In this context, Jeremy Patashnik, student of EC 10 wrote his “In Defense of EC 10.” Patashnik insisted that the basis for the walkout was ill founded. He said that the protestors had completely missed the point of Economics –that it addresses positive rather than normative questions. It is not about “Should there be a minimum wage?” for example but about “What happens when there is a minimum wage?” In that way, Economics is a science. Patashnik however, forgets that it is not the positiveness or the normativity of the questions which is at issue but the choice of questions in the first place. For instance, we ask ‘what happens when there are minimum wage regulations’ and arrive at the conclusion that unemployment can be solved by means of ‘labour market flexibility’. We forget that falling wages may actually worsen cyclical unemployment as spending goes down. Since workers do not accumulate capital, they have a higher propensity to consume and if they are deprived of purchasing power, they stop spending which has further feedback effects on output and employment. This is the Keynesianism which the neoclassical synthesis forgets.

Having sticky prices (like the minimum wage) is in fact the very basis of capitalism. It allows for inelastic price expectations. In case of elastic price expectations, if prices rise, one expects them to rise further and if they fall, people expect them to fall further. There is no peg for prices to be centred on. Therefore, when prices fall, people expect them to fall even more and consume less which is why output doesn’t go up on its own in case of a crisis. It requires government intervention to push it up. It is ofcourse, possible to have a crisis even in case of inelastic price expectations but we will not go into that here.

Another scary thing- and this I recall from Mankiw’s ‘Principles of Economics’ textbook which was in fact written for EC 10 and which I have also read as a part of the Delhi University undergraduate syllabus- is that cash subsidies are better than subsidies that distort prices. In other words, instead of allowing for ration shops which give out food at less than market rates, governments should simply identify the poor and give them cash. That way, the poor have a choice as to whether to purchase non food items or to consume food and thus end up with a higher level of utility. (I haven’t presented this argument very well here. Do note that it has a lovely indifference curves related, formally demonstrated proof.) Mankiw forgets that it is the identification of who is poor and who is not that is the problem. In India, beneficiaries of government schemes are identified with the help of a ‘poverty line’. Currently, the Planning Commission has fixed it as Rs. 32. By Mankiw’s cash subsidies argument, only people who earn less than Rs. 32 a day are eligible for the cash subsidy. In case, one earns Rs. 33, bad luck. Moreover, imagine surviving on Rs. 32 a day! This kind of poverty line has a very dangerous Type II error. It leaves out so many people who survive on next to nothing from attaining very minimal standards of nutrition. If food is cheaper, at least they can attain some benefit- even if they don’t reach the highest indifference curve possible. Therefore, if policy makers took their textbook Economics seriously, they would actually create more destitution. Unfortunately, our Manmohan Singh and our Montek Ahluwalia are very good students of Economics.

Crisis wise, there is also the ‘rational expectations hypothesis’. This says that suppose there is a situation of unemployment. Demand and supply have converged at less than full employment output. There is a fiscal thrust to push up output and employment. Suppliers will then see that prices are expected to rise and increase supply. In case of adaptive expectations, supply will rise slowly in response to price expectations which depend on the prices of the previous year. In case of rational expectations however, rational suppliers will already know the full employment output and the price required for demand and supply to adjust at full employment equilibrium therefore they will adjust price is such a way that there is no crisis at all. Therefore, crisis is only due to a shortfall of rationality. The Ratex guys forget that crisis happens because it is systemic. It is not due to a lack of information. It happens simply because the entire system of finance and real capital is inherently unstable. Even if people are perfectly rational, it is theoretically inevitable for crises to happen. One can’t expect that they will simply sort themselves out in the long run when people become rational.

These are only three factors that I can remember from my own undergraduate Economics courses that do not present the entire story. I’m not saying don’t teach Ratex or the argument for cash subsidies. I am simply saying that do teach alternatives to Ratex that talk of crisis as systemic, teach real life reasons why cash subsidies haven’t become popular as opposed to food subsidies, teach us the shortfalls of not having a minimum wage. Isn’t it funny that when someone says something left wing-ish, she is treated as biased and unobjective while whatever the liberal right says, even if it doesn’t present the entire story, is the epitome of objectivity?

Rajdeep Sardesai asked Brinda Karat if this defeat marks the redundancy of Left ideology and she coolly told him he was being very stupid. The capitalist crisis has shown us that bubbles are the modus operandi of growth in capitalism and that busts are systemic. Stark inequalities of income in India as in capitalist development everywhere, have reminded us that even if you put moral and ethical questions aside, trickle down doesn’t work –and what is the point of a growth that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer? The economy has grown on the backs of cheap and cheaper labour –contractualisation has ensured that 92% of the labour force gets less than the minimum wage and “hire and fire” means poor and dangerous work conditions that no one can even protest. Can Marxism be dead in times like these? Brinda Karat was right. It was not a ‘redundancy’ of its ideology that led to the CPI(M)’s defeat.

Is it bad governance? It is difficult for a Left loyalist to admit this but after thirty four years, the people wanted a change of government. They wanted efficiency. When the mainstream media talks about the inefficiency of the Left, it forgets the achievements of the West Bengal government. The index of industrial output is surprisingly very high as is the index of agricultural productivity. West Bengal is one of the few States that had taken land reform seriously. And yet, when I had travelled into the West Bengal countryside, I had noticed that towns less than four hours away from Kolkata have no electricity. The people of West Bengal wanted a change. Mamata rode this desire for change with a call for ‘poriborton’. Meanwhile, college Leftists like me snorted. A change that would put Bengal on the same neoliberal growth trajectory as any other State is hardly a ‘Revolution’. But Mamata saw that the time was right and that as the people looked hard for an alternative, she rose to the task.

The real reason for the CPI(M)’s defeat was the presence of this alternative- Mamata.

But who is this Mamata? As the results of the polls poured in, a jubilant Barkha Dutt interviewed women coloured in green gulal. Dutt emphasised the point that Mamata Bannerjee’s supporters spanned across class and gender and she was right. What her report lacked, however, was an understanding of ‘how’.

When you think about it, it has hard to put the Trinamool Congress on a political spectrum.

Does it promote the interests of big business? Mamata once made a declaration that she will make Kolkata into London and Digha into Goa (or was it Singapore?) While the Central Government is happier making bigger grants in aid to West Bengal under Mamata rather than under the CPI(M), with the fiscal responsibility Act, it is unlikely that she will be able to undertake such wide-scale beautification projects without making it easier to attract investment. So Mamata may easily be pro big business.

Is she pro working class? The Trinamool Congress runs its fair share of trade unions but on and off, Mamata has made statements about how strikes are a bad idea. The Trinamool Congress may have a difficult time inviting private investment with the Bengalis’ reputation of being lazy workers and frequent strikers. I will not be surprised if Mamata bans strikes in the near future. So is she pro working class? She has definitely got large parts of the working class on her side but it is not likely that she will take issues of labour very seriously –especially, given her ‘poriborton’ plans.

One of the key factors in Mamata’s appeal amongst the more snobbish Bengali middle class is that she has often mentioned that student political organisations should be disbanded. Students should stick to their studies instead of going around making a nuisance of themselves. This attitude is an undemocratic attitude in that it denies students the democratic right to take political positions. It is characteristic of a view of education as a machine to create professionals to serve the system rather than to create intelligent, thinking people who are not afraid to challenge the system, to ask dangerous questions and to serve as organic intellectuals of the masses.

This is why people from all classes tend to support Mamata –the snobbish middle classes see that their children will focus on studies and on building safe careers, the working classes see an alternative to the CPI(M) which may prove more efficient and works in much the same way at least as far as labour unions go, the upper classes see a chance for more business friendly policies. All in all, Mamata reminds people that she is efficient.

The biggest chunk of Trinamool rhetoric is the restoration of Bengal to its former glory –a very good way to get the proud, parochial Bengalis to stand up to support the Trinamool Congress. A little before she became CM, Mamata renamed the Tollygunj station as ‘Mahanayak Uttam Kumar’ and another station as ‘Netaji’. This was a reminder to the Bengalis of their great land. This was the ‘mati’ in the ‘ma mati manush’.

Finally, what you see most starkly is that the pro Mamata vote is mostly an anti CPI(M) vote. Mamata herself, has rabidly concentrated all her energies on bringing down the Left bastion. She had even defected from the Congress in the earlier part of her career, saying that the Congress was not serious enough about bringing down the CPI(M). As such, Mamata has no ideology of her own. Her focus is on holding up the CPI(M) cadre as the villains who stand in the path of Bengal’s glory. In fact she has even made an anti CPI(M) alliance with the CPI(Maoist) and famous Maoists have actively campaigned for the Trinamool. It is hard to see anything they could possible ally upon other than to bring the CPI(M) down.

What frightens me about the Trinamool is not the constant killing of CPI(M) cadre under the cover of dark though I fear for some who are close to my friends. It is the odd fact that the Trinamool reminds me of old history lessons on the rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany. Mussolini was a dictator and a war monger but at the end of the day, he was efficient. While he was the dictator, the trains ran on time. Mamata has given us the Durronto and it is seldom late. She is efficient, very efficient. Hitler had managed to coax all possible classes to support his electoral victory. He had focussed on restoring the past glory of the Fatherland and had identified an enemy- the Jews- as standing in the path of achieving that glory. Similarly, Mamata has focussed her energy on restoring the glory of Bengal and has identified the CPI(M) cadre as standing in the path of the restoration of Bengal’s glory. Mamata’s kristalnacht however, is not one night of breaking glass and killing. It is a concerted and slow slaughter of every CPI(M) cadre the TMC supporters can catch hold of. Mamata is in power and she intends to stay.

Theoretically, if Mamata has a political ideology, it is an ideology of Fascism. It is an opportunistic rise to power on an anti incumbency wave, based on wooing each class on the idea of a common glory and on the identification of a common enemy. Though it is not communal Fascism like in the case of the BJP and of course, the Trinamool is closer to the UPA but all the same, it is reminiscent of the story of the early Nazi party and the rise of Mussolini.

Finally, there is the personality cult. Mamata herself, is the ‘ma’ in ‘ma mati manush’. She holds herself as a mother figure, a saviour of the people in the same way as Mussolini called himself ‘Il Duce’ and Hitler became known as the ‘Fuhrer’.

One may say I am sore about the Left’s defeat and am being unnecessarily dark and ominous but this is how I understand the phenomenon of Mamata,

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” –W.B. Yeats.

The BJP is the astute, political wing of the RSS –popular for all the right reasons. (Pun intended.) It has pushed the neoliberal reforms, liberalised financial flows considerably, thrown open tax incentives to Foreign Direct and Institutional Investment and ushered in the ‘India shining’ years so much so that to the average, urban middle-upper middle class person who notices only the glittering malls and not the dark shadows of the squatter settlements underneath, India is not a Third World country at all. And if you think of the BJP out of the context of the RSS umbrella and the nefarious ABVP and Bajrang Dal elements, it is quite respectable and very easy to vote for.

To a BJP member, the BJP is far less communal than the Congress which adopts minority appeasement policies to cater to Muslim votebanks. As for the Left, the Left is simply anti national.

In contrast, the BJP is very nationalist and to most of us, brought up as we are, on a healthy dose of “Saare Jahaan Se Acha, Hindustan Hamara” and “Vande Mataram,” this is a very good thing. So when the BJP took its ‘Ekta March’ into Jammu and Kashmir, declaring “But isn’t Kashmir a part of India?” it got its due share of political mileage even though Omar Abdullah had the BJP activists detained almost immediately.

Legal eagles may explain the constitutional provisions of the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir because of the special circumstances of its annexation but this brand of nationalism that denies Kashmir its special status has been highly influential. As Siddharth Varadarajan often points out, constitutionally, Jammu and Kashmir is to have its own flag and its Chief Minister is to be called its Prime Minister. Nonetheless, Kashmir is seen as any other State and the Indian army makes full use of AFSPA to drive home this point. Clearly, if Kashmir is to be a part of India, then an ‘Ekta March’ is not enough.

Incidentally, the BJP stands up for AFSPA.

The Hindu Right brand of nationalism is also very influential in the determination of the prevailing notion of what ‘Indian’ means. A friend of mine was rather aggrieved by my lax views on chastity. She declared that her Indian values are fundamental to her. I grinned and asked her whether the Khajuraho temples are not Indian, whether the Kamasutra is not Indian and more importantly, whether the lord, Krishna was not (if he ever was) Indian. She clarified that she meant family values and I leaped on to her line of argument immediately –are notions of ‘Indian’ akin to notions of ‘family’? Clearly, in that case, the idea of what is an ‘Indian’ is deeply affected by the social relations necessary to keep capitalism in place i.e. the family. This notion of nationalism then, is a very bourgeois notion.

The bourgeois concept of what is national and what is anti national has also criminalised dissent, especially dissent against the very political economy of Indian capitalism. Gandhi was jailed by the British colonisers, Mandela by the apartheid regime but Binayak Sen has been jailed by the world’s largest democracy. This is not to say that the UPA is fascist but to say that its own brand of nationalism is also bourgeois and has led it to be extremely undemocratic in its recent use of sedition laws.

And yet, trade unions run by the Hindu Right are even more popular than those run by the Left! This is mostly because of the false feeling of deprivation on the basis of one’s majoritarian religious identity. This is also a challenge for and so far, a political failure of the Left movement.

All in all, one has to give it to the Hindu Right for theoretical consistency. It is a bourgeois brand of nationalism and no wonder, the BJP pushes reforms while Hindu groups insist on family values. It is fascist in that it sees India as the country of the Hindus and imbues in its followers a sense of deprivation associated with being Hindu, because of which it supports AFSPA and insists on a whittling of Kashmir’s autonomy. It hasn’t a conclusion out of place except that its premises are condemnable.

Isn’t it interesting how modernity has meant the use of “technologies of governance” or ways for “power” to assert itself? (Trust Foucault to put it best.) And yet, this “governmentality” need not be bad. Censuses for example, are a very effective channel for power to influence all aspects of a subject or a body and yet, one can’t condemn a census. In fact a census is a good thing. So is the UID a good thing?

Nilekani argues it is. It can be used as effective security against terrorism. Oops! And here Nilekani shuts up and changes track –Umm, through the UID we solve the problem of fake ration cards so we can ensure that the food under the PDS goes to the BPL population only. Recruiters or universities can gather information about a student candidate immediately and the problem of fake degrees can be easily dealt with and what’s more –it’s not that Nilekani or the Government are forcing the UID down our throats. The scheme is demand driven. If you want a biometric I.D, a biometric I.D you get… but only if you want one.

Two questions present themselves almost immediately.

Firstly, why did the Government change the focus of the pitch for UID from issues of security to issues of development? It clearly indicates that somehow, somewhere, the government could not hold on to their national security argument for the UID amidst cries against intrusion. Long after Foucault wrote on governmentality, Giorgio Agamben thought fit to remind us –what if we end up in a ‘state of exception’? In other words, all democracies leave a little leeway for the declaration of an emergency or a ‘state of exception’ when basic civil rights are suspended and citizens become more like inmates than citizens. They are reduced to bare life. So censuses may be a good thing but a census in Nazi Germany can be used to figure out which are the Jews and which are the Gentiles so that the Jews can be singled out and sent into a ghetto or a camp. Similarly, a UID in a state of exception may be pretty dangerous. If you have a database on everyone it is easier to locate which is a Muslim’s house (in case the BJP is in power) or which is a political dissident’s house (I’m a little worried for Left cadre in a Trinamool Bengal next year) and to concertedly kill, loot or rape whoever hides inside. In other words, these very technologies of power can become very dangerous in a state of exception and as can be seen from the 1971 experience Indian democracy is very frail.

Yes it has succeeded but it is frail.

The second question is simply the demand driven bit. If all universities and work places suddenly start demanding UIDs, it will be rare for students not to get an ID. Similarly, if ration shops start demanding a UID, you’ll have a long queue for one and what’s worse, getting a UID may be as difficult as getting a ration card so if the system for doling out UIDs is not efficient enough, people may die of starvation.

Nonetheless, we can now agree that Nilekani and the Government cannot safely claim not stuffing the UID down our throats.
The development arguments however, beg further questions.

Let us look at food security. Currently, the public distribution system is about giving free grain to the BPL population. The idea is to give the foodgrain free to the people who need it. The question however is, how do you decide who needs the foodgrain and who doesn’t? Now you say –ah ha! We have a poverty line.

This poverty line of ours is based on the minimum caloric requirement of 2400 calories in rural areas and 2100 calories in urban areas as of 1973-4 multiplied upwards by the appropriate consumer price index. This means that the poverty line in say, 2004 would be Rs. 13.8 a day in rural areas and Rs. 17 a day in urban areas on average according to the Tendulkar Committee Report which in turn means that anyone who spends Rs. 14 a day in rural areas or Rs. 18 a day in urban areas on average (Let me remind my readers that this covers food, clothing, rent and everything else) is not eligible for benefits under the public distribution system.

What is more, as pointed out by Professor Utsa Patnaik from NSSO figures, at least 86.7% of the rural population as of 2004 consumes less than 2400 calories a day and 64.5% of the urban population consumes less than 2100 calories. The official poverty ratios are 28.3% in rural areas and 25.7% in urban areas which means that only 28.3% of the rural population and only 25.7% of the urban population are eligible to benefits under the PDS. In other words, 58.4% of the rural population and 38.8% of the urban population fall out of the PDS net even though they consume less than the minimum nutritional intake that is considered to be subsistence consumption by the National Nutrition Monitoring Board.

And they say that the UID is an answer? What will the UID do? It will only make the PDS more targeted. To give food to the poor, one doesn’t need the UID, one needs to universalise the PDS.

What is Nilekani thinking?

Similarly most Centrally Sponsored schemes are targeted in nature except the NREGA which is self selecting as it pays a bare subsistence wage even lower than the Minimum Wage. The UID will only make these more targeted instead of universal when there really isn’t much difference between someone just above poverty line and someone below it. In fact it may result in no more than marginal cash transfers to those just below poverty line to just above it to claim a stupendous fall in poverty ratios on the part of the ruling political party.

So do we really need this UID?

Muruganandam went on to dedicate the next four years to designing a machine to produce these napkins cheap. He set up a workshop in Kanuvai and was finally successful in designing a machine costing Rs. 65,000 as opposed to machines costing Rs. 3.5 crores used by the leading multinational brands. It is suited to smaller scale production and can be used by SHGs and local entrepreneurs to produce cheaper sanitary napkins and distribute them locally.

Refusing a blank cheque from a famous international company, Muruganandam went on to persuade women from his neighbourhood to form groups and help him distribute his product. He would take used samples to study, seeing which, his horrified mother left his house for his sister’s. Until the women of his community began to see the merit of his invention both as a means of income and as a cheaper product, Muruganandam was mostly seen as a pervert.

In November 2009, the government was finally forced to take notice. Government schemes have mostly ignored the issue of making sanitary napkins available of rural and urban poor –mostly because to make public policy on such an issue, one needs to first, talk about menstruation. While condom distribution has been made widespread –more because of the need for population control than a more open view to sex, menstruation is still a taboo subject.

With Muruganandam’s local initiative, the government has seen the need to subsidise sanitary napkins and to distribute them cheaply. The contract has apparently gone to an MNC rather than to Muruganandam who claims that if the government wishes to distribute his product, it won’t even need a subsidy. The scheme has been kept in wraps and no newspaper other than the Hindu has reported it.

Muruganandam has been awarded a National Award for his innovation but that, is little help for his mission.

This poem is based on Muruganandam’s invention and how the government has not given him the contract for cheap sanitary napkin disposal and its initial and stubborn tendency to keep quiet on the issue.

I

A useful thing

They came up with

But then they said

Whisper.

I’d like to scream

With joy and pain

But yet they said

All well to stay

Free, care free

But still they say

Whisper.

When they could sell

So much more

Why do they say

Whisper?

II

A fine young chap,

He made them cheap

And told them

Go to hell!

To the Government,

He said he’d sell

But they told him

Go to hell.

What! Should we talk!

They said in shock,

Such a private thing?

It isn’t right,

It’s bad manners-

Oh such a private thing!

III

She sits away

From the rest

And washes her

Linen.

She cannot work,

Or stay care free,

She cannot run

And laugh and dance.

It happens every month.

When she is mad,

Red hot with rage

And turned aside

So full of hate

Oh why should she whisper?

It was the 24th of October and the country was gearing up. Anish, who had been teaching at a village school in Rajasthan, partly as a Gandhi Peace fellow and partly out of pure idealism, had literally fled to JNU that day. I met him at the Chinese food joint, gorging and gormandising on honey chicken and chicken fried rice. The poor thing had been eating vegetarian meals all month.

“What happened?” I asked. “The village elders were having a conversation about how they were looking forward to ‘cutting down’ the Muslims in the neighbouring village (translation- the original Hindi was starker: ‘Musale katenge’) as soon as the verdict was announced and asked me to join. I said I was not interested in cutting Muslims down. They replied, ‘No problem. We’ll teach you. If you can learn to cut bajra stems then you can learn to cut Muslim throats as well.’ (Guruji, aap bajra katna to seekh gaye, ab Musale katna bhi seekh jayenge.)”

Then the verdict was postponed to the 28th. My family rescheduled my mother’s flight from Gujarat and all other appointments so that we could stay put in our respective locations all day. But the judges couldn’t agree and the verdict was postponed again. This time even the UPA had started to panic. Chidambaram made official statements about the deployment of police personnel and paramilitary forces everywhere possible. 1.9 lakh Central paramilitary troops were deployed in Uttar Pradesh itself.

And then it came.

The common rooms, the Baristas, the lounge bars –in fact any and every place with a TV set in town was jam packed and those who felt their scruffiness would have them thrown out, peeked in through the shop windows.

Later, my friend, Rishabh told me that the verdict was a riot control document. The more Hindu of the lot scratched their heads and said, “Yeah so they recognised that Ramji was born here then why have they even given this one-third to the Muslims?” Other Hindus like my classmate Adarsh, said, “Ah! The Muslims should be happy and not spread communal tension. Atleast they got one-third.” (Luckily I wasn’t there. My friend Krithi, a fellow Left sympathiser, blew her top.) Most people said – “Ah! One third-one third-one third! That’s fair! No riot!” And Kamna, sipping her tea in the Library canteen, was of the same opinion. According to her, I was being communal when I said that the verdict was not fair.

The Ultra Left in JNU –groups like the Progressive Students’ Union or the Maoist sympathetic Democratic Students’ Union (quite the misnomer) –went up in arms. They saw the verdict as a de facto justification for the Babri Masjid demolition and yelled out for rebuilding the Babri Masjid. I agreed with the de facto justification bit but the thought for fighting to rebuild a mosque didn’t seem all that secular to me. My friend, Kavita was furious with the Ultra Left. “How can they talk of rebuilding the mosque? Don’t they think they are being disgustingly irresponsible? These factors must be settled by the law, by the Supreme Court. If the Sunni Waqf Board has a problem, it must go to the Supreme Court!”

Krithi heard her out but disagreed. “The High Court has been pacifist to the point of being unjust. How do we know that the Supreme Court will not do the same? As the Left, we must put political pressure on the Supreme Court.”

Meanwhile, Sahmat, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust brought out a pamphlet signed by respected academicians from AMU, JNU, DU etcetera, discrediting the Ayodhya verdict saying that it was based on the “faith and belief” of the Hindus rather than fact and evidence. Historians like Romilla Thapar were particularly vehement against the ASI report, saying that archaeological evidence actually points to animal bones, “surkhi” and lime mortar which are characteristic of Muslim presence. The ASI report had pointed to the presence of pillar bases to claim that a temple had once existed where the Babri Masjid had stood but no pillars were found. In fact, said Sahmat, there is no proof that Hindu belief says that Ram was born right under the dome of the mosque even in recent times, leave alone ‘time immemorial’ and who knows if those who broke in (in 1949) to put Ram’s idols under the dome of the mosque, put them in their rightful place. In other words, it is simply the belief of the Hindus that has caused the High Court to cede to the Hindus, the most important part of the mosque. Sahmat is particularly disturbed by the legitimation that the verdict gives to violence and muscle power. After all, next time property is required or the manufacture of a dispute is required to gain the political support of the Hindu majority, another janmasthan or two can be sprung up from time to time.

The Sahmat report brought nods of encouragement from everyone but the ABVP. This one asked students to unite against ‘communist hoax cries’ and referred to the academicians who signed the Sahmat statement as intellectual prostitutes. Meanwhile, it had a spectacular Navratra puja with loud speakers and cry upon cry of “Jai Shri Ram” which was regrettably, very popular.

The CPI(M) Politburo reaffirmed that the peace after the verdict proves that the people find the settlement of such disputes through the judicial process acceptable. Then it went on to critique the verdict because the judgement was based on the faith and belief of the Hindus rather than fact and evidence after which, it suggested rather than insisted that the judgement could be seen as a justification of the Babri Masjid demolition which it requested, rather than demanded, of the Supreme Court to keep in mind.

To my friend, Amit, always a critic of the CPI(M), it was a major disappointment that the Party should advocate the mere use of the judicial process with no attempt to put political pressure on the Court. After the High Court verdict, the ability of the judiciary to resist appeasing the majority for the sake of peace is much in question and in its bid to avoid channelling the disappointment after the verdict into anger and in its bid to avoid retaliation from the sanghis, the CPI(M) is also, falling into a pacifist trap. Amit also questioned the insistence on fact and evidence. After all, in Somnath, the Shiv temple was, in fact, demolished to build a mosque. Should that be given off to the Hindu groups as well?

I had to agree with Amit on the CPI(M)’s fall into the pacifist trap. (I’m still chewing on the question about the Somnath temple.) It saddened me to think about how close the grip of Hindutva really is. Even when it seems universally condemnable, the most intellectually fashionable statements end up giving the Hindutva groups their way. And that, is the real danger of communalism.

Neoliberalism means economic freedom. The freedom of capital to move freely, across national boundaries, without hindrances. Neoliberalism means freedom – freedom to invest any and every where. Neoliberalism means freedom of choice of whether to participate in political activity or to develop a political understanding…But is this freedom? Neoliberalism does not mean the freedom not to be exploited, the freedom not to be displaced, the freedom to eat a square meal, to drink clean water, to safe living spaces and working conditions. (Think Bhopal.)

Sounds polemic? Yet, it is the need to attract foreign capital and the fear of capital flight that has caused neoliberal governments to put a cap on fiscal deficits which has led to a serious decline of public expenditure on education and healthcare across states in India. For the freedom of the rich to invest where they like, the poor must suffer from lack of schooling, poor health facilities and calorie intake. And why is that? Finance capital fears inflation because it undermines dividends earned on domestic bonds and leads to a dwindling of asset values. This is why finance capital fears government intervention and in fact politics altogether. The ideology of neoliberalism rests on the notion that governments are ineffective and ‘inefficient’ and that private players must have more economic freedom. (The fragility of this myth is apparent simply in the corruption and inefficiency of the Indian bourgeoisie. Contact your friendly, neighbourhood builder for details. When CWG footbridges et al collapse, be sure that the cement has been siphoned off by a private contractor. Still not convinced? Stand on a Delhi road. Nine out of ten times, the bus that runs you over will be a Blueline and not a DTC.)

While liberal individualism may be disguised as a freedom, it is also a cultural more that distrusts politics, that asks students to ‘concentrate on studies’ and refrain from speaking out for our own, very basic rights.

In fact this view is particularly dangerous for women who, as it is, are already confined to private spaces by the numerous insecurities imposed upon them by patriarchy and are often shy of taking to the streets for issues that concern them.

This view also restricts the role of education to producing individuals who can be productive assets to the neoliberal system – who concentrate on their careers and refrain from thinking about wider social issues. It ignores the fact that the purpose of education in society is actually to build up sensitive people who can speak out for their own people, especially those who are poor and oppressed – in fact to develop as Antonio Gramsci puts it, the ‘organic intellectuals’ of the masses.

If politics decides your future, decide what your politics should be.

It seems that E.M.S. Nambooripad was once asked how it is that China had managed a revolution and India has not. E.M.S. had smiled tad helplessly, and said only one word, “caste”.

Caste.

Caste has done much more than prevent a Communist revolution though. It has made India inextricably difficult to define as a nation. What is this ‘India’ of ours? With 13 different languages and many more dialects, unlike German or Italian nationalism, Indian nationalism cannot possibly be linguistic. Given how bad the communal situation has always been, it cannot be religious either. So what is it that keeps these twenty nine different States and nine Union Territories (At the end of the British era, it was eleven Provinces and a range of Princely States) together? Is it that we were all once under the British and ruled as one big, subject nation? Was this nationality always there? Or was it brought about by the British rule? Perhaps, as Periyar had acknowledged after his disillusionment with the Congress, there were good things to the British rule. For one thing, the oppressed classes or the Shudras or ‘Dalits’ found hope of winning their age old struggle against brahmin and upper caste exploitation.

Nationalism was created. It was (and is still) created every day by songs, speeches, films, newspapers and television to cause people to produce themselves as citizens of a nation –by propagating the idea among those whose families had stayed in the subcontinent for years that thinking of yourself as a citizen of this vast, diverse country is the only normal thing to do. It was created by balancing all multifarious religious and caste identities. It was about connecting the Hindu to the Muslim, the landlord to the peasant, the brahmin to the dalit, all struggling against each other also, all the while, in the hope that tomorrow would bring an inclusive freedom from oppression for all.

But there’s never expression or freedom for all. To create a national identity, to keep some groups together, one inevitably ends up pushing some groups apart. The call to return the Caliph to his throne in Turkey brought the Muslims into the Non Cooperation Movement. However, this was a return to the old feudal order –opposed vehemently by the lower caste Muslims. (Even after conversion, the caste system never dies- ask my Christian Malayali friends.)

Nationalist movements like any other movement, have a tendency to get hegemonised –in this case, it was hegemonised by the upper castes who saw the need to get the Dalits into the movement but were likely to be patronising about it.

E.M.S. Nambooripad had also said that Indian history should be viewed as a series of superimpositions on an essentially pre capitalist mindset. Even if Indian scientists send out a rocket for a space expedition, they must first have an elaborate puja for its success. To me, the best example of such an India is the character of Mrs. Iyer in Aparna Sen’s film, ‘Mr. And Mrs. Iyer’ who, despite having an MSc in Physics, considers water drunk by a Muslim as unclean. India now has flyovers, industries, malls, IT- at least bits of it does… but India still has caste oppression.

Ofcourse the nature of this oppression has changed. Earlier it was untouchability, being denied education and being looked upon as unclean as a consequence of the caste division of labour. Now it is merit. Oppression works in insidious ways. It prevents inter caste marriages, denies education to one’s forefathers and then declares that all are equal and one must compete on the basis of merit. What is this merit, this talent, this intelligence? Today, I can hold my head up and say that I am intelligent and my merit can take me anywhere. I can speak well, write well and I can handle basic math. This is not because I have worked harder on these things than anyone else but because my parents have post graduate degrees. My mother’s father was also a post graduate and had in fact, topped both, BSc as well as MSc. My father’s father was a BA and he couldn’t have gone that far if his uncle hadn’t been in the academic profession. Both my grandfathers worked and struggled hard against phenomenal odds but though they weren’t Brahmin, they did not belong to backward castes. Ofcourse, there are first generation literates who do get into higher education and learn to speak and write well but they are more the exception than the norm. Most people who get to do their MAs, leave alone their MPhils and PhDs, are people like me –children of educated parents. Don’t believe me? Check out the econometric models set by Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze in India: Development and Participation. The number of years of formal education of the mother have a positive, significant effect on that of the child. This is not just an empirical result but an intuitive argument. Having educated parents means that education means something in your family. No one will expect you to drop out of school and college to work. Also, educated parents can help you with homework, sympathise and work out ameliorative measures when you fail an exam and support and advise you on how to get ahead- something economists tend to ignore as the emotional side of the story.

Thus, this ‘merit argument’ is eyewash. A system has denied education and what Nivedita Menon calls ‘cultural capital’ to a family over generations. Then the same system insists that it has changed and caste discrimination has been banned so the child is expected to compete with children who come from families that have been educated for generations. Thanks to history, there is a natural system of reservations for the upper caste. Reservations actually democratise society.

Going by the prime assumption within the merit argument itself –that there are no social differences between people –why are there so many Dalit construction workers, shoemakers, crematorium workers, cobblers and washermen and such few Dalit teachers, professors, experts or corporate sector employees? Is it that the Dalits do not have merit? Is that not a casteist conclusion?

Talking to people on reservations is generally frustrating. For one thing, they give you arguments like –“But you know, you wouldn’t want to be in a college or filling a post through a quota. You’d like to do it yourself. A quota is an insult. It implies you can’t do it on your own. Quotas are casteist.” This argument usually frustrates me so much that I am usually left agape, striving hard to pick up my scattered wits. At first it is important to establish that no one does anything on her own. I got into St. Stephen’s College because I am competent but I would not be competent if I did not have educated parents (who in turn, are educated because their parents were educated and their caste ensured that they were educated). Therefore, I too am not doing my MA in JNU solely because of my merit (I do however, get 5 deprivation points for being a woman), I have taken full advantage of the fact that education has run in my family for generations –something a Dalit student is denied, despite being the citizen of a country that promises equality of opportunity to all.

A cogent argument that often proves to be hard to refute is that reservations should not be given at the level of higher education –that a Dalit graduate is akin to any other graduate. But no one quite understands how very important it is to have more Dalits in teaching posts. It can break the Brahmin hegemony in education! It can even break the all powerful notion that Dalits are not meritorious. More Dalits in professors’ posts will go to show that levelling the playing field can put a Dalit where a Brahmin considers it her natural right to be. More Dalits in influential posts can help lobby against ‘merit’-based arguments and ensure reservations elsewhere aren’t scuttled. They can also make policy recommendations to ensure social justice more effectively -redistribution of land, reservations in primary schools and can politically engage with and beat the merit argument. It is also psychological. For all the Dalits who are afraid to chase their dreams, they can be told, “Looks at XYZ. He’s a Dalit like us.” As a woman, I feel that way about our few women professors. Whether they are feminists or not, seeing them there gives me hope.

Yes, creamy layer problems are there but even a rich Dalit tends to have trouble getting an education. Even upper caste students from educationally backward States like Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan tend to be taken lightly by their teachers. A rich Dalit student still lacks ‘cultural capital’ or those factors that affect one’s ability because of the way one’s family has evolved over generations. Also caste discrimination is still a reality. One of my friends was kicked out of school because he had been engaged in a fight by an upper caste student using casteist provocation. He would not have managed to get past school and into college without reservations and this is no comment on his abilities, which I believe are as true and good as gold.

Ofcourse I do not believe that reservations are a panacea. You need much more- redistribution of land, reservations in primary schools –even in private schools, more and better government schools. It’s not enough to create seats but also to nurture people in order to give more and more people the qualifications to fill up those seats.

Lastly, reservations are a right. No one has the right to look down on someone who has got a post or a seat via reservation. She is only exercising her democratic right.