Democracy is another word for demon-crazy

Inimitable writer-activist Arundhati Roy examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India through her latest anthology of razor-sharp essays

The title of Arundhati Roy's essential new book, Listening to Grasshoppers taglined Field Notes on Democracy, is inspired by the hordes of grasshoppers that descended on ripening fields of wheat, months before one of the most brutal massacres of the 20th century.
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The year was 1915, in which half a million Armenians were slaughtered by the Ottoman Empire because of their minority Christian faith. Elders of the village considered the coming of the grasshoppers a bad omen. Much like Roy in the book who says about the 2002 Gujarat genocide: "The wheat is ripening and the grasshoppers have landed in mainland India".

"Written in anger, at moments when keeping quiet became harder than saying something...", her book argues that a nexus of government, judiciary, industry and media is colluding to absolve each other's sins. Roy admits that she is "hysterical" about where Indian society is headed: "I'm screaming from the bloody rooftops."

In her view, "genocide" was committed in the Gujarat riots in 2002, Kashmir is under brutal military occupation and economic policies have driven millions to the brink of starvation. As for last November's Mumbai attacks: "What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet is squelching under our feet."

The beauty of the prose lies in her clear-eyed analysis and the lucidity of her written voice. Take, for example, this description of growing inequality: The "old society has curdled and separated into a thin layer of thick cream and a lot of water.

The cream is India's 'market' of many million consumers (of cars, cell phones, computers, Valentine Day's greeting cards), the envy of international business. The water is of little consequence".

Listening to Grasshoppers Field Notes on Democracy is published by Penguin and available at bookstores for Rs 499