Jan. 14, 2002
Shall We Leave It to the Experts?
Arundhati Roy

India lives in several centuries at the same time. Somehow we manage
to progress and regress simultaneously. As a nation we age by pushing
outwards from the middle-adding a few centuries on to either end of
our extraordinary CV. We greaten like the maturing head of a
hammer-headed shark with eyes looking in diametrically opposite
directions. On the one hand, we hear that European countries are
considering changing their immigration laws in order to import Indian
software engineers. On the other, that a Naga sadhu at the Kumbh Mela
towed the district collector's car with his penis while the officer
sat in it solemnly with his wife and children.

As Indian citizens, we subsist on a regular diet of caste massacres
and nuclear tests, mosque breaking and fashion shows, church burning
and expanding cellphone networks, bonded labour and the digital
revolution, female infanticide and the Nasdaq crash, husbands who
continue to burn their wives for dowry, and our delectable stockpile
of Miss Worlds. I don't mean to put a simplistic value judgement on
this peculiar form of 'progress' by suggesting that Modern is Good and
Traditional is Bad-or vice versa. What's hard to reconcile oneself to,
both personally and politically, is the schizophrenic nature of it.
That applies not just to the ancient/modern conundrum, but to the
utter illogic of what appears to be the current national enterprise.
In the lane behind my house, every night I walk past road-gangs of
emaciated labourers digging a trench to lay fibre-optic cables to
speed up our digital revolution. In the bitter winter cold, they work
by the light of a few candles.

It's as though the people of India have been rounded up and loaded on
to two convoys of trucks (a huge big one and a tiny little one) that
have set off resolutely in opposite directions. The tiny convoy is on
its way to a glittering destination somewhere near the top of the
world. The other convoy just melts into the darkness and disappears. A
cursory survey that tallies the caste, class and religion of who gets
to be in which convoy would make a good Lazy Person's Concise Guide to
the History of India. For some of us, life in India is like being
suspended between two of the trucks, one in each convoy, and being
neatly dismembered as they move apart, not bodily, but emotionally and
intellectually.

Of course, India is a micro-cosm of the world. Of course, versions of
what happens here happen everywhere. Of course, if you're willing to
look, the parallels are easy to find. The difference in India is only
in the scale, the magnitude, and the sheer proximity of the disparity.
In India, your face is slammed right up against it. To address it, to
deal with it, to not deal with it, to try and understand it, to insist
on not understanding it, to simply survive it-on a daily, hourly
basis-is a fine art. Either an art or a form of insular,
inward-looking insanity. Or both.

To be a writer-a supposedly 'famous' writer-in a country where
millions of people are illiterate is a dubious honour. To be a writer
in a country that gave the world Mahatma Gandhi, that invented the
concept of non-violent resistance, and then, half-a-century later,
followed that up with nuclear tests is a ferocious burden.(Though no
more ferocious a burden, it has to be said, than being a writer in the
United States, a country that has amassed enough nuclear weapons to
destroy the earth several times over.) To be a writer in a country
where something akin to an undeclared civil war is being waged on its
citizens in the name of 'development' is an onerous responsibility.
When it comes to writers and writing, I use words like 'onerous' and
'responsibility' with a heavy heart and not a small degree of sadness.

What is the role of writers and artists in society? Do they have a
definable role? Can it be fixed, described, characterised in any
definite way? Should it be?

Personally, I can think of few things more terrifying than if writers
and artists were charged with an immutable charter of duties and
responsibilities that they had to live and work by. Imagine, if there
was this little black book-a sort of Approved Guide to Good
Writing-that said: 'All writers shall be politically conscious and
sexually moral', or, 'All writers should believe in god,
globalisation, and the joys of family life...'

Rule One for a writer, as far as I'm concerned, is that There Are No
Rules. And Rule Two (since Rule One was made to be broken) is that
There Are No Excuses for Bad Art. Painters, writers, singers, actors,
dancers, filmmakers, musicians-they are meant to fly, to push at the
frontiers, to worry the edges of the human imagination, to conjure
beauty from the most unexpected things, to find magic in places where
others never thought to look. If you limit the trajectory of their
flight, if you weight their wings with society's existing notions of
morality and responsibility, if you truss them up with preconceived
values, you subvert their endeavour.

A good or great writer may refuse to accept any responsibility or
morality that society wishes to impose on her. Yet, the best and
greatest of them know that if they abuse this hard-won freedom, it can
only lead to bad art. There is an intricate web of morality, rigour
and responsibility that art, that writing itself, imposes on a writer.
It is singular, individual, but nevertheless it's there. At its best,
it's an exquisite bond between the artist and the medium. At its
acceptable end, a sort of sensible cooperation. At its worst, it's a
relationship of disrespect and exploitation.

The absence of external rules complicates things. There's a very thin
line that separates the strong, true, bright bird of the imagination
from the synthetic, noisy bauble. Where is that line? How do you
recognise it? How do you know you've crossed it? At the risk of
sounding esoteric and arcane, I'm tempted to say that you just know.
The fact is that nobody-no reader, no reviewer, agent, publisher,
colleague, friend or enemy-can tell for sure. A writer just has to ask
herself that question and answer it as honestly as possible. The thing
about this 'line' is that once you learn to recognise it, once you see
it, it's impossible to ignore. You have no choice but to live with it,
to follow it through. You have to bear with all its complexities,
contradictions and demands. And that's not always easy. It doesn't
always lead to compliments and standing ovations.It can lead you to
the strangest, wildest places. In the midst of war, for instance, you
could find yourself fascinated by the mating rituals of a purple
sunbird, or the secret life of captive goldfish, or an old aunt's
descent into madness. And nobody can say that there isn't truth and
art and beauty in that. Or, on the contrary, in the midst of putative
peace, you could, like me, be unfortunate enough to stumble on a
silent war. The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it.
And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as
political an act as speaking out.There's no innocence. Either way,
you're accountable.

Today, perhaps more so than in any other era in history, the writer's
right to free speech is guarded and defended by the civil societies
and state establishments of the most powerful countries in the world.
Any overt attempt to silence or muffle a voice is met with furious
opposition. The writer is embraced and protected. This is a wonderful
thing. The writer, the actor, the musician, the filmmaker-they have
become radiant jewels in the crown of modern civilisation. The artist,
I imagine, is finally as free as he or she will ever be. Never before
have so many writers had their books published. (And now, of course,
we have the Internet.) Never before have we been more commercially
viable. We live and prosper in the heart of the marketplace. True, for
every so-called success there are hundreds who 'fail'. True, there are
a myriad art forms, both folk and classical, myriad languages, myriad
cultural and artistic traditions that are being crushed and cast aside
in the stampede to the big bumper sale in Wonderland. Still, there
have never been more writers, singers, actors, painters who have
become influential, wealthy superstars. And they, the successful ones,
spawn a million imitators, they become the torch-bearers, their work
becomes the benchmark for what art is, or ought to be.

Nowadays in India, the scene is almost farcical. Following the recent
commercial success of some Indian authors, western publishers are
desperately prospecting for the next big Indo-Anglian work of fiction.
They're doing everything short of interviewing English-speaking
Indians for the post of 'writer'. Ambitious middle-class parents who,
a few years ago, would only settle for a future in engineering,
medicine or management for their children, now hopefully send them to
creative-writing schools. People like myself are constantly petitioned
by computer companies, watch manufacturers, even media magnates, to
endorse their products. A boutique owner in Bombay once asked me if he
could 'display' my book (as though it was an accessory, a bracelet or
a pair of earrings) while he filmed me shopping for clothes! Jhumpa
Lahiri, the American writer of Indian origin who won the Pulitzer
Prize, came to India recently to have a traditional Bengali wedding.
The wedding was reported on the front page of national newspapers.

Now where does all this lead us? Is it just harmless nonsense, best
ignored? How does all this ardent wooing affect our art? What kind of
lenses does it put in our spectacles? How far does it remove us from
the world around us?

There is very real danger that this neoteric seduction can shut us up
far more effectively than violence and repression ever could.We have
free speech. Maybe. But do we have Really Free Speech? If what we have
to say doesn't 'sell', will we still say it? Can we? Or is everybody
looking for Things That Sell to say? Could writers end up playing the
role of palace entertainers? Or the subtle twenty-first-century
version of court eunuchs attending to the pleasures of our incumbent
CEOs? You know-naughty, but nice. Risque perhaps, but not risky.

It has been some years now since my first, and so far only, novel, The
God of Small Things, was published. In the early days, I used to be
described-introduced-as the author of an almost freakishly
'successful' (if I may use so vulgar a term) first book. Nowadays I'm
introduced as something of a freak myself. I am, apparently, what is
known in twenty-first century vernacular as a 'writer-activist'. (Like
a sofa-bed.)

Why am I called a 'writer-activist' and why-even when it's used
approvingly, admiringly-does that term make me flinch? I'm called a
writer-activist because after writing The God of Small Things I wrote
three political essays: The End of Imagination about India's nuclear
tests, The Greater Common Good about big dams and the 'development'
debate, and Power Politics: The Reincarnation of Rumpelstiltskin about
the privatisation and corporatisation of essential infrastructure like
water and electricity. Apart from the building of the temple in
Ayodhya, these also currently happen to be the major preoccupations of
the Indian government.

Now, I've been wondering why it should be that the person who wrote
The God of Small Things is called a writer, and the person who wrote
the political essays is called an activist? True, The God of Small
Things is a work of fiction, but it's no less political than any of my
essays. True, the essays are works of non-fiction, but since when did
writers forgo the right to write non-fiction?

My thesis is that I've been saddled with this double-barrelled
appellation, this awful professional label, not because my work is
political, but because in my essays, I take sides. I take a position.
I have a point of view. What's worse, I make it clear that I think
it's right and moral to take that position and what's even worse, use
everything in my power to flagrantly solicit support for that
position. For a writer of the 21st century, that's considered a pretty
uncool, unsophisticated thing to do. It skates uncomfortably close to
the territory occupied by political party ideologues-a breed of people
that the world has learned (quite rightly) to mistrust. I'm aware of
this. I'm all for being circumspect. I'm all for discretion, prudence,
tentativeness, subtlety, ambiguity, complexity... I love the
unanswered question, the unresolved story, the unclimbed mountain, the
tender shard of an incomplete dream. Most of the time.

But is it mandatory for a writer to be ambiguous about everything?
Isn't it true that there have been fearful episodes in human history
when prudence and discretion would have just been euphemisms for
pusillanimity? When caution was actually cowardice? When
sophistication was disguised decadence? When circumspection was really
a kind of espousal?

Isn't it true, or at least theoretically possible, that there are
times in the life of a people or a nation when the political climate
demands that we-even the most sophisticated of us-overtly take sides?
I believe that such times are upon us.And I believe that in the coming
years, intellectuals and artists will be called upon to take sides,
and this time, unlike the struggle for Independence, we won't have the
luxury of fighting a 'colonising enemy'. We'll be fighting ourselves.

We will be forced to ask ourselves some very uncomfortable questions
about our values and traditions, our vision for the future, our
responsibilities as citizens, the legitimacy of our 'democratic
institutions', the role of the state, the police, the army, the
judiciary and the intellectual community.

Fifty years after Independence, India is still struggling with the
legacy of colonialism, still flinching from the 'cultural insult'. As
citizens, we're still caught up in the business of 'disproving' the
white world's definition of us. Intellectually and emotionally, we
have just begun to grapple with communal and caste politics that
threaten to tear our society apart. But in the meanwhile something new
looms on our horizon.

It's not war, it's not genocide, it's not ethnic cleansing, it's not a
famine or an epidemic. On the face of it, it's just ordinary,
day-to-day business. It lacks the drama, the large format, epic
magnificence of war or genocide. It's dull in comparison. It makes bad
TV. It has to do with boring things like water supply, electricity,
irrigation. But it also has to do with a process of barbaric
dispossession on a scale that has few parallels in history. You may
have guessed by now that I'm talking about the modern version of
corporate globalisation.

What is globalisation? Who is it for? What is it going to do to a
country like India in which social inequality has been
institutionalised in the caste system for centuries? A country in
which hundreds of millions of people live in rural areas. In which 80
per cent of the landholdings are small farms. In which almost half the
population cannot read or write.

Is the corporatisation and globalisation of agriculture, water supply,
electricity and essential commodities going to pull India out of the
stagnant morass of poverty, illiteracy and religious bigotry? Is the
dismantling and auctioning off of elaborate public sector
infrastructure, developed with public money over the last 50 years,
really the way forward? Is corporate globalisation going to close the
gap between the privileged and the underprivileged, between the upper
castes and the lower castes, between the educated and the illiterate?
Or is it going to give those who already have a centuries-old head
start a friendly helping hand?

Is corporate globalisation about 'the eradication of world poverty' or
is it a mutant variety of colonialism, remote controlled and digitally
operated? These are huge, contentious questions. The answers vary
depending on whether they come from the villages and fields of rural
India, from the slums and shantytowns of urban India, from the living
rooms of the burgeoning middle class or from the boardrooms of big
business houses.

Today, India produces more milk, more sugar, more foodgrain than ever
before. Government warehouses are overflowing with 42 million tonnes
of foodgrain. That's almost a quarter of the total annual foodgrain
produce.Farmers with too much grain on their hands were driven to
despair. In regions that wielded enough political clout, the
government went on a buying spree, purchasing more grain than it could
possibly store or use. And yet, under the terms of its agreement with
the World Trade Organisation, the Indian government had to lift import
restrictions on 1,400 commodities, including milk, grain, sugar,
cotton, tea, coffee, rubber and palm oil. This, despite the fact that
there was a glut of these products in the market. While grain rots in
government warehouses, hundreds of millions of Indian citizens live
below the poverty line and do not have the means to eat a square meal
a day. Starvation deaths (dressed up as measles and food-poisoning)
are being reported from several parts of the country.

>From 1 April, 2001-April Fools Day-once again according to the terms
of its agreement with the WTO, the Indian government is contracted to
drop its quantitative import restrictions. The Indian market is
already flooded with cheaper imports. Though India is technically free
to export its agricultural produce, in practice most of it cannot be
exported because it doesn't meet the first world's 'environmental
standards'. (Western consumers don't eat bruised mangoes, or bananas
with mosquito bites, or rice with a few weevils in it. In India we
don't mind the odd mosquito-bite or the occasional weevil.)

Developed countries like the US, whose hugely subsidised farm industry
engages only 2 to 3 per cent of its total population, are using the
WTO to pressurise countries like India to drop agricultural subsidies
in order to make the market 'competitive'. Huge, mechanised corporate
enterprises working thousands of acres of farmland want to compete
with impoverished subsistence farmers who own only a couple of acres.

In effect, India's rural economy is being garrotted. Farmers who
produce too much are in distress, farmers who produce too little are
in distress and landless agricultural labour is out of work as big
estates and farms lay off their workers. They're all flocking to the
cities in search of employment.

'Trade not Aid' is the rallying cry of the headmen of the new Global
Village, headquartered in the shining offices of the WTO. Our British
colonisers stepped on to our shores a few centuries ago disguised as
traders. We all remember the East India Company. This time around, the
coloniser doesn't even need a token white presence in the colonies.
The CEOs and their men don't need to go to the trouble of tramping
through the tropics risking malaria, diarrhoea, sunstroke and an early
death. They don't have to maintain an army or a police force, or worry
about insurrections and mutinies. They can have their colonies and an
easy conscience. 'Creating a good investment climate' is the new
euphemism for third world repression. Besides, the responsibility for
implementation rests with the local administration.

In India, in order to clear the way for 'development projects', the
government is in the process of amending the present Land Acquisition
Act (which, ironically, was drafted by the British in the nineteenth
century) and making it more draconian than it already is.State
governments are preparing to ratify 'anti-terrorist' laws so that
those who oppose development projects will be counted as terrorists.
They can be held without trial for three years. They can have their
lands and cattle seized.=20

Recently, corporate globalisation has come in for some criticism. What
happened in Seattle and Prague will go down in history. Each time the
WTO or the World Economic Forum wants to have a meeting, they have to
barricade themselves with thousands of heavily armed police. Still,
all its admirers, from Bill Clinton, Kofi Annan and A.B. Vajpayee to
the cheering brokers in the stalls, continue to say the same lofty
things. If we have the right institutions of governance in
place-effective courts, good laws, honest politicians, participatory
democracy, a transparent administration that respects human rights and
gives people a say in decisions that affect their lives-then the
globalisation project will work for the poor, as well. They call this
'globalisation with a human face'.

The point is, if all this was in place, almost anything would succeed:
socialism, capitalism, you name it. Everything works in Paradise, a
communist State as well as a military dictatorship! But in an
imperfect world, is it corporate globalisation that's going to bring
us all this bounty? Is that what's happening in India now that it's on
the fast track to the free market? Does any one thing on that lofty
list apply to life in India today? Are state institutions transparent?
Have people had a say? Have they even been informed-let alone
consulted-about decisions that vitally affect their lives? And are Mr
Clinton (or now Mr Bush) and Mr Vajpayee doing everything in their
power to see that the 'right institutions of governance' are in place?
Or are they involved in exactly the opposite enterprise? Do they mean
something else altogether when they talk of the 'right institutions of
governance'?

In November 2000, the World Commission on Dams report was released by
Nelson Mandela. It is the first time ever that any serious attempt has
been made to study the performance of big dams. For those of us who
are opposed to big dams, the WCD report is a contested document with
many unacceptable, wishy-washy clauses. However, at least it attempted
to address the serious social and ecological issues that have been
raised and debated over the years. At least, it attempted to set out
guidelines for those governments and agencies engaged in building
dams. At least, it attempted to estimate how many people have been
displaced by big dams.

India is the only country in the world that refused permission to the
World Commission on Dams to hold a public hearing. The government of
Gujarat, the state in which the Sardar Sarovar dam is being built,
threatened members of the Commission with arrest.

In February 2001, the Indian government formally rejected the World
Commission on Dams report. Does this sound like a transparent,
accountable, participatory democracy?

Recently, the Supreme Court ordered the closure of 77,000 'polluting
and non-conforming' industrial units in Delhi. The order will put
500,000 people out of work. What are these 'industrial units'? Who are
these people? They're the millions who have migrated from their
villages, some voluntarily, others involuntarily, in search of
work.They're the people who aren't supposed to exist, the
'non-citizens' who survive in the folds and wrinkles, the cracks and
fissures of the 'official' city. They exist just outside the net of
the 'official' urban infrastructure.

Close to 40 per cent of Delhi's population of 12 million-about 5
million people-live in slums and unauthorised colonies. Most of them
are not serviced by municipal facilities-no electricity, no water, no
sewage systems. About 50,000 people are homeless and sleep on the
streets.These 'non-citizens' are employed in what economists rather
stuffily call the 'informal sector', the fragile but vibrant parallel
economy that both shocks and delights the imagination. They work as
hawkers, rickshaw-pullers, garbage recyclers, car-battery rechargers,
street tailors, transistor-knob makers, buttonhole stitchers,
paper-bag makers, dyers, printers, barbers. These are the 'industrial
units' that have been targeted by the Supreme Court. (Fortunately, I
haven't had that knock on my door yet, though I'm as non-conforming a
unit as the rest of them.)

The trains that leave Delhi these days carry thousands of people who
simply cannot survive in the city. They're returning to the villages
they fled in the first place. Millions of others, because they're
'illegal', have become easy meat for the rapacious, bribe-seeking
police and predatory government officials. They haven't yet been
driven out of the city but now must live in perpetual fear and dread
of that happening.

In India, the times are full of talk of the 'free market', reforms,
deregulation and the dismantling of the 'licence-raj'-all in the name
of encouraging entrepreneurship and discouraging corruption. Yet, when
the state obliterates a flourishing market, when it breaks the backs
of half-a-million imaginative, resourceful, small-scale entrepreneurs,
and delivers millions of others as fodder to the doorstep of the
corruption industry, few comment on the irony.

No doubt it's true that the informal sector is polluting and,
according to a colonial understanding of urban land use,
'non-conforming'. But then we don't live in a clean, perfect world.
What about the fact that 67 per cent of Delhi's pollution comes from
motor vehicles? Is it conceivable that the Supreme Court will come up
with an act that bans private cars, or limits the number of cars a
household can own?

If pollution is indeed the main concern of our courts and government,
why is it that they have shown no great enthusiasm for regulating big
factories run by major industrialists that have polluted rivers,
denuded forests, depleted and poisoned groundwater, and destroyed the
livelihoods of thousands of people who depend on these resources for a
living? The Grasim factory in Kerala, the Orient Paper Mill in Madhya
Pradesh, the noxious 'sunrise belt' industries in Gujarat. The uranium
mines in Jaduguda, the aluminum plants in Orissa. And hundreds of
others.

This is our in-house version of first world bullying in the global
warming debate, i.e., we pollute, you pay.

In circumstances like these, the term 'writer-activist' as a
professional description of what I do makes me flinch doubly.First,
because it is strategically positioned to diminish both writers and
activists. It seeks to reduce the scope, the range, the sweep, of what
a writer is and can be. It suggests, somehow, that writers by
definition are too effete to come up with the clarity, the
explicitness, the reasoning, the passion, the grit, the audacity and,
if necessary, the vulgarity, to publicly take a political position.
And conversely, it suggests that activists occupy the coarser, cruder
end of the intellectual spectrum. That activists are by profession
'position-takers' and therefore lack complexity and intellectual
sophistication, and are instead fuelled by a crude, simple-minded,
one-sided understanding of things. But the more fundamental problem I
have with the term is that this attempt to 'professionalise' protest
has the effect of containing the problem and suggesting that it's up
to the professionals-activists and writer-activists-to deal with it.

The fact is that what's happening today is not a 'problem', and the
issues that some of us are raising are not 'causes'. They are huge
political and social upheavals that are convulsing the world. One is
not involved by virtue of being a writer or activist. One is involved
because one is a human being. Writing about it just happens to be the
most effective thing a writer can do. It is vital to
de-professionalise the public debate on matters that vitally affect
the lives of ordinary people. It's time to snatch our futures back
from the 'experts'. Time to ask, in ordinary language, the public
question and to demand in ordinary language, the public answer.

Frankly, however trenchantly, angrily, persuasively or poetically the
case is made out, at the end of the day, a writer is a citizen, only
one of many, who is demanding public information, asking for a public
explanation.

Speaking for myself, I have no personal or ideological axe to grind. I
have no professional stakes to protect. I'm prepared to be persuaded.
I'm prepared to change my mind. But instead of an argument, or an
explanation, or a disputing of facts, one gets insults, invective and
the Experts' Anthem: You don't understand and it's too complicated to
explain. The subtext, of course, is: don't worry your little head
about it. Go and play with your toys. Leave the real world to us.

It's the old Brahminical instinct. Colonise knowledge, build four
walls around it, and use it to your advantage. The Manusmriti, the
Vedic Hindu code of conduct, says that if a Dalit overhears a shloka
or any part of a sacred text, he must have molten lead poured into his
ear. It isn't a coincidence that while India is poised to take her
place at the forefront of the Information Revolution, millions of her
citizens are illiterate. (It would be interesting, as an exercise, to
find out how many 'experts'-scholars, professionals, consultants-in
India are actually Brahmins or from the upper castes.)

If you're one of the lucky people with a berth booked on the small
convoy, then Leaving it to the Experts is, or can be, a mutually
beneficial proposition both for the expert and yourself. It's a
convenient way of easing your conscience, shrugging off your own role
in the circuitry.And it creates a huge professional market for all
kinds of 'expertise'. There's a whole ugly universe waiting to be
explored there. This is not at all to suggest that all consultants are
racketeers or that expertise is unnecessary, but you've heard the
saying-There's a lot of money in poverty. There are plenty of ethical
questions to be asked of those who make a professional living off
their expertise in poverty and despair.

For instance, at what point does a scholar stop being a scholar and
become a parasite who feeds off despair and dispossession? Does the
source of a scholar's funding compromise his or her scholarship? We
know, after all, that World Bank studies are the most quoted studies
in the world. Is the World Bank a dispassionate observer of the global
situation? Are the studies it funds entirely devoid of self-interest?

Take, for example, the international dam industry. It's worth tens of
billions of dollars a year. It's bursting with experts and
consultants. Given the number of studies, reports, books, PhDs,
grants, loans, consultancies, eias-it's odd, wouldn't you say, that
there is no really reliable estimate of how many people have been
displaced by big dams in India? That there is no estimate for exactly
what the contribution of big dams has been to overall food production?
That there hasn't been an official audit, a comprehensive, honest,
thoughtful, post-project evaluation of a single big dam to see whether
or not it has achieved what it set out to achieve? Whether or not the
costs were justified, or even what the costs actually were?

What are the experts up to?

On the whole, in India, the prognosis is-to put it mildly-Not Good.
And yet, one cannot help but marvel at the fantastic range and depth
and wisdom of the hundreds of people's resistance movements all over
the county. They're being beaten down, but they simply refuse to lie
down and die.

Their political ideologies and battle strategies span the range. We
have the maverick Malayali professor who petitions the President every
day against the communalisation of history texts; Sunderlal Bahuguna,
who risks his life on indefinite hunger strikes protesting the Tehri
dam; the Adivasis in Jaduguda protesting uranium mining on their
lands; the Koel Karo Sangathan resisting a mega-dam project in
Jharkhand; the awe-inspiring Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha; the
relentlessly dogged Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan; the Beej Bachao
Andolan in Tehri-Garhwal fighting to save the biodiversity of seeds;
and of course, the Narmada Bachao Andolan.

India's redemption lies in the inherent anarchy and fractiousness of
its people and its political formations. Even our heel-clicking,
boot-stamping Hindu fascists are undisciplined to the point of being
chaotic. They can't bring themselves to agree with each other for more
than five minutes at a time. Corporatising India is like trying to
impose an iron grid on a heaving ocean, forcing it to behave. My guess
is that India will not behave. It cannot. It's too old and too clever
to be made to jump through the hoops all over again. It's too diverse,
too grand, too feral, and-eventually, I hope-too democratic to be
lobotomised into believing in one single idea, which is, eventually,
what corporate globalisation really is: Life is Profit.

What is happening to the world lies, at the moment, just outside the
realm of common human understanding. It is the writers, the poets, the
artists, the singers, the filmmakers who can make the connections, who
can find ways of bringing it into the realm of common understanding.
Who can translate cash-flow charts and scintillating boardroom
speeches into real stories about real people with real lives. Stories
about what it's like to lose your home, your land, your job, your
dignity, your past, and your future to an invisible force. To someone
or something you can't see. You can't hate. You can't even imagine.

It's a new space that's been offered to us today. A new kind of
challenge. It offers opportunities for a new kind of art. An art which
can make the impalpable palpable, the intangible tangible, the
invisible visible and the inevitable evitable. An art which can draw
out the incorporeal adversary and make it real. Bring it to book.

Cynics say that real life is a choice between the failed revolution
and the shabby deal. I don't know...maybe they're right. But even they
should know that there's no limit to just how shabby that shabby deal
can be. What we need to search for and find, what we need to hone and
perfect into a magnificent, shining thing, is a new kind of politics.
Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The
politics of opposition. The politics of forcing accountability. The
politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain
destruction. In the present circumstances, I'd say that the only thing
worth globalising is dissent. It's India's best export.