The following is an excerpt published in 'The Despatch' from a book titled “The People of India: New Indian Politics in the 21st Century” edited by Ravinder Kaur and Nayanika Mathur. Its blurb reads ‘The People’ and ‘New India’ are terms that are being invoked freely to both understand and govern India as she enters her 75th year of post-colonial nationhood.
A core feature of the New Indian Politics is how the will of the people is articulated as much via street politics
which was happening a hundred years ago in more acute form
as the formal political party system.
No. The formal political party system is important. Things like the farmers' protest were not important. It was Kejriwal who gained in Punjab while, unexpectedly, Yogi did well in Jat dominated districts of Western UP.
These popular protest movements have arisen in the face of a strong centralized state,
Nonsense! The farmers' protest was spearheaded by Tikait's son. Like Daddy's, the thing looked impressive but ended as something of a fiasco. Charan Singh's grandson doesn't seem to have profited by it any more than Charan Singh's son gained by the big farmer's protest forty years ago. The anti CAA protests seem to have harmed Congress and the Left. Kejriwal benefitted in Delhi but so did the BJP.
The fact is popular protest movement- e.g. that of Anna Hazare- are either inconsequential or benefit an existing or new party. Mamta benefitted by the anti-Nandigram/ Singur protests and is still in power. But the people of Singur seem disgruntled.
characteristically in the absence of an effective opposition that would articulate grievances.
There is no effective opposition in some States- e.g Naveen's Orissa, Mamta's Bengal, Stalin's Tamil Nadu. The problem is that there is no plausible rival to Modi at the Center.
What sets these protests apart is also how they brought new political figures to the centre stage,
Kejriwal founded his party over a decade ago. Since then, which 'new figure' has there been? Kanhaiya is a Congress chamcha. Hardik is with the BJP. Jignesh is unhappy but still with Congress. On the other hand, Owaisi gets a lot of coverage. But he is not associated with any 'protest'.
and mobilized religious minorities and marginalized people in new coalitions.
What fucking coalitions? Shaheen Bagh led to Congress and the Left being wiped out. Delhi is now a two horse race.
Equally noteworthy is how the media, forever in search of a single charismatic leader, often described the protests as ‘leaderless’, thereby overlooking the work of collective leadership in running protests.
But if this 'collective leadership' is confined only to the protest at hand then there is no political leadership of it.
It is on this uncertain turf between the street and the political parties and between the modes of exclusion and inclusion that a diverse people of New India have emerged.
Where were they previously? Hiding in holes in the ground?
But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
No. You are getting more retarded than when you started off.
Let us return to the farm laws and their repeal to further consider New Indian Politics.
Why bother? We know the outcome. Kejriwal scooped the pot. Few saw that coming.
That the repeal signalled an unsettling political terrain in Indian politics was evident from the social media trends that gained instant popular traction.
Guys who live in Copenhagen may bother with social media trends. Everybody else just asks the Sardarji who runs the local offie.
If the trend #farmlawsrepealed signalled a plain fact, often a joyous one, then #disappointed captured the state of disenchantment of Modi supporters (dubbed bhakt) as well as the business policy elite who had long made a case for market-friendly ‘deep reforms’ in the farm sector.
This is foolish. A quick google showed that the farm law didn't matter. Procurement patterns were changing. States were welcome to subsidize their own farmers- but then they'd go off the fiscal cliff. Can Kejriwal square the circle by making money off rezoning so as to pay off the farmers? We will have to wait and see.
The passionate response #disappointed was not just about the failure to implement market reforms by a leader who had crafted his image as someone who ‘means business’ in more ways than one.
But nobody was really disappointed. Congress got wiped out in Punjab. Yogi did well in Western UP. Modi had made the right call. Anyway, the 'people' like a leader who takes risks but who apologizes when they don't pay off.
It was also a public expression of disillusionment, the breaking of a spell that had bound the followers to a strongman leader who held out the promise of capitalist growth and the attendant civilizational glory.
Bullshit! Modi isn't Manmohan or Montek. He is Mr. Governance but governance isn't about a dash for growth. It is, rather, a slow and steady pursuit of integrity and efficiency. More to the point, Modi looks like a surefire three term PM. Bakhts are satisfied.
Some tried to repair the broken spell by recuperating the repeal as a political #masterstroke, a kind of cunning move (Chanakya Niti) whose true intent and effect had not yet been revealed.
So what? Anybody can tweet. I used to till I got my 'permanent ban' badge of honor.
Others rued the ‘street veto’ that had cast a shadow on Indian democracy. This anxiety was especially evident in the primetime television debates where the anchors pitted street protests as a challenge to the ‘might of the ballot’, one that threatened to undermine the power of the parliament.
But that anxiety faded long ago. Why focus on effervescent shite on Social Media generated, more often than not, by diaspora cretins like me?
It indeed isn’t easy to make sense of this strange turn of events.
It's easy enough for the rest of us. The Sikh diaspora sent a lot of money to finance the farmer's protests. Then Kejriwal scooped the pot and they felt silly. A Bania had outwitted the Jat. The fact that the new CM was a drunken clown rubbed salt in the wound.
After all, the repeal was a dramatic about-turn the followers of Modi had least expected, and that too a reversal staged in the full glare of global publicity.
Not really. What mattered was UP. The BJP had shat the bed in Punjab and deserved to lose there. But without Yogi as CM in UP there is no line of succession. Sooner or later, Modi becomes a lame duck- like Nitish.
It seemed to have upset all that had come to be regarded as politics-as-usual in a post-2014 New India.
Nonsense! Procurement will keep shifting to Eastern UP, Madhya Pradesh, etc. Punjab will be left to grapple with its own fiscal crisis.
Some speculated that the repeal was a calculated move made by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as it was sensing a loss of ground in states such as Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, which were coming up for state elections.
Punjab was a write-off. The one good thing is that the BJP has shaken off the Badals. Kejriwal is in a better position to do reform because there is no AAM Trade Union or Farmers Wing. The BJP's hands are tied by its past.
While this electoral arithmetic has to be taken seriously, especially given the cynical politics of the BJP and its government, which is forever and only in ‘election-mode’,
India is a big country. There is always an election campaign in some State.
it would be simplistic to believe that this calculation was the sole guiding factor.
All decisions made by responsible people involve a calculation of costs and benefits.
This moment of rupture not only disclosed the highly charged affective fault lines in the political landscape
The BJP has its own farm wing which wasn't happy. This affective fault line existed in all older parties.
but also laid bare new fields of conflict and cracks in the visage of power that had hitherto been deemed invincible.
Nothing of the sort occurred. The big question was whether there would be Jat consolidation and how big a role would go to Tikait and Ajith Singh's respective sons.
Most of all, it made visible the diverse people who inhabit this landscape of politics, the many agents of politics forged in the new antagonisms of post-liberalization India.
Not really. For older people, there was a sense of deja vu.
As the farmers’ protests refused to dwindle and, instead, new outposts of it popped up in different parts of India, we heard many ask: ‘But who are these people?’
The answer tended to be 'grandson or great nephew of such and such guy who had once commanded headlines;. What nobody saw coming was the cunning Bania, Kejriwal, scooping the pot.
This question was not altogether new. Similar rhetorical questions had been posed of the myriad protesters who came out against the evil trinity of the CAA–NPR–NRC over 2019,
It was the Supreme Court which had set all that in motion. The CAA, like the Farm Bill, didn't really mean very much. But the anti-CAA agitation helped the BJP. Muslims were saying they didn't want Kaffirs to gain security from Islamic persecution even though this had been the law since 1948.
before the toxic mix of the authoritarian state, a pogrom in Delhi
Congress conducted two pogroms in Delhi- one against Muslims in '47 and one against Sikhs in 1984. There was no pogrom under Kejriwal though some Muslim AAM politicians did run amok. But, in a new party, that is excusable. Kejriwal quickly distanced himself from the nutters.
and the pandemic shut down these protests. Similar questions had been asked then too: ‘Who are these people?’
The answer was elderly fools or student activists or other such cretins.
Tellingly, Modi had dubbed them andolanjeevis or those who live— parasitically it was assumed—off protest movements.
That label stuck. Protests can succeed if they are about money. People understand that money matters. Protests fail if they are merely 'woke' or involve virtue signaling.
The subtext was apparent: those who protested against the government were subverting the national interest, even tarnishing the image of the government and the nation on the world stage.
Unless what motivated them was money. The farm protests were like the yellow vest protests. Fiscal policy matters. Fantasies about Fascism don't.
In this scheme of things, the government and the nation were inseparable,
coz the President of America would feel silly if he tries run the Government from the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
and any opposition to the government was taken as an opposition to the nation.
but some opposition to government was explicitly so.
Andolanjeevis was the 2021 edition of the category of ‘anti-nationals’, a scornful term popularized by Modi government supporters to accuse dissenters of treachery.
Mrs Gandhi's minion, Buta Singh, was more explicit. He called various Gandhian organizations CIA fronts bent on destroying the country. But then, under Manmohan, there was the canard that 'Hindu Terrorism' was a big threat to India.
It’s a theme that appears to be inexhaustible, reappearing in ever new forms. The most recent iteration was the identification of activists and the civil society as the ‘new frontier of war’, the enemy within the nation—a war that required techniques of ‘fourth-generation warfare’ to be deployed against those citizens who oppose the government.
But it was Manmohan who targeted not just Naxals but even Christians protesting against Nuclear Plants and other such people as anti-national entities or a Trojan Horse funded by foreign NGOs to damage the Indian economy. But these ideas have a long history in the Indian National Security establishment. Don't forget, even after the 1962 War, there were plenty of nutters at Presidency College, Calcutta, who were shouting 'China's Chairman is our Chairman.'
What we witness here is an unsettling, and unsettled, terrain of the new Indian politics and the many people who forge it.
We have been witnessing this continually in every decade for a hundred years.
Three key features of these new antagonisms can be identified.
These cretins can't identify shit.
First, the politics of protest has become the staging ground for conflicts between the state and a diverse range of peoples,
Where? Kerala? The Church and the fishermen are opposing a Communist CM intent on Deng Xiaoping like growth. I can think of no other site of protest at the moment.
and this especially when the opposition parties are weakened and faced with a dominant government at the centre and hyper-nationalist majoritarian politics.
This is nonsense. The opposition can win States- e.g. Himachal- or break up coalitions- e.g. Bihar. Politics is the art of the possible and in Indian politics, anything is possible.
Second, the push towards centralized governance—
occurred under Nehru and was ratcheted up by Indira. But there has been increasing 'subsidiarity' since. The question is whether the Center can continue to redistribute money. This is particularly important in the context of seat redistribution in 2026.
the ubiquitous ‘one’ model: one nation, one market, one tax, for example—
The creation of an internal market, if not fiscal harmonization, is an economic necessity. Sheikh Hasina might integrate Bangladesh into such a 'common market'.
and an authoritarian style has created a strong state as well as frictions within the federal structure of the Indian union.
Not yet. The States were cushioned against the GST transition. What will happen now? I don't know. Nor do andolanjivis or academics from shite departments. The 2024 elections are very important because seat redistribution is supposed to happen in 2026. States which stand to lose need to stand together. Stalin needs to get over his fixation with Rajiv and get behind somebody electable. Why are people so complacent about this? I suppose we assume that the can will be kicked down the road. But why should it be? The BJP may lose its one foothold in the South and thus double down on the cow-belt. Why should they deny themselves more Parliamentary seats?
The signature style of Modi’s strongman politics is to conjure spectacles: sudden big-bang policy decisions, often announced on live television broadcasts.
Every country had 'big-bang' announcements re. COVID and so forth. Modi is in fact a strong leader. So is Zelensky. That's a good thing.
If the element of surprise keeps the public enthralled—or petrified, as the case maybe—and ensures undivided media coverage, it simultaneously upstages political opponents.
Why don't Prime Ministers piss themselves on TV? Instead of trying to upstage your opponent, why not take off all your clothes and stick a radish up your bum?
This hegemonic control of the media
If you control something you are its hegemon. Gramscian hegemony, however, has nothing to do with control rights.
is crucial in shaping the field of politics within, and against, which the popular protests have emerged
Nonsense! Popular protests differ from campaigns whipped up by Press Barons. Consider the 'Tea party movement'. It was 'astro-turf' not 'grass-roots'.
Third, connected to this are the ideological moves to reset the nation as an enclosure of global capital aligned with Hindu nationalist culture.
Only Rahul mentions 'vichardhara' or ideology. That is because he- like the authors- is a fucking cretin.
This ongoing capitalist-cultural shift is evident in a number of signature laws passed in the past two years
these silly people didn't update this to reflect the publication date.
—from the revocation of the special status of Kashmir and CAA/NRC
it was the Bench which decided that J&K had no shred of sovereignty. Similarly it was the Bench which set up detention centers and ordered the compilation of the Nationality Register in Assam.
to the farm laws and the labour code—that seek to open up new markets within the national territory even as the nation itself is rearranged in the framework of Hindu nationalism.
Hindu nationalism triumphed in 1947. India opened up to global markets in the 1990s. Why do these guys not know this?
The shift was accelerated during the pandemic, a deployment of crisis-as-opportunity approach to draw investors looking for alternatives to China.
Not really. There was some talk, but talk was all it was. Some existing projects may have been accelerated- that is all. Vietnam, on the other hand, has done very well.
The appearance of the people on the streets is more than an expression of dissatisfaction.
Where? Nowhere I can see.
It is taking matters in one’s own hands or what was dubbed ‘street veto’, a political action akin to showing a red card
something the umpire does
when the rules of the game are broken
and a player is sent of the field.
or remade without due agreement.
Nonsense! The rules were set long ago by foreigners in some distant country. They don't depend on agreement. These guys know shit about sport
The term ‘street veto’,
has not gained currency. It doesn't exist. Governments withdraw laws if they think they will lose elections. Otherwise, if they think they will win, in Westminster style democracies, they dissolve Parliament and seek a fresh mandate.
invoked following the repeal of the farm laws, was used to convey disapproval of both an unceasing out-of-control protest as well as the abject about-turn of the Modi government.
States which wanted to implement reform were welcome to do so. Procurement would continue to shift away from the places where protest was most intense.
If at all, the criticism of street politics opened up an inherent paradox in mass democratic politics:
these guys can't reason worth a demand. Everything is a fucking paradox for them.
the raw potentiality of crowds is at the heart of mass democratization,
Nope. Crowds only have any fucking political potential in big cities. But their actions aren't likely to lead to 'mass democratization' because then the rural masses- who are religious and conservative- gain the whip hand. The Paris Commune was crushed by young conscripts from the countryside.
and yet it is only by imposing discipline and control that political energy can be harnessed.
Political energy means money and labor power. Harnessing them does not necessarily involve 'discipline' or 'control'. Forming a stable administration may do so but administrations don't harness power. That has already been done. Thus the new leader doesn't have to create an Army or Bureaucracy from scratch. He takes over what already exists.
The democratic politics is renewed by subjects who are simultaneously active but also disciplined.
This is an ungrammatical and meaningless statement. Democratic politics features citizens some of whom are politically active. Discipline is not a sine qua non more particularly if an 'overlapping consensus' exists regarding what needs to be done.
It is this kind of constant tension upon which many people, the figures of politics, emerge.
Again an ungrammatical and foolish sentence. The 'figures of politics' first must have economic and social existence. They may rise or fall politically. I suppose what these cretins mean is something like 'new political movements emerge in constant tension with some shite or the other' but such a statement simply isn't true. New political movements can emerge without any tension purely because of Tardean mimetics- i.e. imitating a superior- or because boring but ambitious people need an outlet for their urge to competitively bore the pants of everybody else.
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