There are many possible explanations for the incompetence with which the government and, more broadly, the political establishment responded to the protests of the past week. The simplest and most convincing of all is the generation gap.
Most grandparents don’t understand what makes their grown grandkids tick. The incomprehension was exacerbated here by the huge changes India has seen over the last 20 years and also by the way in which the Indian political class has distanced itself in lifestyle from its constituency.
India is a gerontocracy. Most of its political leaders are in their seventies and eighties. The children of the current bunch of political leaders, many of whom are described as “youth icons”, are well into middle age. Their children are, in many instances, older than the boys and girls who were out on the streets.
Almost three-fourths of India’s citizens are under 30, as were the bulk of the protesters. This under-30 generation is far better educated, more sophisticated and less insular in outlook than their parents or grandparents.
In 1992, India’s literacy rate was all of 43 per cent. It’s 74 per cent now. The average Indian 20-year-old can not only scrawl a signature; a large number are also committed technology users, which demands actual fluency in reading, writing and arithmetic.
In turn, their use of technology alerts them to a wide array of global trends. This exposure has changed their mindsets in ways their parents and grandparents find difficult to imagine, let alone understand. The protesters knew, for instance, that in some parts of the world, girls don’t live in daily fear; they really don’t understand why it is impossible to replicate those conditions in India.
Smart as they may be, the protesters were also naïve. They believed that the civics kunji definitions of “public servants” and “elected representatives” were not cargo-cult fiction.
Those young men and women hail from a cultural context where grandparents are kindly and listen indulgently to their grandkids, even when they don’t have a clue what the kids are yelling about. That was the spirit in which they marched on the first day. If only Pronob-dadu, Manmohan Nana, Sheila Nani or Rahul Uncle had bothered to give them the time of day.
Instead, the politicians refused to listen and hid in fear. They ordered that youngsters their grandkids’ age should be beaten for daring to tread on their turf. Finally, ungraciously, senior politicians muttered patronising platitudes about having daughters of their own. The protesters know politicians have children, who are themselves mostly politicians. They have noted that those “children” also hid from them.
The past 10 days have taught them a lot and it’s a smart generation with a high learning curve. Speaking from personal experience, those boys and girls kept their cool and faced tear gas, lathi charges and water cannons with more restraint and fortitude than my generation did 30 years ago. They’ll find more effective ways to get their points across the next time they have something to say, and it won’t be long either.
Nearly four centuries ago, an English sarpanch addressed his parliament thus, “Look on the people you represent, and break not your trust, and expose not the honest party of your kingdom, who have bled for you. And suffer not misery to fall upon them for want of courage and resolution in you, else the honest people may take such course as nature dictates to them.”
This is a pretty decent definition of political responsibility and the Indian political establishment is #fail by those standards, if one might use Net-jargon. That sarpanch, Oliver Cromwell, raised an army that pulled the king off his throne and put his head on the chopping block. In supposedly democratic India, nature is likely to take its course less dramatically. But the chances of the United Progressive Alliance being voted out have risen considerably after this craven display.
