‘Oh unfortunate generation

you’ll weep, but lifeless tears

because perhaps you won’t even know how to return to

what, not having had, you couldn’t even lose;

…you’ve spent the days of your youth

speaking the jargon of bureaucratic democracy

never departing from the repetition of formulas,

…you’ll find yourself using the same paternal authority,

at the mercy of the ineffable power that willed you against power,

unfortunate generation!’

Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970¹ 

 

‘In much of the popular mind, politicians are all the same. They’re a bunch of egotistical, lying narcissists who sold their souls long ago and would auction their children tomorrow if they thought it would advance their career. They are selfish, manipulative, scheming, venal. The only feelings they care about are their own. They set out to climb the greasy pole so long ago that they had lost contact with reality by the time they are in their twenties. You cannot trust a word any politician says and if you shake hands with them, you ought to count your fingers afterwards. They are not people you would want your son or daughter to marry.’

Jeremy Paxman, 2002²

 

THE statements above reflect two views that summarise the disconnect between popular perceptions and politics that has evolved in the last forty years or so. Pasolini’s lament locates the tragic circumstances in which a new generation struggles to define politics in the words of its own lexicon and bricolage.³ It mourns the death of political creation, of change and originality. Paxman’s comical façade conveys another more serious reality – the end of trust between citizens and those who represent them. Both perceptions are as appropriate in the context of twenty-first century India as they were to the circumstances in which they were originally made. This brief essay assesses the significance of the breakdown of trust between people and politics.

What defines political disconnect? In the Indian context, political disconnect may be summarised as a situation in which a substantial decline in political participation (by an entire generation of citizens) is accompanied by obsolete methods of governance that do not find a resonance in the aspirations or desires of the country’s citizens. Though by no means an exhaustive summation of the phenomenon, it does capture a critical facet of our political conditions.

People usually associate with two distinct political realities which determine their level of political participation. The first is an ideological compatibility between people and politics; this politics of ideas evokes a reaction and therefore is a form of political connectivity – with issues. The second is more personalised and ‘human’, as individual leaders and their charisma or personality traits engender participation and keep citizens involved in the process of politics. A combination of both ideological and human preoccupations with politics signals a higher degree of popular participation. We shall proceed by looking at the human element and its contribution to political awareness first.

 

In our recent story of politics there have been two very distinct generational shifts, each accompanied by a huge public expectation among the young of the time. The first occurred in 1966 when Indira Gandhi succeeded Lal Bahadur Shastri as prime minister. The second transition was the elevation of Rajiv Gandhi to the same office in 1984.

The purpose of generational change is to supply existing institutions and mandates with a fresh energy and stay on message. Additionally, with each generational change, there is hope as well; a diffusion of political particles. In both cases, with the change in faces, people desire a change in agenda and methods of governance. In Indira Gandhi’s case there was a concerted effort to induce radicalisation at the onset of her regime and 1971 did see an assertion of a new radical agenda that partially chipped away at the old order of the Nehruvian consensus. In 1984, despite an overwhelming mandate and tremendous public support, Rajiv Gandhi’s government appeared lost in transition.

In both situations the overbearing public association with politics came to rest on personality politics, as had been the case throughout the time that Pandit Nehru was prime minister. ‘Midnight’s Children’, the generation of Indians born around or after Independence, had an entire pantheon of national leaders to look up to. Even if their political convictions did not find resonance in public support, the politicians of the time enjoyed enormous personal respect and prestige. Aged 59 and after her election defeat in 1977, Indira Gandhi ‘found herself without a job, an income or a roof over her head’⁴ and struggled for a good while. Kamaraj, one of her staunchest political adversaries reportedly once refused to sanction a pedestal fan for his mother from state funds. Even in popular culture, a politician could be a hero, c.f. Dilip Kumar in the film Leader (1964). Such an image of a politician in public service is very far removed from the popular contemporary view that we saw articulated by Jeremy Paxman.

 

This shift in the popular imagination, of the politician as an unrelenting villain, is a causative factor in a public disenchantment and, therefore, a public-political disconnect. The fact that popular suspicion about politicians is periodically reinforced by their lack of accountability and a diverse catalogue of corruption only pushes away people increasingly used to systems and the verbiage of market economies. It does appear difficult to reconcile the principles upon which representative democracy is founded with the practices of our democratic representatives. But is this really indicative of a generational disconnect?

More recently we have seen a very strong streak of public expression (which included shades of hysteria) with the entire political class in this country. The terrorist attack of November 2008 placed a long held public disenchantment with politicians on a fast track. There is also an element of schadenfreude among many people, especially the young, when they witness the negative energy of millions of Indians focused on the political class as a whole. Any sympathy that one might have felt for the Home Minister of Maharashtra vanished once he implied that the horror that occurred in November was but a routine matter. Equally, one might have empathised with the CM of Kerala for having been shown the door at the private funeral for one of the fallen commandos, had he not reacted with words that he did to give expression to his frustration. Possibly, one could even have considered the questions raised by the BJP as sagacious until their Vice President no less, exposed the party’s inherent fascism in suggesting that unless one mirrored their concept of an Indian, one’s opinion was irrelevant.

In fact, across the political spectrum, from Left to Right, we are witnessing a political response that is completely at odds with the aspirations, sensitivities and demands of the Indian people. A disconnect between the political class and those they claim to represent has never been so visible or indeed recorded. This is an example, albeit an extreme one, of public hostility to political conditions triggered by a singular event. But is this indicative of a national or even generational disconnect with politics? The answer has to be a resounding no.

 

Why? Apathy and indifference to politics (generally speaking) is a ‘luxury’ confined to those quarters of civil society that do not require the interface of government and politics in the day-to-day running of their lives. In a sense this ‘class’ (if one may dignify the divisions of Indian society by that Aristotlean allusion) has transcended the requirement of politicians in their lives, if not evolved into a disconnected minority, albeit one that occupies a substantial space of public opinion and opinion making. Unsurprisingly, it is easy to mistake this tiny fragment as representative.

True, even within this bolus there is a group that does engage with politicians, political issues and principles on a regular basis, but that is a very tiny minority within a minority. As a result of this particular displacement we have also seen a staggering illiteracy among the urban audience who, though they may be highly qualified and possess a high degree of education, receive their day-to-day wisdom about politics essentially from the media. The news feed to believability ratio is amazingly high. People tend to believe almost anything that is relayed to them through their television screens, thus rendering the private capacity and inclination to question, verify and assess, almost redundant.

 

It is easy to be entrapped in arguments over personalities and the human factors that determine our analysis. That would be limiting. Any aetiological perspective about a generational disconnect with politics must also bear in mind the ideological incompatibilities between movements, policies, the ideas they espouse, and the leaders who guide them on the one hand and the citizens of a state on the other. Inherent to this relationship is an analysis of the responses of a ‘new breed’ to old ideas.

It is clear that in the last six decades the arguments and ancillaries of politics and political issues have hardly changed, though some argue that we may be witnessing a third transition from the old to the new. With such a large influx of younger politicians being elected to legislative positions and a generally more competitive youth that has a larger degree of choice available to it than any preceding generation in independent India, generational change is only natural. Nonetheless, even as a nascent generational move is apparent within the political establishment, that shift is itself characterised by a continuation of the same institutional and ideological imprint that was circulated by individuals of previous generations. Hence, Lampedusa’s lament (or is it intent?), that ‘everything must change so that everything can remain the same.’⁵

 

Herein lies another perceived disconnect – between expectations which societal elements hold during transitions of power and political realities that pre-programme individuals to continue adhering to established and institutionalised principles in the exercise of an, albeit, new found power. A generational shift is therefore happening in terms of younger actors entering political spaces, but there is no visible shift in agenda.

‘The Moving Force’, the essential joie that determines political actions and results is completely incoherent, perhaps even non-existent in India’s political agenda today. It would help our understanding if we examine this chronologically. Modern India’s tryst with politics, democracy and political processes began with the national movement, the moving force in Indian politics for the length of its duration. Similarly the ‘Nehruvian consensus’ determined political exchange during the first half of India’s existence as an independent state.

After this, a breakdown in consensus occurred, particularly exacerbated by the imposition of Emergency in 1975. Since then, there has been no single moving force or spirit of consensus that unifies the Indian polity – its citizens, institutions and representatives. The early 1990s saw divisive agendas dominate politics, both through the Mandal agitation as well as the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi issue. These were both issues and agendas that connected politics with people, but disrupted political unity and consensus. What they signified were dismemberments between the various state and non-state actors engaged with politics at various levels.

Even earlier, movements that attracted mass public connectivity to politics were limited to caste or other sub-groups within Indian society, for example the Dravidian movements in South India throughout the 1950s and 1960s. These limited interactions, albeit inclusive of large populations, were unrelated to a majority of Indians. Naxal insurgencies did not have a bearing, nor did they evoke the interest of even a substantial set of voters in say, South Bombay. Similarly the financial fundamentalism of modern day eco-political dialogue with its intangible language of profits and capital flows finds no resonance in the sphere of rural politics of youth in U.P. or Bihar.

 

Student and youth movements relate to and attach themselves to what they configure in relation to their own specific interests. Thus, the ‘errand boy’ politics of youth student leaders in unions of Lucknow University is entirely distinct from the politics within the young cadres of the Salwa Judum in neighbouring Chhattisgarh. These are dismemberments in politics, but it is difficult to call them disconnects. After all young voters in up-market, economically mobile and stable urban constituencies too are involved in politics if they are conducting a dialogue on fiscal or economic policy, though it may be unrelated to the political outlook of a young Naxal. Indians between the ages of 18 and 48 (to take a general demographic) operate in a dismembered polity where issues are no doubt disconnected from each other, a multiplicity of matters relating themselves to a human multitude. Naturally, this too conveys the appearance of disconnect, though that may not be the case.

 

But there is another dismemberment in Indian politics. We have earlier referred to this very serious rupture in passing, but it merits a more detailed analysis. This is the inherent disconnect relayed by those on the ‘establishment sector’ of the political divide – the representatives of state and party political actors. Often, as we have seen, their perceptions of public aspirations are so far removed from reality that it is they who have become disconnected with those they represent, particularly the young. And this disconnect is not merely ideological or political; it is sometimes social as well, as characterised in the lifestyles of the political class/establishment.

For example, it is now almost de rigueur that once an individual secures office, he must begin insulating himself from the people who elected him or are directly responsible for his selection to that office. Once there is nothing in common between the lifestyles of the people and their representatives, disconnect is obvious and to be expected. Perhaps in this sense, generational disconnect is actually a reality. In any case in this condition we come closest to what can be termed ‘disconnect’.

Alternatively, party political processes themselves are not easy to navigate. The intangibles of party organization can play a serious role in undermining change or any radical shift in outlook or policy, even though that may be what connects parties to people. Politics is a protean ‘discipline’, we all know that. In the context of India, however, political ideas have a habit of evolving along set, linear patterns, within a given party culture, as consciously sought extensions of what has gone before. These deeply entrenched politics of association – with institutions, individuals, ideology (and specific slogans) – seek to demonstrate a continuity of thought, sometimes even action. Thus even a transfer of power, from the incumbent unit of leadership to the next (or next generation) within political parties in India, is usually prolonged. It is in this period that new vision, direction, changed generational values, abstract and tangible, are in danger of getting lost in transition.

 

This leads to perhaps the most serious potential for disconnect – the death of internal democracy. A great example of this is the form that party resolutions adopt and these are real indicators of the level of connectivity between political groups and people, especially young people with new, refreshed ideas and methodologies. More often than not, party resolutions have no input, none whatsoever from the workers of that surreal sphere we all refer to as ‘the grassroots’. That is an internal disconnect which has the potential of extending its hold over all political activity within a party.

In conclusion one should bear in mind Aristotle’s famous maxim, considered an axiom when it comes to discourses on politics, that ‘the state belongs to the class of objects which exist by nature, and that man is by nature a political animal’.⁶ The realities of politics in India do not allow for absolute dislocations between people, young or old and the practise of politics. What they do in contemporary politics is disengage political actors from each other. This has consequences we can call political dismemberments.

 

Footnotes:

1. Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), Italian dramatist, poet, philosopher and film-maker. Cited in Street Fighting Years: An autobiography of the sixties by Tariq Ali, Verso, 2005.

2. Jeremy Paxman, The Political Animal, published by Michael Joseph, 2002; Penguin Books, 2007.

3. Bricolage: attributed to Levi-Strauss. ‘A primal engineering which takes the random litter of the world and rigs up from it a structured, mentally habitable set.’ Cit. Peter Conrad, The Everyman History of English Literature, J.M. Dent and Sons, 1987.

4.Katherine Frank, Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi, Harper Collins, 2002.

5. Giuseppe de Lampedusa, The Leopard, Collins, U.K., 1960.

6. Aristotle, The Politics, Book I, Section II, ‘The State and the Individual’, Modern Library, New York, 1943.