Only the white-collared can liberate activism from the murkiness that has been attached to it.
| Photo Credit: Illustration: Sreejith R Kumar
It takes a big crime for affluent Indians to be jolted into taking a look around them. This fortnight, news of the rape and murder of a young doctor in Kolkata managed to keep this group busy. Now my social media feed is filled with people, who otherwise only post pictures of their holidays or brunches, lamenting the lack of safety for women in India. ‘10 years after the gruesome Delhi rape, nothing has changed,’ they say.
Well, the truth is, during these 10 years, there hasn’t been a single day when there were no news reports about rape or murder in some part of the country. But for India’s elite — yes that 2.2% who never fail to highlight that only they pay income tax — a crime is a crime only if it happens to someone like them. The 2012 rape and murder of Jyoti Singh struck a chord because it happened in a tony South Delhi neighbourhood. The Kolkata rape story hit a nerve because although the victim was not from an affluent family, she was a doctor who graduated from a reputed institution. Unless the crime falls into the category of “it could have happened to one of us”, it is irrelevant.
Blinkers on
One of the reasons social change is so hard to push for in India is because its educated upper-class chooses not to advocate for it. These are the people who are leaders of companies, senior executives and businessmen, people who have the affluence and the influence to make sure their voices are heard. Yet, this is the cohort that is least likely to take the risk of antagonising the powers that be by raising any questions or seeking accountability. They work only in the narrow sphere of furthering their own interest.
To be fair, this is what both society and our education system teaches us; that in order to get ahead, you put your blinkers on and focus only on the goal at hand, which is to get ahead of the other person. Any kind of activism or involvement in agitations is seen as a distraction, a waste of time, and those who indulge in these activities are deemed to be losers, people one must not associate with or be influenced by. The pursuit of personal success in an economy defined by scarcity requires single-minded focus on chasing your economic goals. Do this for three decades, through school, college and 15 years of work, building layer upon layer to insulate your bubble from the rest of the country, and you are left with neither the sense of outside reality nor the skills to question or change it.
Outsourcing the dirty job
On top of this, we have built a culture in which we always have someone else cleaning up after us. Nothing in this life trains us to roll up our shirt sleeves and do something ourselves. We don’t build, we don’t maintain, we don’t repair. We outsource all the dirty work, including how to change the country for the better. I live in Gurugram, a city that has, seemingly, been made to cater purely to this demographic, where the gates are high, the security is strict, and everything is created to keep the real world out. It’s filled with people who take pride in their ability to seek and get “only the best”.
Yet, every winter, when the air becomes a putrid, killer grey, there is collective chest beating, but not much else. Other than discussions on which is the best air purifier that can be bought, there is no conversation at all about whether the problem can be solved. There are no protests, no demonstrations, no one petitions the government to ask why stubble burning has not been banned. People just cough and wheeze and avoid outdoor brunches, while they wait for “someone” to “do something” about this.
Truth is, nothing in India will significantly shift until its elite starts engaging with the country. It is convenient for the political class to make “activism” a bad word. And, so far, the educated, urbane Indian has gone along with this interpretation. But 30 years after liberalisation, when these same people are proudly pitching India as a great market and a rapidly developing country, it is rather irresponsible to shirk from the work of actually making it a better place. Only the white-collared can liberate activism from the murkiness that has been attached to it. In fact, they can even imbue some glamour to it. When the CXOs are in the streets, seeking safety for women or asking for clean air — really, the bare minimum that can be done for a citizenry — that’s when the needle will move. I am not holding my breath though.
The writer is the author of Independence Day: A People’s History.
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