Yesterday, I went to a meeting of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL--note the reference to America's ACLU). The meeting took place just off tonk road. A driveway next to a bustling vegetable market announced the meeting. Inside the still-incomplete concrete high-rise, I paid the Rs. 100 (~$2.25) registration fee and took one of the dusty plastic seats in the half-full hall. On the long table at the front of the hall were name placards for "Prabakhar Sinha", "Prashat Bhushan", "Arundhati Roy", "Dr. Binayek Sen", "Premkrishna Sharma", and "Aruna Roy". Aruna Roy, the political activist well known for passing the 2005 Freedom of Information Act, was not present, sending a spokesman with excuses.
Arundhati Roy had everyone's attention. The Man Booker Prize-winning author has recently skewered India's political establishment for its treatment of the poor, Maoists, and other oppressed groups. In her most recent article for Outlook, she coined the phrase "India is a poor superpower", a phrase which seems to be catching on in social circles.
Binayek Sen was recently imprisoned for 20 months for pro-Maoist agitation. His radical credentials (and credentials, as Tom Wolfe pointed out long ago, are the most important thing, no?) seemed more legitimate than Roy's, but his lispy voice and quiet demeanor belied his poor treatment in prison and his relative usefulness to 'the cause'.The proceedings were mostly in Hindi, so I have to rely on translations I received from my companion, what newspaper clippings I've been able to gather and the odd English phrase that the speakers used out of their hindi context.
There were several speeches before Roy took her place in front of the table. She held in her hand a copy of Outlook, and proceeded to recapitulate the points in her most recent article: 100 people control 25% of India's wealth; 20% of its population are responsible for 75% of its GDP growth. The formal economy (that is, the economy which figures into GDP figures) only accounts for 18% of the livelihoods that Indians draw from the economy at large. Her arms are crossed, and she remains stationary on the stage, barely moving her head as she speaks. Her hair is frizzy and long, grown out from the famous pictures of her with shaved hair after her time spent living with Maoists in Madya Pradesh. She wore incredibly baggy pants, carrying herself like a cosmopolitan Delhiite.
Roy casts India's current political crisis in terms of binaries: If she is to be believed, there are only two choices for the future of India: American Capitalism and Soviet Communism, and both are inadequate. Rhetoric like this is by no means new, but when combined with her vaguely incendiary revolutionary rhetoric ("Preaching nonviolence can be immoral," she said at one point) it is fresh and blunt.
"The Indian Nation only exists for the 20% who live in the sky," she said later on. "They think they can do anything to ensure the growth of GDP." But if this is to suggest that Roy engages in more than her fair share of agitation, then I should also add that she has good cause. India's 8.8% growth rate year-over-year is much-touted in the Western media. But with food inflation rates at 16%, it becomes increasingly clear that the poor are the big losers of India's modernization. An example: I pay a rickshaw driver Rs. 150 every day to drive me back home from Jaipur. The distance is about 15 kilometers. Assuming the rickshaw gets about 50 MPG gas mileage, and it takes about an hour for the journey, he is making roughly 80 Rupees from my fare. This 80 Rupees is about $2. Now, if you extrapolate this daily fare out to a month's wages, it's easy to see why 16% inflation in food prices can in no way be remedied with 8% growth in the man's wage (even if this is realized. I still pay the same amount of money for a rickshaw that friends paid last year and the year before).
But this is a digression. Roy had touched a nerve with the audience, and after Prabakhar Sinha, a supreme court lawyer, said that the court systems are outright corrupt, the scene took on a distinctly revolutionary tone. "What is to be done?" seemed to be the question of the day, and after Roy finished her speech there seemed to be no end to the questions about how "accountability" can be restored. Although Roy said that the constitution is the "Foundation of the Indian Democratic Secular Socialist Republic", she seemed to actively encourage the view that "real people" had lost all control over the proceedings of Indian government.
If there is a formula for revolution, then surely an essential part is the feeling that the government is no longer accountable to the people. The flurry of government absurdities of recent (For example, the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya case recently allowed motions to be filed on behalf of Lord Ram, a hindu deity--this granting him personhood. Imagine, in the United States, we are angry enough with the possibility of corporate personhood!).
However as enticing as revolution must sound, I have the feeling that most Indians feel as indignant towards their government. Roy's most serious error seems to be her assumption that the choice between American Capitalism and Soviet Communism can even be made. India may be a democracy in name only, but if so it is still the world's largest charade. Tyranny in a nation of 1.3 billion people, all from different social, religious and economic backgrounds would probably cause the country to split apart. So long as Arundhati keeps this in mind, India will not be without its revolutionary patriots.
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