; we were taking age-old ways and sprucing them up with glitz and glamour.

He confused rituals with tradition and consumerism with modernity.

The brats in the plane are victims of an emergent culture that emphasises narcissism; as long they conform to the family’s whims and fancies, children are in a curiously cynical manner, indulged and ignored.

Neither the family nor schools focus on socialisation, in which children are taught to balance their narcissism with respect for the rights of others.Not all the malls nor cell phones and fancy cars add up to modernity.

Not all the jewelry at Karva Chauth nor big fat weddings and expensive Diwali gifts add up to tradition. India has a long way to go before it gets the right definitions of tradition and modernity.

This column appeared in DNA, November 21, 2007.


Confusing consumerism with modernity

Will they still need me?

NEW YORK: It is a brilliant Father’s Day afternoon and I am sitting at McSorley’s, the oldest pub on the buzzing Lower East Side of Manhattan, where my younger daughter lives. She has invited her friends to quaff a few beers with me. Focused on making a life for herself in “this city that never sleeps,” she works hard and makes the most of the vibrant metropolis; mind-ful, I suspect, of the old Frank Sinatra standard: “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”

My older daughter, on the other hand, has chosen to make Delhi her home, hanging out with friends from all over the world who happen to live in the capital. Both of them traverse the world with an easy sophistication that is enviable.

When my first daughter was born, my mother gave us a plaque, which read “You must give your children roots and wings. Roots will give them the strength to face any adversity; wings will help them soar above everything to explore new worlds and go farther than you ever did.” As I sat in the pub, with the group of bubbly twenty-somethings, I couldn’t help thinking of my mother’s plaque and marvelling at just how we may have got it right with our daughters.

The older daughter’s roots and the younger one’s wings are a perfect foil for my mother’s advice. They both make their way in the world. While I do draw a sense of satisfaction from their achievements, there is a nevertheless a disturbing arrhythmia in my mind. My thoughts go back to the cheerful holidays spent in our various homes in the US and in India: the warm Christmases, the lazy Sundays; the vacations we shared in Goa, in Europe and in the United States; the hysterical laughter while watching the bumbling antics of Inspector Clouseau in Pink Panther videos. These are comforting and pleasing memories; the sadness comes from knowing such togetherness will become less frequent in the years to come.

Such sweet and sour emotions are a luxury that today’s fathers enjoy. When I was growing up, fathers were remote persons. They inspired awe, sometimes admiration; most often fear but hardly ever love. Whether liberal or conservative, they just did not get involved in their children’s lives. The authoritarian ones ran their children’s lives according to their worldview; the more liberal ones simply accepted things.

If they couldn’t control their children or satisfy them with baubles, they pulled back and became even more distant. The distant father, the absent father, the authoritarian father, the indulgent father… these are classical personality formulations on which much of today’s psychology and literature are based.

This is the thing about Father’s Day: even in blasé Manhattan: it evokes teary reactions in grey-haired men, who are otherwise balanced and not prone to sentimentality. Ever since it was first observed in Fairmont, a small mining town in West Virginia in 1908, the day was “etched in sadness as well as thankfulness”.

The Fairmont event was a church service in remembrance of the 360 men, many of them fathers, killed in a mining disaster the previous year. However, it was not until 1972, when President Richard M Nixon proclaimed it a national holiday that Father’s Day became established and its observance began to spread around the world.

Father’s Day is when children honor and indulge their father. There is some amount of Hallmark Card artifice to it. However, for me, it has always been a pause; a chance to remember the wonderful times growing up with my children; to recognize that the relationship with them is always ambiguous. You love them and hope for nothing in return. Most times, you experience pure joy; other times, there may be sheer aggravation. Underlying it is a bittersweet taste: as involved fathers we try to move heaven and earth to smooth things for our children when they are dependent on us. The haunting question is: will they still need us when we’re 64?

On a brighter note, some day we will have grandchildren on the knee.

This column appeared in DNA, June 26, 2007.

Reaping the Modi whirlwind

It is now clear that Narendra Modi is making an open bid to be the BJP's prime ministerial candidate, your correspondent shares his analysis on the Modi phenomenon from a 2007 column.

Narendra Modi’s victory in Gujarat is an emphatic statement by the people of the state that they have no time for the Congress ideology of political correctness. A proud and entrepreneurial people, if somewhat insular, Gujaratis have historically embraced radical ideologies, starting from Mohandas Gandhi’s fight against the British in the 1930s to Jayprakash Narayan’s nihilist navnirman movement against the Congress in the 1970s.

In the 1990s, Gujarat embraced Hindutva, partly for primordial reasons, but also because they had no faith in the Congress.

The Congress held sway over Gujarat for nearly two decades after the state was formed in 1960. Then, slowly and surely, the Congress appeal diminished. If Narendra Modi survives the next term to 2012, Hindutva will have become the mainstream ideology in the state.

Many liberal Gujaratis have become disenchanted with the Congress; an editor told me: “We don’t want Modi, but where is the Congress? Gujaratis are not going to throw up a Mulayam Singh Yadav or a Mayawati because they want stability. We are rich and have good infrastructure, long before Modi got here.”

Modi has tapped into the Gujarati disillusionment with the Congress. To begin with, they have no time for socialism and nonalignment; in 2002, they challenged the Congress on its secular ideology. In handing Modi a significant electoral triumph, they have begun to question the idea of democracy, preferring an authoritarian leader. Gujarat has revolted against the four pillars of Indian nationalist ideology: socialism, secularism, democracy and nonalignment.

These are the norms the Congress propagated during the nationalist movement and then after Independence. Trouble is, socialism became an excuse for the license-permit Raj; secularism mutated into a pandering to a Muslim vote bank; nonalignment became an anti-American ideology and democracy became a family business. Gujaratis would have none of it; they turned first to JP; now they are willing to take their chances with Modi.

The people of Gujarat are decent and hard-working and try to get along; typically they would support a party like the Congress. Over the years, they came to see the Congress as an elitist and Stalinist organisation in which regional leadership was not encouraged. Instead, the party’s leaders in the state had to be anointed by the High Command.

Even today, young leaders in the state, as on the national stage, are sons and daughters of veterans of the party. This is not true of the BJP. Thus, even sensible people in the state chose to support the nasty and dangerous Hindutva ideology over the feudal setup of the Congress.

It’s not just in politics, but in business as well. The scions of the old mill-owning families in Gujarat are now reduced to living off their parents’ wealth; my friend Sanjay Lalbhai, who presides over the growing Arvind empire, is a notable exception. Gujarat recognises and rewards only entrepreneurship and hard work; while they respect the old generators of wealth, they have no time for their progeny. Today’s big business names in Gujarat were unknown a decade ago. Perhaps that’s why the Gujarati diaspora has done so well all over the world, despite their obvious and severely limiting insularity.

So we must realise that Modi’s success is a vote against the elitism of the Congress. And against the lack of new ideas in the party of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel, the most revered icons of Gujarat politics. The general feeling in Gujarat is that the two were given short shrift in post-Independence politics.

The widespread belief is Gujaratis rarely joined the civil or the defense services because of their proclivity to business. On the other hand, many middle class Gujaratis believe they remained outsiders because of their problems with Hindi, English and Western ways. This is the cause of the dangerous Modi whirlwind we are reaping today.

This column appeared in DNA, December 26, 2007.


Reaping the Modi whirlwind

The US poll battle: race vs gender

Now that the US presidential race is a straight fight between Barrack Obama and Mitt Romney, your correspondent revisits his 2007 column.

A bright 20-something who lives in New York City captured the essence of political debate in the US.

“If you back Obama, the feminists will get you; support Hillary and risk being branded a racist,” she said. As voters turned up to select nominees for both parties, Republican and Democratic, it was evident that the contest in the Democratic Party between Senators Barack Obama (Illinois) and Hillary Clinton (New York) drew most ink.

On the face of it, Democrats mustdecide their nominee on ‘primordial considerations’ of race and gender. But there’s some rational selection criteria.

While the Republicans appear to have settled on John McCain as their presidential candidate, the Democratic aspirants are running neck and neck. With most states having completed their primaries, no clear winner seems to have emerged.

Analysts say the race may not be decided until April and most agree that the balance is now tilted in favour of Obama, an African-American with a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas.

Brought up in Hawaii and having lived in Indonesia, Obama’s curriculum vita is a sparkling record at Harvard Law School and as a community organiser in Chicago. Hillary Clinton’s resume is as glittery: Yale Law School and eight years in the White House as First Lady.

In the achievements department, both candidates sort of cancel each other out. Obama’s campaign seems to be more sophisticated and better-financed.

His message of change has a subtext in which is an acknowledgment that the days of the ‘boomer generation’ are over. This refers to Americans born between 1946 and 1964, during which a post-war boom saw the US emerge as a global superpower.

During the time it dominated public consciousness, in politics, in business, in the arts and in the academy, this generation also came to be known for what the critic Christopher Lasch called ‘the culture of narcissism’. The term was a catchall for a set of beliefs and fears including worship of fame and celebrity, fear of aging and aversion to commitment and lasting relationships.

Obama is 46 and can be considered a late boomer. He first perked my interest when he was quoted as saying that turn-of-the-century America was dominated by the rule of two major boomers, Bill Clinton and George W Bush; that the dorm-room debates of the ’60s and ’70s over ideology and lifestyle had carried over into national and global politics.

Stirred by the Vietnam War, these differences have polarised America as never before, especially with the ‘shock and awe’ invasion of Iraq ordered by President Bush.

Phrases such as ‘coalition of the willing’ and ‘either you’re with us or against’ sharpened the divide. Obama wants to change that, bringing Democrats, Independents and some Republicans together to restore America’s standing in the world and to bridge the rifts at home.

With this central theme, Obama challenged Hillary Clinton, whose candidacy at the start of the primaries seemed to be a shoo-in. Now that he’s managed to overtake her, the Hillary camp appears to have panicked.

Campaigning in Wisconsin, a top Hillary aide accused Obama of plagiarism, claiming he used words from a 2006 campaign speech by Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick.Obama was quick to dismiss the charges as a ‘desperate’ effort to stay in the race.

The Democratic race is now a fight devolving on character. Both candidates have turned to economic populism posing against the wealthy bankers, oilmen and corporate executives, who amassed huge fortunes under the benign Bush regime and its free-market policies.

As the primaries draw to a close and one of the candidates, woman or black, secures the nomination, he or she will have to contend with the effective dirty tricks lobbies of the Republican underbelly.

It could get down and dirty. In the end, we will have the answer to the crucial question: Is America ready to elect a non-white or non-male President?

This column appeared in DNA, February 20, 2008


The US poll battle: race vs gender

Urban Renewal Politics

When an old, dilapidated building collapsed in Bombay's Nagpada area, my mind floated back to the 1950s when I used to drive past it on my way to school. Even as I empathised with the unfortunate victims, I could also see that Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh only added to the chaos by rushing to the collapse spot like Batman would to a crime scene.

In the Nagpada tragedy, both the authorities and the people compounded the failure of the city’s civic regime.

Why was the chief minister out there? Perhaps he was stung by criticism that he waffled during the massive flood disruption a few weeks ago and so wanted to show that he cared about the city and its denizens. The fact they were mostly poor Muslims was an added political bonus.

As for the much-touted 'aam aadmi' (common man), he and she turned out to satisfy their morbid curiosity and, without the firm hand of civic authority to hold them in check, they got in the way of rescue efforts, adding to the tragedy.

South Bombay MP Milind Deora hit the nail on the head when he urged the chief minister to "let go." Deora articulated an opinion that is growing across the country. Urban renewal, which the Prime Minister has identified as a top priority in his policy agenda, is not just a matter of finance, technology and civic action by well-meaning citizens; it will succeed only when the political system permits cities to throw up their own political leadership.

Already in the last elections, we saw two highly regarded chief ministers, S M Krishna in Karnataka and Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh, swept out of power. They acted more like mayors of Bangalore and Hyderabad than as chief ministers.

Fortunately, there is a model that can be replicated. In Delhi, a strong civic leadership emerged and survived despite the fact the city has the powerful central government breathing down its neck. Sheila Dikshit managed to assert herself, even when the retrograde BJP was in power at the Centre. She pushed through many development initiatives including traffic management schemes such as flyovers and underpasses, mass transport projects like the Metro, pollution control programmes such as the introduction of unleaded fuel for private vehicles and compressed natural gas for public transport, and privatisation of the frayed power distribution network.

Most important, she challenged the widespread cynicism and imparted instead a hope for the future and pride in the city. Dikshit’s success in Delhi holds out an object lesson. She managed to throw up a popular and powerful political leadership despite the overbearing presence of the Central government and cynical Congress leaders with a one-point agenda: how to displace the chief minister.

So how did she beat back the cynics and power-grabbers? The story goes back to 1998 when the Congress came to power in the city after a long stay in the political wilderness. The party’s leadership decided that Delhi should set an example of governance. To accomplish that goal, it was important to deal with the bureaucracy and the elected leaders. A district commissioner or an MLA or an MP had no connection with specific neighbourhoods. They looked at the larger picture, not in terms of vision but for their own interests.

Neighbourhoods need civic leadership. In Delhi, the vacuum was filled by Resident Welfare Associations (RWA), voluntary bodies comprising concerned citizens who sought to ensure that their neighbourhoods had some amount of order in terms of basic civic needs such as security, garbage collection, water supply, sanitation and power supply.

The Delhi government, in a far reaching initiative, sought to empower these voluntary groups in a unique programme called Bhagidari (partnership). It has been spectacularly successful. In one fell swoop, Sheila Dikshit inducted civic-minded groups into her agenda of governance. Lots of good things have happened. But most important a dialogue has been established between the 'aam aadmi' and the government. Delhi has not become like London, Paris or New York. But the first steps have been taken as they were 150 years ago in these exemplary cities.

For Bombay, the message is clear. In the absence of enlightened civic leadership, the Shiv Sena will call the shots just as fascist political machines ruled the roost in 19th century western cities. The current Maharashtra government is an embattled coalition of opportunists and morons. The decay is there for everyone to see. The collapse is evident. It’s time for the Congress to extend its Bhagidari programme to Bombay while they still have a say in the state.

This column appeared in DNA, August 30, 2005

http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/report_urban-renewal-politics_739