The Technocrats of India

I was meandering through a shop a few months ago – one of those hipster places that sells things that make you feel like you’re not really buying but sharing whatever the hell it is that’s caught your eye.

My friend, who was similarly meandering about pointed to someone and said to me, “Isaac, America’s the only country where people walk about wearing t-shirts with the president’s face on it. It’s weird. You won’t catch anyone in India doing that.”

Now, I’m a thinking man, and this statement got me thinking. Though I’ve only been to my native land, India, for less than a year if one were to stalk me and cumulate each month-long visit, I do take a bit of interest in the culture and politics there. I mean, where the hell else do you have baby-tossing rituals?

Long story short, I decided to make the following graphic, which I put on a t-shirt for my friend.

Feel free to download and distribute as you like.

This post is about the above picture.

As if to just help the whole set-up for this post, India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (pictured above during a bout with hair-jaundice) decided to visit the White House last week. It was the first Indian state visit to America after the new boss took office.

Sunil Adam, of whom I am no huge fan, wrote a biting piece about the whole visit. Amongst his many criticisms is the fact that the whole thing was kind of thrown together higgledy-piggledy, with ManSingh being only able to meet the FOOs (fans of Obama) rather than big-time world leaders.

Why such treatment Mr. President? Isn’t our man good enough for you? Perhaps it’s the fact that you call yourself the leader of the free world, and he’s just a technocrat.

Technocrats. It was the basis for what I wrote in the graphic up there (and I grew up listening to techno). They seem great – all about letting those with the skills handle areas of government that pertain to them. Seems ideal, even.

Naomi Klein, in The Shock Doctrine, outlines how easy it is to hide shock-therapy-style capitalism as technocracy. It all seems great when you’ve got just a bunch of eggheads (her word, not mine) running things, doing what they do well. Except that there’s a cultural policy (and here I’m delving into critical media theory) at the base of it all that says that the sum result has to be people’s ability to buy things in huge quantities for as cheaply as possible.

While Singh was showing Obama what it was like to be king (I kid; reports say that he was giggling like a schoolgirl – or at least applauding unnecessarily – at everything Obama said), India was holding hands behind its back with America’s former nemesis – Russia. There are plans afoot for big nuclear cooperation between the two countries, with a reactor being the foundation of the whole thing to start.

It’s starting to look like a Bollywood tale, it is. India – who will she choose? The successful American hand, fresh from its Cold War win, or the Russian fist, seething from its defeat and looking for a round two?

Or at least, that’s what a lot of commentators would have you believe.

Going back to Klein, it looks like we’re past the old days of nation vs. nation. Besides the occassional sporting event (cricket, anyone? No? Good; I hated watching that boring game with my uncles), we are very much in the multinational corporate world. One in which nations don’t protect their people from other nations, but rather corporate interests and itself from the people. Some would even say that it was always like that, but that we were too busy sitting on vinyl chairs eating cardboard out of cardboard boxes to notice.

So what’s been going on in India? Indian police beating up “radical Sikhs” in Ludhiana for protesting against “radical Hindus.” Nothing new since the genocide of Sikhs after Indira Gandhi got shot by her (Sikh) bodyguards who I guess were more loyal to their culture under attack rather than her.

A military offensive against Maoist rebels that are causing quite the commotion in the north. India raised a brow when then took Nepal by storm; but by god they shall not have Delhi, is the new credo.

And let’s not forget a fresh dose of clashes in Kashmir. My favourite author (and that of every Indian with the ability to use common sense) on the subject is Arundhati Roy, who wrote extensively about India’s attempt at bringing democracy with a carbine to that region.

Her latest book combines a number of essays and has this to say about India as a whole:

India’s Shining, Feeling Good. You only have to close your ears to the sickening crunch of the policeman’s boot on someone’s ribs, you only have to raise your eyes from the squalor, the slums, the ragged broken people on the streets and seek a friendly TV monitor and you will be in that other beautiful world. The singing-dancing world of Bollywood’s permanent pelvic thrusts, of permanently privileged, permanently happy Indians waving the tricolor flag and Feeling Good. It’s becoming harder and harder to tell which one’s the real world and which one’s the virtual.

And so that’s it. A billion plus people, and it’s all about how to capitalize. Products coming on; more going out. The cheapest car, the spiciest Happy Meal. The only people standing in the way are those pesky separatists that might very well cut the market, I mean nation, into more manageable pieces. Eighteen official languages, hundreds of religions, disenfranchised villages and an millions-strong underclass of Dalits. This is a nation?

I’m beyond blaming Ghandi for all this. Yes, he didn’t represent everything the way the British thought he did. Yes, his imposition of separating religion and state split the area into three nations. Yes, his little hunger strike against the Dalits ended with him enjoying a glass of orange juice that a Jain philosopher said “contains millions of peoples’ blood.” But even he could not have thought his merchant class revolution against the old guard of owners would have led to this. One word – Bhopal.

Plus, these parallels between India and America now go beyond domestic policy to foreign – the former has increased its meddling in Afghanistan.

I will disagree with Klein and Roy on one fundtamental thing – we’re all sitting around talking about these countries as if they’re democracies. They’re not. They’re very specifically set up to not be democracies. There’s something to be learnt from that.