GenNext to the fore~I
Source: By Barun Kumar Basu: The Statesman
In a presentation more than five decades ago, the progressive American political scientist, Elmer Eric Schattschneider, observed: “The flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent.” For him the essence of political conflict was the scope of participation. Since in any situation the number of apathetic outnumbers those involved, competition between winners and losers over the original policy dispute prompts the losers to enlarge the scope of conflict. “Alliances are formed and re-formed; fortresses, positions, alignments and combinations are destroyed or abandoned in a tremendous shuffle of forces redeployed to defend new positions or to take new strong points. In politics the most catastrophic force in the world is the power of irrelevance which transmutes one conflict into another and turns all existing alignments inside out.”
Schattschneider passed away in 1971. He would have been happy had he witnessed the run-up to the elections of 2014. Relatively high polling percentages in the recent State assembly elections illustrate that people are emerging from the closet and exercising their electoral muscle. Who exactly are these hitherto closeted voters and what makes them probable game-changers in 2014?
Exposed to external influences, the post-1991 GenNext, with their 200 million new voters, is both the product and beneficiary of liberalisation. They have access to job opportunities my son’s generation never had. For them, the Internet is just a mouse-click away, offering enormous information. Social networking sites across the world have enabled India’s youth to imbibe the values of democratic nations, for better and the worse. GenNext is also witness to the dismantling of totalitarian empires and the expression of human freedom worldwide. The State having shrunk in terms of the patronage it once had, GenNext is no longer largely dependent on the government for job opportunities.
State-sponsored enterprise has been miserably exposed to GenNext by benchmarking with the private sector and global standards of efficiency. To that can be added the underhand benefits accruing to politicians and bureaucrats from subterfuges like Private-Public-Partnerships and so-called joint ventures. Yet GenNext has risen on the strength of its efforts and determination and is fiercely zealous of its rights (though not always obligations), not dependent upon state largesse. India does have the potential to be a superpower but for the frigidity of the political class, and cutting across party lines. There is politics in education, health services, and provision of water and railway lines, scholarships, jobs, and trade licences for the unemployed. For GenNext, there is little reason for fulfillment and hope of equity and fair play.
The problems are mind-boggling. Vigilante groups affiliated to political parties storm bars and nightclubs, bully teenagers in the name of religious conservatism, rape women who are GenNext’s mothers, sisters and wives, legislatures that suddenly guillotine matters of the greatest socio-economic importance such as anti-corruption laws, an antiquated, overloaded and understaffed legal system that offers little or no redress, the non-existence/failure of administrative grievance redressal mechanisms in governance and the repeated attempts to undermine institutions such as the Information Commissions. All this and much more is but a full bottle of bitter pills for GenNext, as it is for their seniors. However, such pills, unlike Valium, do not kill, but energise anger in GenNext in dangerous ways.
GenNext faces steadily rotting State-operated university systems that denies admission to students with 95 per cent and above in Class 12, but these very students top the merit list for entry into the London School of Economics and Harvard University. Those with lower marks must make do with decrepit under-funded colleges and indifferent teachers who lack even elementary teaching skills and commitment, least of all any accountability. The school education system spawns generations of students who are unable to comprehend the goings-on in the world around them; hence the likes of Baba Ramdev emerge as leaders. For lowest academic performers, there are no worthwhile vocational training colleges that would empower them to lead their lives respectably, instead turn them to a life of crime or unwillingly work as semi-indentured labour or menials in a service agency.
Even for outstanding students, academic curriculum is but a deflated bladder that has too many holes to repair and make it rise once again. Lessons on morality and ethics, basic laws, etc. that would influence and educate GenNext against any waywardness do not even figure in school and university curricula. Therefore, when such a rebellious GenNext member is arrested for speeding on Rajpath and promptly fined Rs. 500, but finds the constable ready to let him go in return for Rs. 250 getaway bribe, the youngster is happy even as the corrupt system ensnares him and he learns to live life king-size, bribing his way. There is none to guide him back into a relatively more virtuous mainstream.
It is but natural for GenNext to be peeved when prominent members of the political class speak of travelling “cattle class” while others utter theek hai in moments of grave crisis, as if the nation with 40 per cent of its total voters being people below the age of 40 are no more than obedient cows that must bow to the arrogance of the leaders they elected. Twitterati and the Facebook litter our political space even as citizens are increasingly reduced to mere statistics on Excel work-sheets. That India now possesses a power-packed GenNext did not matter to the political class that, nonetheless, retained its hard-handed arbitrariness eternally embedded in the colonial past. Disconnect between the rulers and the ruled could never have been greater. Consider the fact that 40 per cent of India’s population is between 18 and 49 years of age, and controls about 450 million votes. This might translate to about 225 seats in the Lok Sabha in 2014. Indeed, Mr Modi made an apt start by addressing this key constituency from Delhi’s Shriram College of Commerce.
Another similarly-sized or much larger segment is the 329 million-strong women’s group, of which 201 million are in rural areas. In fact, Census 2011 clearly shows that even with a depressed 64.64 per cent literacy rate, there are over an additional 100 million literate women now, almost equal with their male counterparts, which has a substantially higher 80.89 per cent literacy rate. What should worry our political parties is the fact that in rural areas, female literacy has expanded from 46.13 per cent in 2001 to 57.93 in 2011, i.e. by about 12 percentaje points. Against these figures, the male literacy rate rose from 70.70 to 77.15 per cent between 2001 and 2011, i.e. about 7 percentage points rise. Even in urban areas, female literacy rose by 6.25 while male literacy rose by just 2.49 percentage points, although the urban sex ratio is more skewed in favour of males at 929 against 949 in rural India.
An interesting phenomenon thus seems to emerge. While there is continuing migration to cities, yet the accretion in male literacy rates is below the parity level whereas women, both urban and rural, have in the last decade, educated themselves enough to be able to perhaps distill the gibberish being dished out on regional TV channels by political parties. Female education and decline in birth rates may correct historically skewed sex ratios in another half a century and than women may account for a larger proportion of the vote in the elections this year.
Women are the worst affected in several respects. An unending industrial recession meant loss of jobs, depressed wages, high inflation and attendant rising costs of food, fuel, daily necessities, children’s education, transport costs, et al. The buck stops with the female head of the household. All these factors are compounded by open sexual and often mindless discrimination in matters of employment, absence of any social and job security, low wages, uncertain working hours and often violent work environments, irrespective of age. The rural and urban slum woman also has to trudge several kilometers every day for potable water for her family. When she silently watches her children living off two chappatis and green chilies washed down with brackish water and then retire for the night in climatic extremities, mostly without a quilt in winter or even a fan in summer, her anger knows no bounds. Quacks and ojhas step in for doctors and midwives, while roots and shoots, often poisonous, are substitutes for life-saving medicines.
In a presentation more than five decades ago, the progressive American political scientist, Elmer Eric Schattschneider, observed: “The flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent.” For him the essence of political conflict was the scope of participation. Since in any situation the number of apathetic outnumbers those involved, competition between winners and losers over the original policy dispute prompts the losers to enlarge the scope of conflict. “Alliances are formed and re-formed; fortresses, positions, alignments and combinations are destroyed or abandoned in a tremendous shuffle of forces redeployed to defend new positions or to take new strong points. In politics the most catastrophic force in the world is the power of irrelevance which transmutes one conflict into another and turns all existing alignments inside out.”
Schattschneider passed away in 1971. He would have been happy had he witnessed the run-up to the elections of 2014. Relatively high polling percentages in the recent State assembly elections illustrate that people are emerging from the closet and exercising their electoral muscle. Who exactly are these hitherto closeted voters and what makes them probable game-changers in 2014?
Exposed to external influences, the post-1991 GenNext, with their 200 million new voters, is both the product and beneficiary of liberalisation. They have access to job opportunities my son’s generation never had. For them, the Internet is just a mouse-click away, offering enormous information. Social networking sites across the world have enabled India’s youth to imbibe the values of democratic nations, for better and the worse. GenNext is also witness to the dismantling of totalitarian empires and the expression of human freedom worldwide. The State having shrunk in terms of the patronage it once had, GenNext is no longer largely dependent on the government for job opportunities.
State-sponsored enterprise has been miserably exposed to GenNext by benchmarking with the private sector and global standards of efficiency. To that can be added the underhand benefits accruing to politicians and bureaucrats from subterfuges like Private-Public-Partnerships and so-called joint ventures. Yet GenNext has risen on the strength of its efforts and determination and is fiercely zealous of its rights (though not always obligations), not dependent upon state largesse. India does have the potential to be a superpower but for the frigidity of the political class, and cutting across party lines. There is politics in education, health services, and provision of water and railway lines, scholarships, jobs, and trade licences for the unemployed. For GenNext, there is little reason for fulfillment and hope of equity and fair play.
The problems are mind-boggling. Vigilante groups affiliated to political parties storm bars and nightclubs, bully teenagers in the name of religious conservatism, rape women who are GenNext’s mothers, sisters and wives, legislatures that suddenly guillotine matters of the greatest socio-economic importance such as anti-corruption laws, an antiquated, overloaded and understaffed legal system that offers little or no redress, the non-existence/failure of administrative grievance redressal mechanisms in governance and the repeated attempts to undermine institutions such as the Information Commissions. All this and much more is but a full bottle of bitter pills for GenNext, as it is for their seniors. However, such pills, unlike Valium, do not kill, but energise anger in GenNext in dangerous ways.
GenNext faces steadily rotting State-operated university systems that denies admission to students with 95 per cent and above in Class 12, but these very students top the merit list for entry into the London School of Economics and Harvard University. Those with lower marks must make do with decrepit under-funded colleges and indifferent teachers who lack even elementary teaching skills and commitment, least of all any accountability. The school education system spawns generations of students who are unable to comprehend the goings-on in the world around them; hence the likes of Baba Ramdev emerge as leaders. For lowest academic performers, there are no worthwhile vocational training colleges that would empower them to lead their lives respectably, instead turn them to a life of crime or unwillingly work as semi-indentured labour or menials in a service agency.
Even for outstanding students, academic curriculum is but a deflated bladder that has too many holes to repair and make it rise once again. Lessons on morality and ethics, basic laws, etc. that would influence and educate GenNext against any waywardness do not even figure in school and university curricula. Therefore, when such a rebellious GenNext member is arrested for speeding on Rajpath and promptly fined Rs. 500, but finds the constable ready to let him go in return for Rs. 250 getaway bribe, the youngster is happy even as the corrupt system ensnares him and he learns to live life king-size, bribing his way. There is none to guide him back into a relatively more virtuous mainstream.
It is but natural for GenNext to be peeved when prominent members of the political class speak of travelling “cattle class” while others utter theek hai in moments of grave crisis, as if the nation with 40 per cent of its total voters being people below the age of 40 are no more than obedient cows that must bow to the arrogance of the leaders they elected. Twitterati and the Facebook litter our political space even as citizens are increasingly reduced to mere statistics on Excel work-sheets. That India now possesses a power-packed GenNext did not matter to the political class that, nonetheless, retained its hard-handed arbitrariness eternally embedded in the colonial past. Disconnect between the rulers and the ruled could never have been greater. Consider the fact that 40 per cent of India’s population is between 18 and 49 years of age, and controls about 450 million votes. This might translate to about 225 seats in the Lok Sabha in 2014. Indeed, Mr Modi made an apt start by addressing this key constituency from Delhi’s Shriram College of Commerce.
Another similarly-sized or much larger segment is the 329 million-strong women’s group, of which 201 million are in rural areas. In fact, Census 2011 clearly shows that even with a depressed 64.64 per cent literacy rate, there are over an additional 100 million literate women now, almost equal with their male counterparts, which has a substantially higher 80.89 per cent literacy rate. What should worry our political parties is the fact that in rural areas, female literacy has expanded from 46.13 per cent in 2001 to 57.93 in 2011, i.e. by about 12 percentaje points. Against these figures, the male literacy rate rose from 70.70 to 77.15 per cent between 2001 and 2011, i.e. about 7 percentage points rise. Even in urban areas, female literacy rose by 6.25 while male literacy rose by just 2.49 percentage points, although the urban sex ratio is more skewed in favour of males at 929 against 949 in rural India.
An interesting phenomenon thus seems to emerge. While there is continuing migration to cities, yet the accretion in male literacy rates is below the parity level whereas women, both urban and rural, have in the last decade, educated themselves enough to be able to perhaps distill the gibberish being dished out on regional TV channels by political parties. Female education and decline in birth rates may correct historically skewed sex ratios in another half a century and than women may account for a larger proportion of the vote in the elections this year.
Women are the worst affected in several respects. An unending industrial recession meant loss of jobs, depressed wages, high inflation and attendant rising costs of food, fuel, daily necessities, children’s education, transport costs, et al. The buck stops with the female head of the household. All these factors are compounded by open sexual and often mindless discrimination in matters of employment, absence of any social and job security, low wages, uncertain working hours and often violent work environments, irrespective of age. The rural and urban slum woman also has to trudge several kilometers every day for potable water for her family. When she silently watches her children living off two chappatis and green chilies washed down with brackish water and then retire for the night in climatic extremities, mostly without a quilt in winter or even a fan in summer, her anger knows no bounds. Quacks and ojhas step in for doctors and midwives, while roots and shoots, often poisonous, are substitutes for life-saving medicines.
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