And yet, it would be a mistake to attribute the public response, both good and bad, solely to the presence of a celebrity. For one, if Aamir were to be replaced by another celebrity, the effect would not have been the same. There might be others who might be able to pull it off, but the choice would be determined not by the scale of their fame, but by the nature of their reputation.

More importantly, it is Aamir’s ability to begin with an idea, execute it without compromise, and find ways to make it valuable to the consuming ecosystem that makes his effort so remarkable. In some ways, what works for him is not his celebrity but his obstinacy. Here we have a show that airs across channels, including Doordarshan, at a time slot long abandoned by advertisers and viewers, dealing with subjects far removed from entertainment, dealt with in an unremittingly grim manner, and which ends up being followed by us as if it were a prime-time entertainment show, full of glitz, glamour and East European cheerleaders. The most remarkable thing about Satyamev Jayate is that it takes everything that the market swears is commercial disaster, repackages it and forces the same market to pay obeisance.

Those who criticise the high fees rumoured to be charged by Aamir miss the point altogether, for his ability to make money at commercial rates is precisely what makes this show a true radical breakthrough. It underlines the fact that a real celebrity brand, by which I mean someone who stands for not fame, but a driving idea and belief, and acts accordingly without compromise, can shape the market and bend it to his or her will. Aamir Khan is not a social crusader like a George Clooney, who uses his fame to support a cherished cause, but an entrepreneur who sees social ills as a market that needs to be catered to. He manages to reconcile the mostly incompatible ideas of commercial viability and rarefied cause and restores to the market some notion of social legitimacy.

And unlike others who come from the market, he is able to protect the purity of his idea from what are touted as the deadening compulsions of the market ecosystem. He caters to the market by not pandering to it, but by sensing its unarticulated and barely discernible needs. At a time when the market works hard at flattening out choice and drowning us in sameness, where television channels vie with each other in bringing us versions of the same banality, Aamir’s ability to make this show and command a price for it is proof that the market can operate at a more elevated level, that the current epidemic of sameness is a function not of some inherent mechanism at work, but of its unimaginative use.

That does not mean that the market plays no role at all. The outer limits of possibilities do get defined by the fact that this is, after all, a commercial proposition. Truly contentious issues are unlikely to be covered, and the somewhat spurious and contrived call to action at the end reduces a complex issue to a postcard or sms message that will allegedly change the world is a product of the needs of television and the urge felt by viewers to “do something real”. Also, every issue, no matter how pressing, gets only a week to sort itself out.

And what about bringing about social change? Unlikely, given the nature of the problems we are talking about. Of course, the show might well heighten awareness, enable the efforts of those doing real work at the ground level, and get the issue out of the denial closet, where it is currently ensconced. But it is a little unrealistic to expect a film star and a TV show to change the world. Even on Twitter, that touchstone of the terminally excitable, the show trended only for a single day. Satyamev Jayate is a television show and a powerful one at that, but it will not make us better people. What it might do is help the market finds its better self.

Outlook-May21, 2012

          

The phenomenon of spectatorship is not confined to the IPL alone. Almost any event, provided it has the right mix of glamour, adrenaline and media coverage becomes a hyper-charged version of itself, with hysteria skulking around the thin periphery of the event, waiting to be unleashed. Increasingly, it is not even important that the content of the event be familiar or one that evokes any specific interest; the important thing is to be there and to be seen to be there. A rock concert, a performance by someone who is allegedly a world famous DJ, a literature festival, a Formula 1 race, a fashion show, sundry film and other awards nights- all of these elicit a broadly similar level of enthusiasm encased in a familiar canopy of sound. Marquee events become free of content; all that matters is the flash of cameras intent on devouring the sights.

The need to be part of the energy of the crowd is not a new feeling; in India all markets, no matter how spiffy descend into the chaos of a bazaar and all events, no matter how posh, take on the unmistakable air of a mela. Central to a mela is both the energetic crush of the crowd as well as the diversity of experience on offer. Fun in India has been synonymous with frenzy; it is only when the individual is able to immerse herself in the collective and become one with the crowd that the true satisfaction of being somewhere is extracted. The crowd in India does not threaten but comforts; we seek crowded hill stations and bustling bazaars and tend to distrust places that are too clean, quiet or lonely and offer experiences of only a singular note.

The idea of being a spectator too has always been an important part of life. Whether it was the act of standing by a window and watching the world do its business or sitting on the front patio for hours, absorbing the energy of other people’s activities, an entire generation grew up spending a large time passively watching other people.Seeing was doing; for otherwise there was not much to do.

What we are seeing today is something new. The spectator of today is no longer merely a passive watcher, a poor cousin of the doer, relegated to the sidelines. He is in many ways an equal performer, a sweat-drenched participant in the act of enacting a crowd. Becoming an audience is now a task of considerable effort, it involves physical exertion and emotional commitment, even if the emotion involved has exercises the lungs more than the heart. One can imagine the spectator at a concert or an IPL game coming back as tired as the performers themselves, drained by the energy expended on the act of watching other people do things.

The new spectatorship creates an illusion of agency on part of the individual watcher. The crowd performs like a single organism, making every individual believe that he somehow leads rather than follows the crowd. The sense is of having a master switch, of being able to infect the event with his excitement. The idea of the active spectator, one who prepares himself for the tasking of watching, and develops a set of skills over a period of time does not necessarily involve being interested in the activity being followed. To the uninformed eye, the IPL spectator, for instance would appear to be a committed fan, giving his all to the team that he supports. In reality, the intensity of excitement is self-limiting; the moment the event ends, the passion evaporates without any visible residue. Which is why it is so difficult to sell team merchandise outside the game, and so easy to sell it inside the stadium.

The codes of spectatorship are at work even when one is not physically present at the event. Significant events get screened at restaurants and pubs, where formals rituals of watching are enthusiastically enacted. A crowd is contrived, a large screen attempts to simulate the scale of the experience and alcohol provides incentive to drop one’s inhibitions. In some ways, media experiences tend to simulate live experiences while live experiences are played out with intense awareness of the media gaze. The energy generated at venues is in part performed for the benefit of the all seeing camera eye, whether visible or not.

Given the important of visual experiences, an event today is not a natural occurrence, but a deliberate enterprise that orchestrates participation and a particular kind of response. The urge to ‘make’ an event out of everything, to enshrine ideas of all kinds into a hyperkinetic form of activity can be seen in other areas too. A film release today is two separate events, one is the film and the other is the promotional package that precedes the film. In one sense, a film is released twice, for the events leading up to the release are sometimes more memorable than the film itself which can die ingloriously in a single weekend. Similarly when products are launched, or even when protests are organised, the need to create a place where things happen visibly is deemed to be increasingly important. The Anna Hazare movement lost steam when an event failed to materialise; months of effort disappeared in an instant because of the visibility of the embarrassment.

The advent of interactive and social media has considerably enhanced the practice of spectatorship. The idea of ‘not merely watching’ now takes on a more tangible form; one can text messages and leak non-stop reactions on twitter even as the event is unfolding. Social media provides a second order of spectatorship; we can watch other people watching and respond to their response. On social media sites, we are simultaneously voyeurs and supplicants; offering ourselves up for ceaseless visual scrutiny. By virtue of being embedded in real time, social media becomes a parallel event, where spectators are alive and energetic, spewing out reactions and contributing to the overall spectacle. Social media allows ownership of the event to pass from the performers to the spectators more visibly; it becomes more apparent that the spectacle is being enacted for the sole benefit of the watchers. It is instructive to think of the pressure on Sachin Tendulkar to get his hundredth century; the milestone was seen as a responsibility that needed to be discharged rather than an achievement to be personally savoured.

Increasingly, as the symbolic takes centre stage, sight replaces touch as the primary experience. The world, as WJT Mitchell puts it is taking a ‘pictorial turn’, where the visual experience defines our sense of who we are. Sight allows us to consume things selectively from a distance, while giving us a sense of direct participation. We are always ‘in the picture’ when we are able to see something, and are thus able to feel a presumptive sense of ownership without putting anything at risk. The act of seeing, becomes a richer, almost erotically charged experience- witness the interest in seeing celebrities or tigers, shooting everything once is a part of, sharing one’s visual experiences on social media sites, being seen at places that are ‘happening’ with people who matter and posing all one’s life for an invisible camera. Implicitly it would seem that we are spectators first and actors thereafter, often acting so that we can be seen.

TOI Crest 12 May 2012

          

Growing up in middle class India, soda was an occasional treat. Tired of the exquisite cool balance of nimbu pani, and denied the exotic charms of orange squash (only for important guests), every now and then we strayed into the wanton arms of nimbu soda. Made from a simple concoction of lime, some chaat masala and bante-wala soda (the bottle with the marble stuck inside it), the drink delivered a surprisingly strong kick. Soda activated what was hitherto docile and sweet into something wild and feral. It allowed us to douse our throats with something searingly potent, wipe our slightly masala encrusted lips with the back of our hands and go aaaahh with a sense relief too deeply located to be identified with any part of the body. The pleasure was experienced twice over- as the liquid burned a hole down our chests and as the gas effervesced its way out.

For soda was a permissible foray into hot-bloodedness, something we were allowed to indulge in, notwithstanding its ability to re-order the civilised molecular equilibrium of stability ever so temporarily. It made us feel alive as it hit the right spots and shook us out of the torpor induced by a relentless summer that baked us into slowness. It was not merely refreshing, it was deeply energising in its own unsettling way. It multiplied the bite of the lemon in an exponential manner till it became something that corroded the throat as it went down. A nimbu-soda has all the finesse of a home-made bomb, with crude, readily available and altogether ordinary ingredients combining chemically to produce devastating effect. It disappeared even as it burned its way down leaving us the legacy of a burp or two. In many ways, we didn’t drink the soda; it was the soda that consumed us. The lime gave it bite, a hint of cruelty that makes things interesting while the masala made it pleasurably Indian. In some ways, the masala spoke to the Indian penchant for turning all foods into a form of chaat.

Soda drew its power from two different sources. The first was its form, its ability to effervesce with latent potency. Soda is all intent, with very little content, a powerful medium without a coherent message. The seemingly innocuous water-like appearance hides an explosive wildness that gets unleashed when the bottle is opened. The act of opening a bottle of soda is akin to setting free a genie seething in claustrophobic anger, only to awaken avid with intent. Soda represents the unanticipated belligerence of the ordinary; the possession of the otherwise placid water by a fit of red-eyed road rage. The combination of sleepy passivity in appearance and snarling energy in action allowed soda to be legitimate while providing a measure of wildness to its drinkers.

The other source of its power perhaps lay in its association with alcohol. The darkness associated with alcohol rubbed off on its accomplice and soda got imbued with some of the aura of sinfulness that inevitably surrounded ‘hard drinks’. Soda amplified with the dark power of whisky, it allowed alcohol to showcase its potency in a vividly visual way. When we drank soda we were allowed to consume sin from a detached but visible distance. Vice sparkled in a whisky and soda, and the ice added mystery.

A whisky and soda simmered with masculine portent, with the soda allowing the whisky to slide out of the brooding layers of its murky liquidness and attach itself to the our insides, alive, brandishing purpose. As a delivery vehicle for alcohol, it was both respectful and impatient, trading off its complexity for a quicker, more palpable hit. Soda made the whiskey fire crackle, both in the glass and in the stomach.

The key to the allure of most soft drinks today lies in part at least to the fizzy power of soda. Without aeration, beverages turn stately and offer nutrition and other forms of maternally approved goodness. Motorcycle madness is replaced by scooter pragmatism, vitamins are clocked, minerals are imputed, and much measured sipping takes place. The pour down the throat is outlawed, and bright colours are needed to lure us into the docile arms of juices and shakes, all pretty with purpose.

In an India that is no longer as passive as it was, and which finds stimulation in many other ways, soda by itself may not serve the purpose it once did, but it is an intrinsic part of our everyday life. Step out of any cocooned metropolis, and soda is everywhere. Nothing neutralises the summer as well as it does and nothing produces energy without discernible content as dramatically as it does. It is instructive that in the meantime, our attitudes towards alcohol have also undergone a sea change. Alcohol is no longer the grim escape it once was; it is instead an enabler of good times. Soda today perhaps draws its meaning not so much from its bottled power but the spirit of restless and directionless energy that it adds to our life.

          

This seems to tie in with the beatific halo of commercialism that seems to hang over the serene countenance of religion these days. Television channels are full of products claiming to be divine ‘yantras’ that offer a variety of precise interventions in our lives, and come with the hallowed testimony of several has-been film and television stars. And the commercial angle does not stop at hawking products that matter-of-factly drain out the milk of human blindness. Over the last couple of years, some Hindi news channel have brought to us several exposes involving many religious gurus, the latest one being the reports on Nirmal Baba. In most of these, the picture painted of the leaders in question is deeply unspiritual, with allegations ranging from fraudulently exploiting religious sentiment for personal material gain, enabling money laundering to sexual misconduct. The themes of material exploitation, sexually predatory behaviour and narrow minded chauvinism resulting in hate crimes of all hues, ranging from selective violence to acts of mass murder and terrorism recur across geography and different religions. Of course, this is hardly the whole picture when it comes to religion, but it is a sufficiently prominent aspect of it for us to take notice.

What has changed is the nature of religious practice rather than belief in religion for it continues to enjoy a pre-eminent position in the life of most people in the world. In India, the coming of economic reform and relative affluence has strengthened religion rather than weaken it, and the evidence is all around us. Television channels devoted to building the brands of individual gurus, religious festivals have become the site of legitimised consumption, and even the Janlok Pal movement needed their support to mobilise numbers. In a more everyday sense too, religious rituals continue to be an integral part of our lives, with temples being full, particularly at exam time.

It is not as if personal prayer that seeks divine blessings for one’s well being is a product of today alone, for have grown up on stories of various devotees who perform impossible feats of penance in order to win vardaans which they then use to wreak havoc on the humankind. In a more everyday sense, prayer has been an instrument of improbable hope, as human beings try to reverse the unequal relationship they have with arbitrary circumstance with a concentration of hope and a spectacle of surrender. Prayer is simultaneously a peremptory demand and a submissive entreaty, full of narcissistic magnification as well as servile diminution. Traditionally, the two parts of prayer were kept apart, at least on the surface. One was expected to surrender unquestioningly and become part of a larger collective before the right to ask for anything in return was granted. Increasingly, now the submission is put into the background by the demand; the prayer itself is contingent on results. Prayer is now a transcated vector, pointing unambiguously in the direction of desire, undeterred by its scale and improbability. One interesting site in which this shift can be seen is in the frequency and tenor of the Hindi film bhajan. The lyrics of the devotional songs have strikingly moved from being selfless paeans to a larger nameless God (Allah Tero Naam, Tu Pyaar Ka Saagar Hai, Ham ko man ki shakti dena, Tora Man Darpan kehlaye and many others) that had larger collective goals in to highly specific demands being made of individual deities in the later films. If in earlier times, the emphasis was on self-improvement and unconditional surrender, we see a more demanding relationship in evidence today. Of course, the larger reality is that the filmi bhajan is rarely seen on screens nowadays; it is not that easy to shoot it on a beach against the backdrop of slithering thighs. Even in everyday life, particularly in the north, the filmi bhajan one hears at the local jagran is likely to be set to the tune of Munni Badnaam Hui rather than a more traditional melody. The idea that the religious intent expressed loosely makes its content irrelevant seems to be the dominant one on display. The gap between professed religiosity and practised humanity seems to be growing wider.

As a result, the social utility of religion has diminished significantly. Religion is seen instead as a personal technology of progress that has all the trappings of a good deal, a remote control that can be pointed anywhere at any time. The power of religion to unite diverse groups under its umbrella and to make human beings rise above themselves has been an important aspect of religious practice. Today, we rarely see concerted efforts to mobilise groups around larger social causes without the effort descending into some sort of commercial enterprise. The business of religion is lucrative in part because what is being sought from religion is changing. We want our gods in our pocket, ready to be brandished whenever opportunity strikes.

          

It is increasingly difficulty to escape labels. One is either a liberal or not, and along with that description comes a whole set of readymade beliefs. The very act of being able to slot yourself in these neat categories, brings along with an ability to exude certainty from every pore about holding some pre-fabricated positions on some favourite subjects. When a question is framed in terms of these labels, the answers tend to be predictable. When we ask whether the liberal space is growing in India, the truth is that we already know what the answers are likely to be. The optimistic liberal will agree enthusiastically and hunt down data and anecdotal evidence that supports the case while the pessimist will bemoan all that is wrong with everybody else. Likewise the conservative will, launch into a well-rehearsed rant about pseudo-liberals and their pretensions. Any argument becomes less an exercise in meaningful debate and more about scoring points and using hoary gambits.

A meaningful examination is possible only when we step away from the coded meaning of these labels and ask more fundamental questions. The experience of liberalism has goes beyond its limited meaning of holding a certain set of views on certain subjects- it involves the ability to lead one’s life with a greater sense of control over it, the desire to accept and be tolerant of other perspectives and the willingness to factor in larger human needs in the choices one makes as an individual. Viewed from this perspective, the question of liberalism and conservatism actually breaks down into questions of continuity and change, open-mindedness and reflexive thought and independence as against a desire to belong to a pre-formed school of thought.

For the Indian urban middle class, the sense of control over one’s life has by and large increased substantially. Traditional authority structures have diminished in power, leaving more room for the individual. The possibility of social and economic mobility is higher than ever before, leading to a sense of opportunity. In an everyday sense, we see a levelling out of some social differences as the emerging class enters the economic and social mainstream. The idea of having romantic relationships before marriage is becoming more acceptable and socially legitimate and the ability of women to lead their lives with a relatively higher degree of control is increasingly visible. We can see these changes find reflection in our popular culture which displays dramatically lower levels of repression and is open to fresh characterisations.

So what of the rising tide of moral policing and chauvinism that we seem to see all around us? What about the regional chauvinism in Mumbai, ultra-nationalistic gestures that hold sport and cinema hostage, right-wing cultural conservatism that sees incidents like the attack on girls in pubs in Mangalore- the list is depressingly long. Add to that the return to a particularly pernicious form of intolerance shown by the Khap Panchayats and it seems likelier that we are returning to a more primitive form of conservatism.

While it is undeniable that we have seen a spurt in such incidents in the recent past, two things need to be kept in mind. A lot of these extremely talked-about incidents were of a highly symbolic nature that altered very little on the ground. Women across India do not feel hesitant about going to the pubs nor is there a stream of North Indians in Mumbai who are packing up and going back home. The presence of an overbearing controversy-hungry media has created a huge market for symbolic unrest. The antipathy towards moral policing has ironically created a profitable market for staged stunts that ensure quick national notoriety at very little actual cost. Raj Thackeray has understood how to play this game masterfully.

Also, even when these actions touch a genuine chord among people, chances are that these are marginal reactions to the larger mainstream change that is overtaking those who want to hang on to older ways. Threatened by the prospect of being deluged by forces of change, the sentinels of the past react with excessive aggression; in their anger lies not a sign of things of come but of things that are passing into the past. The Khap Panchayat is a classic case in point; the violence is a study in fear rather an exercise of power and needs to be read as such.

Of course, there is a rise in conservative sentiment and ironically, this has nothing to do with the past. If in the earlier days, we held on to our way of life for it was the only thing we had which we could call our own, today the desire is to protect our new found status as consumers. The tendency of live in a self-contained enclave with an exaggerated regard for oneself is visible in a significant section of empowered India. It is this consuming class that reacts with ultra-nationalistic anger and regards all those opposed to the things it holds dear with contempt. This new conservatism with its accompanying signs is an assertive form of revivalism, conflating a mythic sense of nostalgia with notions of patriotism thereby conferring a sense of righteousness and legitimacy on its words and actions. Greater affluence has only made this group more vocal. The internet is awash with this new religion, which operates as a dedicated group and carpet-bombs its view on all available fora.

The Indian refusal to choose between things is in evidence here too. What we are seeing the simultaneously the rise of greater liberalism accompanied with a surge in conservatism. On the one hand, modern technology does not only create newer platforms of shared understanding but is enabling revivalism as well and on the other the liberal shows an inability to move beyond labels that have become ossified with time. . The middle class is as liberal with tradition as it is conservative with modernity. Or perhaps it is the liberal who hangs on to tradition while it is the conservative who using modernity.

Democratic World- April 2012

          

It is also true that the biggest success of democracy in India has been its representative character. In the post-Mandal world, this ability has grown very significantly, and elections today do genuinely throw up leaders that come from all strata of society, with the hitherto backward classes coming into their political own. The power of the traditional elites has been blunted, and movements like the anti-corruption crusade are in part a reaction of this loss of pre-eminence. The sense of being politically diminished, and electorally insignificant, has given an edge to the fulminations of the middle class, and has spilled over into the streets in a manner that is unprecedented. The middle class feels unrepresented, and thus is increasingly losing faith in the political system as a whole. The anti-corruption flag hides, not too successfully, a larger contempt for politics and politicians, and yearns for solutions that lie outside the fabric of the polity.

It is worth asking if democracy in India is truly representative. The only yardstick for representativeness cannot be that people of all classes find themselves in power. It cannot only be about who gets elected and how representative they are of the entire population, but must necessarily be about how they represent their constituencies and what actions do they take on behalf of their constituents. It is striking that during the entire anti-corruption movement, the protestors did not once turn to their representatives, nor did the legislators in question, MPS & MLAS from the larger cities, feel remotely obliged to speak for their constituents. It is as if both parties instinctively understood that their elected representatives had no role to play. The role of the legislators is to act the part, to don the trappings of power, to grace billboards that greet us on festivals, and to agitate for lal battis on their cars. The one-to-ne correspondence between a local representative and his or her constituent does not exist in a meaningful sense.

That is not to say that the legislators have no interest at all in the electorate, but the form in which it manifests itself most commonly is by acts of patronage. Elected representatives seek to build an electoral base, bloc of some kind that can be persuaded to vote for them en masse in exchange of acts of subsidy or preference or in the name of identity. The other acts of representation involve selectively helping some constituents ‘get their wok done’- findings ways of working through and around the local bureaucracy, often greased by some reciprocal consideration. The idea of direct representation, of actually standing for a cause held dear by the constituents and working towards institutional action in its support is much rarer to come across.

In a larger sense, the indiscriminate use of party whips means hat individual representatives have little room to express themselves legislatively, and this severely compromises their ability to pick up specific issues and stand up for them. The devaluation of the individual legislator, who is often treated as being part of a nameless herd, and needs constant shepherding, goading, instruction and protection, restricts his or her role quite dramatically, and compromises the ability to genuinely represent the voter. Over a period of time, the system has adjusted in a way that for most elected representatives, this is not really experienced as a problem at all and is accepted as a matter of fact.

What has made the Anna Hazare movement so significant, despite all its shortcomings, is the fact it focuses attention on concrete legislative action. It is seeking not a grant or subsidy, but a mechanism that provides an incentive for the system to work as intended. the current political system has become a self-perpetuating and self-contained system, which has become increasingly impenetrable to outside intervention. The existing pillars of democracy too have been co-opted to a significant degree, including the bureaucracy, media and even the elements of the lower judiciary. It is difficult to find impetus for change to come from within, since the system has evolved around a distorted intent- that of coming and staying in power rather than providing governance. The successful separation of governance and electability has ensured that politicians do not need to perform acts of representation in order to get elected. The argument that Parliament, by virtue of its representative character is already playing the role that the Lok Pal bill suggests it play, does not stand up to scrutiny, given the nature of the representation being provided so far.

It was important for our democracy to have become more representative in character. It is now time for it convert the idea of representativeness into a more active ideal, one in which the political system feels pressure to perform; a causal link between performance and electability needs to be etched out in stronger terms. Measures like the Lok Pal bill are never going to be solutions by themselves; if the system does not change in a fundamental way, this mechanism too is likely to get co-opted. The onus is on the voters to send clearer messages. Only then can we hope for change that is sustainable.

Democratic World  – 31 December 2011

          

And yet, as evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker argues in his latest book, the world is in all probability a better place than it has ever been in its considerable history. Fewer people die on account of violence, we live longer and healthier lives and technology has made our everyday lives much easier. This should have been a time of relative tranquillity, as more once-poor countries start experiencing the advantages of affluence, and feel better about themselves. Instead what we see is this global wave of anger, seemingly because of different local reasons, but begging the question as to whether there is a deeper, more universal force at play, something that explains the apparent co-incidence of so many parts of the world boiling over with anger at the same time.

The uprisings in the Middle East seem on the face of it, to offer relatively easier explanations. After decades of living under the rule of tyrants, the young generation, with its imagination fired by ideas of freedom, democracy and its ability for self-expression vastly enhanced by the digital revolution, takes to the street and fights valiantly for change. The problem of course is that however compelling this narrative, it is a vast oversimplification. It might be relatively clear what the protestors are fighting against, but it is far from clear as to what exactly they are fighting for. It is a distinct possibility that the current regimes are replaced not by progressive, democratic ones but by those rooted in some version of Islamist theocracies.

What we are seeing today is the dismantling of most of the founding assumptions of an earlier era. What were yesterdays certitudes are increasingly becomes today’s negotiables; and the process of this negotiation is often an extremely untidy one. Yesterday’s institutions are under attack as are the big ideas that propelled these- globalisation, the power of the market, the permanence of affluence, the influence exerted by military power, the ideal of muti-culturalism and the unquestioned virtues of democracy are no longer the self-assured formulations they once were.

The problems of the affluent nations have to do with the anxiety about having dealt themselves out of reckoning in the emerging world order. The insulation provided by their economic superiority does not seem as strong as it once did. The financial crisis of 2008 made it clear that people who controlled money in the world were manufacturing money without any raw material; they were conjuring up something out of nothing. Wealth was being created by means of convention; an implicit agreement between the big boys of what the rules were without any reference to any external consideration. The collapse, far from bringing about any reform, actually made things worse as the big institutions were bailed out and the financial system remained pretty much what it was. At a more fundamental level, the consequences of creating very large debt burdens are coming home to roost. The irrationality of the financial system, which by implicit mutual consent was never really focussed on, is now becoming evident, and even now the will to do something about it seems absent. The hollowness of the idea that one can live beyond one’s means on an on-going basis, borrowing endlessly from tomorrow has been exposed. There is a feeling that the world is no longer under its control; as economic power shifts and military power does not guarantee desired outcomes.

The misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have forcefully underlined the limits to which military power can be translated into influence. If anything, military power seems to exert a magnetic pull that draws the stronger countries inexorably into messy conflicts from which extrication becomes a real problem. Influence, even when it exists, as in Iraq or Pakistan, does not automatically translate into any meaningful long-term advantage; on the contrary it seems more likely to sow seeds of mistrust and suspicion. The fact that it took a decade to hunt down America’s most wanted terrorist, and it turned out that he was ensconced virtually in the lap of the Pakistani army underlines the absurdity of the American quest. War as a means of conquest has been increasingly hollowed out and has the strange ability to diminish the apparent victors.

And then of course, is the challenge posed by the emerging economies, which results in the more immediate and politically pressing issue of the loss of jobs. After decades of lecturing to the rest of the world about the virtues of free trade without restrictions, the developed world is quick to yelp when it is its turn to pay a price for globalisation. The volatility of the job market creates an unsettling air of uncertainty that makes individual futures seem permanently wobbly. One result of this development is the rising resentment against immigrants and the desire to reclaim the advantages of affluence without having to share them with those who are seen to partake of them without due legitimacy. Ideas of multiculturalism are rapidly seeing mainstream challenge, and combined with the anxiety produced by terrorism, we are seeing more countries take entrenched positions against immigration, both in terms of allowing entry as well as in the tolerance of their cultures.

The question of the environment and the sense that human progress might have dramatic consequences for the world as a whole makes the prospect of the explosion in the economies of the emerging countries one that is fraught with risks. Having caused a bulk of the problem in the first place, the West is under pressure to preach restraint to those that are seeing affluence for the first time. Overall, the combination of low economic growth in their own countries and the sense of foreboding with which progress is viewed in other countries makes for a simmering anger at having been left with few options. The coping mechanisms may vary from anger at the financial establishment, protests against big governments or disgust at the way in which environmental treaties are held hostage to selfish political considerations, but the sense that all is not quite well and that things are likely to get worse is unmistakable.

If the problems of the developed world have to do with the prospect of losing what it once had, the anxieties of the rest of the world are about finding their own paths. Here too the certitudes of the past are up for negotiation and answers are as elusive. If for some the stability provided by long running tyrannical regimes is under question, for others like India, it is the gap between what was promised by the ideals it was founded on and the reality of what those have delivered. Increasingly, democracy seems like an idea that loses much of its force in translation. Questions of poverty and inequality rub shoulders with the need for lives founded on material acquisitions as aspirations become more democratic and there is a greater sense of impatient entitlement to a better life for oneself. The pressure of being an individual is a particularly difficult one to deal with. The idea of freedom was a powerful driver of an earlier age, as we strove to find our individual selves and ‘become who we were’.

In a world that is more inter-connected than it has ever been, it takes very little for someone’s problem to become everyone’s problem. Digital rage works in different ways than its analog counterpart. The most significant difference lies in the ability of social media to store anger and to give it visible moving form. If earlier, anger resided in the cracks between people, events and institutions and needed a significant trigger to find tentative expression, social media makes anger a public installation. The mood of the people ceases to become an abstraction; the ticker tape of resentment is available for observation and participation in every home and on every phone. The cost of entry into protest is very low and the sense of palpable contribution to a movement extremely high. Digital rage reduces risk and increases participation; it explodes quickly and subsides with alacrity. It does not depend on leaders for one role of leaders is to visibly gather rage and find a way to channelize it.

Under all the various kinds of anger on display today, it is as if the world looks forward to nothing any more. Progress has become a succession of gadgets, rather than the development of ideas about the world we live in. The big ideas of the earlier centuries have all been compromised by acts of incomplete digestion. We know the limits of everything, and have learnt the words of praise and criticism by heart. The grand promises of an earlier era have not been kept; affluence has not brought us lasting happiness and democracy has never really translated into a sense of personal freedom. The market has created avenues to affluence that are increasingly detached from anything real; causality itself is the biggest casualty as analysis seems possible only in retrospect. What we see is reason in reverse; things never happen because of a reason in the financial world; they happened because of a reason applied a posteriori.

Regardless of what our immediate context might be, we live with a shared sense of incomprehension- at our rulers and what makes them tick, at the mechanics of the process by which money is made in the world today, by the responsibility that has been thrust on individual shoulders to make something of our life, at the process by which meaning is produced, consumed and re-circulated in the world today. The absence of a stable source of meaning lies at the heart of the current dilemma; we know what we don’t want but do not really know what we do. What we used to want seems less absolute in its desirability today and nothing has taken its place. The anger we see today is nameless and homeless; it seems to live in between things.

Governance Now January 16-31, 2012

          

It isn’t that easy to find a common motivation that underlies all of these actions. In the case of parliamentarians it is a form of revenge that the political class as a whole is bent on extracting from those with the temerity to challenge their power, while in the case of Rushdie it is the desperate attempt by the ruling party to garner some votes. Mamata Banerjee’s actions are part of her paranoia about being the victim of all conspiracies ever conceived of in the history of the world. The Kudankulam action is an attempt to browbeat protestors and send a message to NGOs about the state’s keenness to act against them while the action in response to protests about Sri Aurobindo serves no visible political or electoral purpose but is part of a more general willingness to respond to acts of symbolic outrage with exaggerated alacrity and vehemence.

The usual characterisation that of labelling these actions as part of an effort to stifle dissent needs to be re-examined for the trouble with the choice of these particular words is that it locates these actions in a framework of organised protest. Not all the actions that are being acted against can be classified as dissent; Peter Heehs is not engaged in an act of self-conscious protest nor is Prof Ambikesh Mahapatra part of any organised form of dissent. The discomfort seems to be with anyone ‘troublesome’ who serves no instrumental purpose, and can be dispensed with without any material cost. Banning books, denying visas, passing censure motions, opening up tax cases selectively, these are all simple acts of privilege that are available to those wielding power. The instrument of choice is fear, and the message is for the so-called trouble makers to exercise a form of self-censorship and voluntarily eschew opinions that might attract the punitive actions of the state.

What is interesting is that in most of these cases, the protests have made the original infraction widely known and furiously re-circulated. Very few would, in ordinary circumstances, have read Heehs’ scholarly account of Sri Aurbindo, the offending cartoon would have died a routine death in a day’s time, Arvind Kejriwal’s utterances would be lost in a cacophony of similar abuse used everyday by millions and Salman Rushdie’s much feared speech has in fact come and gone without causing upheavals of a tectonic nature.

The real issue however seems to be one of power rather than the contentiousness of the content. Which is why the details of the offense and whether there are at all any grounds for taking offense in the first place do not matter; the only thing that matters is that offense has been taken and once that happens, no clarifications are possible. Nobody reads what is deemed offensive; its offensiveness becomes an inviolable and irreversible fact. The irrelevance of context or explanations have become a striking feature of such debates; it matters little if Ramanujan’s reading of the many Ramayanas is based on scholarly fact or if Heehs is actually writing a nuanced tribute to Sri Aurobindo.

The other force at work is media. In an increasingly mediatised world, the symbolic appears to be more tangible and real than any reality. For the symbol is made for television; it compresses reality into a resonant sign that is readily accessible to all. Many of the controversies that have erupted in the last few years have to do with symbolic actions- who tweeted what, who watched watch in the assembly, who wrote what, who painted what and who said what. What media does is also to make us lose sense of scale; it imbues everything with equal significance by covering it with a uniformly exaggerated sense of outrage. All provocations seem to carry the same weight, regardless of whether they are minor acts of individual expression or major shows of protest.

The state, under constant and indiscriminate attack for things symbolic and substantive, has increasingly chosen to mirror this lack of discrimination and react uniformly across the board. There is of course a marked asymmetry that exists between the media and the state when it comes to the nature of responses that are at its disposal; media can rave rant and ask questions in a crescendo of self-righteous indignation while the state can ban, punish and arrest. In the bargain, the state loses what it never had- media credibility and what it gains is the support of some constituency or the other and a smug sense of satisfaction at its own power. When pushed hard enough, the state reverts to flexing its muscle with deliberate disproportion for that is its ultimate revenge. Conceptually, the actions of the state are closer to terrorism than revenge, for what it is doing is to strike fear in the hearts of those not involved by its arbitrary choice of targets and the disproportionate nature of its punitive action. And as for the media, by draining itself of outrage on a daily basis, it creates immunity against itself.

          

Why then are lullabies almost always so sad? Why do lullabies tremble with some deep indefinable sense of liquid melancholy? Why do they ache with a nameless yearning for things lost and things that cannot be found?

Think of any lullaby and you will be struck by the tinge of sweet sadness that accompanies it. From the world of Hindi cinema, think of a ‘nanhi kali sone chali’, ‘dheere se aaja re ankhiyan mein’, mere ghar aayi ek nanhi pari or Shubha Mudgal’s So Ja and you will observe this recurring pattern. Often the words too, like in the case of the all-time favourite Rock-a-bye-baby are less than soothing. Across cultures, the lullaby carries traces of sorrow, an imprint of some final and inconsolable incompleteness. The purpose of the lullaby is anything but sad. The baby needs soothing and absolute protection from all sources of fear. The lullaby imitates the rocking motion of the cradle with simple repetitive phrases and a basic melody. But unlike the nursery rhyme where the melody produces little emotional effect, the lullaby infuses everyone listening with a powerful sense of longing. Why is this so universally true?

In some ways perhaps, the musical structure of lullabies in their desire to soothe, come close to those of dirges. The slowness and the tenderness of the tune makes it tinged with an unmistakable air of melancholia. In that sense, it could be argued that sadness is not really intrinsic to the lullaby but merely a musical by-product. The words are not important; just as martial tunes evoke parades and religious songs generate a sense of immersive piety, so do lullabies evoke a sense of quietitude that overlaps with sadness. The musical structure is responsible, not the words or the purpose that the song serves.

As an explanation, however, this is not satisfying enough. There is something more at work here. Perhaps, the mother uses emotion to make a deeper connection with the baby; sadness deepens the bond between mother and child and helps communicate her feelings better. Or perhaps, the lullaby becomes a channel for the mother’s own sense of incompleteness. Often lullabies have words that refer to a husband who is far away or of distance between mother and child and sometimes even about death.The idea that sleep is a form of little death is a common enough one. The lullaby might be our way of playing with the idea of death. There is a sense of separation and the baby’s ‘going away to distant lands’ that evokes a feeling of deep sadness that is all the more powerful because it is not real. It is a rehearsal of sadness that must eventually be ours. It allows us a foretaste of tragedy even as we celebrate the birth of the newborn.

But perhaps the strongest feeling evoked by lullabies is that of nostalgia. We yearn for something pure, tender and innocent when we listen to a lilting lullaby. We long for reaching a part of us we never can. It is this realization that perhaps is at the heart of a lullaby’s ineffable sadness. Perhaps the nostalgia we feel is the nostalgia for the perfection of the womb. The mother gently pines for that sense of intact completeness when she sings melancholically for her little one. As listeners we long to be complete again but know that we cannot. The lullaby is nothing but the song of the baby being cast adrift ever so slowly on the painfully solitary journey called life. As adults when we hear this song, we are reminded of what we have lost and what we can never hope to regain. All of our lives we are driven to pursue the idea of individuality, of becoming someone unique; shining in our special separateness. The paradise of completeness has been lost to a quest for individualness; oneness has given way to being alone, and there is no going back. The lullaby draws us back, without our quite becoming aware of it, to the ideal we might truly desire, one where we are never singular, never unique, never incomplete.

The lullaby is a bridge to the infinity of longing, an ode to the illusion of belonging. The lullaby tells us that what is most beautiful and what makes us feel the purest emotions is also the most transient. We see the magic of life only as it disappears slowly from our eyes. The lullaby is a tender chronicle of a life told in reverse.

          

By Deepika Bhardwaj

Wednesday,Apr 04, 2012

Almost two billions posts on Facebook every day, millions of video views on YouTube every minute and Twitter being fed with tweets every second – the world today is on social media.

And brands are where this world is. So, when it has become clear that, like it or not, brands today have to connect and engage with users on social media, the next point of discussion is what do brands need to do to become the brands of future.

Deciphering this was Santosh Desai, CEO, Future Brands as the key note speaker at the second edition of India Social Summit 2012.

Digital is democratic, collaborative, connected and simultaneous, pointed out Desai while making it very clear that the brands of the future will have to accept the fact that the power to influence a consumer has shifted from brand managers to brand users. The centralised grip of power structures that made brands have a guarded conversation with the user needs to be decentralised. Brands need to take cognisance that consumers today have their own say and they will listen to only what they want to listen and not what brands want them to listen.

Taking example of river Ganga, Desai added that the brands today have to become like rivers not lakes – ever flowing, changing the course as per evolving consumers and adapting to changing needs of its users. “Brands are no more an artificial construction; consumers today want to have real-time conversation with the brands,” he said.

Being managed by a brand versus managing a brand and brand dissolution versus brand building were two other factors that he asked marketers to keep in mind to prepare for the future. “A brand has its own identity today and the future would belong to the companies who are managed by a brand rather than managing the brand. What needs to be done to maintain the brand story and take the brand forward is a question marketers will have to constantly ask,” he shared.

Leaving a message for the brand managers on how they should look at investment in the digital media, Desai said, “It takes something to prepare for the future, to read the future. We are too early in this game and we will have to play it before we think about the results. To reap rewards from what is uncertain, you have to take risks. The future of this medium will be bright only if we look at it as an investment and not as a cost.”

Exchange4media.com

April 04, 2012