I am not people.
Sitting in the lobby of the Taj Mahal Hotel after a light lunch of a
bunch of things stuffed between two slices of organic bread, I read
about Nano, the Tata group’s new "people’s car" that was unveiled at an
auto exhibition. There were no luscious models posing like serpents
curled over its hood; that was for cars meant for not-people.
If you drive a BMW, then it makes you not-people. You have read enough
about the car, so let me tell you about people.
One commentator has said that the elite do not want the less privileged
to aspire for the good things in life and are, therefore, complaining
about such cars clogging the roads. I think it is quite the opposite.
It is a way of pointing fingers and saying, look, there goes the Nano,
there goes the poor guy. Nothing can be more dehumanising. It isn’t the
car; the person buying it has become the product.
Short memories work well in relationships, but can have a rather
disastrous effect on social understanding. The old Maruti 800 was in
fact designed as a people’s car, but it was born at a time when you
were not sold seven-day miracles in 30-second ad slots, Indian leaders
weren’t made on television by votes of those who use satellite dishes,
and you could still call each other monkeys because Darwin had not yet
begun to pose a threat to God.
The human as product is a commercialised entity. We have tabloid front
page pictures of young farmers playing with onions because a
stock-broker has bailed them out of debts when they wrote to the
President asking for permission to commit suicide. I am sorry, the
newspaper may gloat about "impact" but there is something vicious about
such "stories" churned out by the urban fabulist. It transforms the
Dalal Street man from a mutual fund dalal into a philanthropist who
wishes to remain anonymous. There will be the usual round of hurrahs
about how this blighted city has a heart.
Take this scene. A girl trots playfully with her mother towards a large
house in the outskirts of a village. There is something in her hand
that she hides behind her. While her domestic help mother gets busy
with work, she goes into a room and stands before the air-conditioner.
Then she brings out her hidden trick — a bottle. She opens the lid and
places it before the AC and quickly covers it after capturing the cool
air.
The camera pans as she runs along the road towards the fields. A man is
toiling, sweating. She drags him beneath the shade of a tree. He sits
down, wipes his face with the edge of the turban. She opens the bottle.
A blast of air wafts towards him.
It is an advertisement for an air-conditioner and it speaks about "dil
India ka."
When I first saw it I found it beautiful, emotional and simple. It hit
me later that this was in fact an insult to the poor. The little girl
is seeing her mother slog, her father work hard; she does not have good
clothes, probably does not go to school. She sees this big house, the
room with antique-looking furniture. And she takes away bottled air.
Does it mean that the needy need the munificence of the rich even for
the basics of life that nature has provided?
The flipside is that the privileged class too has become a product. The
electronic media thrives on this. Debates are not about individual
sentiments but prototypes. You are the creation of the "manufacturing
company"; we politely call it ethos. It may include the calendar with
beach babes, the yacht parties, the cocktail saris.
It isn’t people who are passing judgments. It is again the "not-people"
reaching this conclusive fact. Facts have a limited and limiting
framework and deter both fluidity and rigidity.
I am sick of the selling of India as a pluralistic society. Mythifying
inclusiveness beyond the bounds of disparate perceptions would be
excluding. Anyone can be a part of the closed as well as the open
normal social discourse. A ghetto is inclusive because it is an
identity support system. Its exclusivity arises from others giving it
that identity, and therefore those others become a part of the idea of
that ghetto.
The protests at Singur where the Tata car plant is located, were not
merely about violence, but a result of the desperate attempts to make
it a mirror version of the Establishment. Dissent was sought to be
co-opted.
We need a people’s tractor, a people’s movement that is not dictated by
elitist diktats that romanticise the 70 per cent who live in the
villages. Rural India is about poverty, but it is also about a specific
regional culture; it is urban India that has to deal with streams of
religious or parochial realities. I can say this because I have lived
all my life in urban India, seen disturbances and been fairly
acquainted with Indian villages. There is, no doubt, an element of
superciliousness regarding rural superstitions, and that gulf cannot be
bridged with the arrival of chic tarot card readers and quick-fix cures.
Regarding the free market, it can hardly be construed as breaking the
barriers. If anything, it is most elitist. It is a thoroughly "Show me
the money" scenario and individualism prevails. Two brothers from a
business family separate to realise their individual dreams and their
success levels increase.
It is a nano world where the insatiability of not-people keeps the
wheels lubricated.
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