NOT JUST ANY OTHER SOUND IN THE ECHO CHAMBER

                Before this irksome and ultra-technical title of my maiden blog raises a few eyebrows among the reverend readers, I would like you not to judge a book by its cover. For it is about everything but the mechanical waves of sound!

                Literary works and political texts are essentially a response to the issues and theories of its time. To what extent does this blog classify as a political text (or a literary work) is highly contentious, but Hail-Inquilab is certainly a response and owes its ontology to the umpteen unwanted events that the year 2012 held in its quiver. To name a few among the scores of reasons that triggered India’s conscience and that of politics- free speech was gagged, human rights perished, constitutional provisions were reduced to parchment promises, the brittle power sector came to ‘light’ following the worst ‘blackout’, democratic values were negated, women were assaulted and raped in all possible gruesome ways.

                Each of these unfortunate episodes that blotted last year’s calendar had, undoubtedly, Its own set of causes but if approached in a holistic manner, two arguments can explain what went wrong:-

•         With respect to political decisions, the government adopted a ‘perfectionist tendency’ (preceded by parentalism) more often than not. Even when it resorted to cooperation theory for bringing reforms, there was crude and instrumental use of popular discontent that made the government diminish the thin line of difference between urgent and important. From economic reform to foreign policy, from mining to manufacturing policy, from power plants to tax laws, the government was undermined from within- a classic political equivalent of some deadly auto immune disease!
•          With respect to political actions, the government made suicidal blunders by deploying a mix of demagoguery, symbolism, threat-perception and force when it should have addressed people’s concerns and expectations by choosing the weapon of dialogue (viz. persuasion, negotiation, etc.). The obsession with politics remained confined to the surface drama of the ebb unconnected to the deep underlying challenges. Above all, obfuscation from leaders gave the citizens more haze to sort through. They should have understood what Dov Seidman once said, “Nothing inspires people more than the truth”.

These problems, in turn, have led to, first of all - a heightened level of legitimacy crisis. This scenario, however, has implicit in it the danger of being received at face value which can yield misleading conclusions. A situation of lack of faith need not always translate into a demand for systemic change. People have faith in the political system but not on those who are at the helm of it. Perhaps, they are aware of the paradox of politics (as given by Yogendra Yadav) that the pursuit of goodness draws you to politics, at the same time immersion in politics has a built in drag away from goodness. The young,  aware India knows that the aim of politics is regulating competition and resolving conflicts and not trivializing issues which politicians today end up doing. No wonder, people have learnt to distance themselves from blatant anti-politics and institution-bashing.

                These self-destructive steps have ensured the Congress party’s rout in most elections lately but that is not the issue. Ours is a democracy, voters have choices and someone or the other will be elected to rule us. The damage they did was to India, its pride, to the national mood and the self-esteem of its citizens. Politics could have been successful, but today its shaking on the surface waiting for the social, economic and ethical bearings to set right. The sense of dejection is not because of India’s large failure, it is because there seems to be lack of conduit for mobilizing common sense decisions that will affect us more than the grand administrative proclamations.

Politics is not just about the authoritative allocation of values and scarce resources it is also about agitating for their arbitrary allocation. And it is precisely this form of politics that I aim to practice through my blog. Protest is the language of politics and a very important one at that. The question of winning or losing is unimportant. In addition to this, this is my attempt to engage myself in theorizing politics with you. A questioning tendency is the basic specie of political theory. It starts with observation of political events and includes explaining them, their disciplined investigation, bringing about generality in the explanations offered, evaluating them and finally contemplating for change (in this specific order). Though political theory cannot bring about change on its own it shows the path for bringing change.

                But the interesting question is this: how to go about bringing a change? Times are such that anyone with a cellphone today is a paparazzi, anyone with a twitter account is a reporter. ‘Popularism’, undoubtedly, is the uber-ideology of the day. Against all the injustices, we have repeatedly rolled our digital sleeves, gnashed our fingers on the keyboard and shouted in political solidarity to stop it. It definitely holds a promise for how things will change for better but it’s time that we understand, outlets for emotions is not all that we need, we need platforms for action. Shrouding ourselves in that echo chamber by being just another angry response won’t help.

                Let’s make sure that the promise of change that the digital social network offers does not die. Let’s not just be any other sound in the echo chamber.

HAIL INQUILAB