You’re sensing anger because, politically, India’s noisiest class is seeing deaths in a way they thought only happened to others, until now
Finding a hospital bed for a rapidly sinking loved one has been as difficult for the so-called influential Indian as it is for the poorest one. Pic/AFP
Baffling why the middle-class around me calls itself so, when it’s actually the economic upper class. Consider 700-800 million Indians make Rs 100/day—even the private driver in Mumbai, making five times that, falls into the upper-middle.
ADVERTISEMENT
The self-diagnosis I suppose is to distinguish oneself from India’s richest—the HNIs (or High Net-worth Individuals), the likes leading up to Ambani/Adani—the fractional difference between their income and yours being as much—if not more—than yours, and the poorest Indian’s!
Either way, the babu class I speak of (urban professionals, rich peasants)—permanently linking their Aadhaar, to credit card, to bank account, to cellphone—has neither the real numbers to severely impact Indian elections. Only the poorest do. Nor do they own enough wealth to secede, with homes abroad, at will. Only the real HNIs can; quietly, getting richer still.
What does this supposed middle constitute then? According to The Economist, India’s “politically, noisiest class”. They have the spare energy and basic education for drawing-room banter, taking abstract cultural/historical/personality sides (like their nightly news anchors). Which makes them socially influential, although only between elections, while the state goes about its day.
What could “government” mean to them? Access, yes; and therefore naked opportunisms that follow. Otherwise, it could mean anything. Given that even the thought of entering a state hospital in a city sends them shivers—never mind that there is hardly any of it in the rest of India.
Collectively they distract themselves with pointless chitchat (on social media and elsewhere), secure in the knowledge that private healthcare/transport/electricity/education/etc will sail them through, anyway. Some abhor state subsidies, for instance.
Because none of them will ever need it. Neither will a dead body anonymously floating into a river be their loved one’s. Nor will anonymously living bodies walking between cities and villages during a pandemic be someone they know (hopefully). There is empathy chiefly among equals.
Such is how insulated life goes on. What if that social pact called privilege, built out of both fear and favour, is summarily broken? How can it? Could there appear a universal public problem, ever in life, that you can’t anymore throw savings/money, or your contacts/network at? That it doesn’t matter anymore who you know/are?
True story: That you could be the ailing, serving chief secretary—head honcho of provincial bureaucracy, which in turn forms the topmost layer of India’s intermediate class—and not find a single hospital bed at AIIMS in the state capital. Having lost the ‘golden hour’, you die of a virus at a private facility. What of the rest of the entire state’s privileged?
That you could be artist, entertainer, CEO, media personnel, any other major professional… If you aren’t dead yet, you’d go from WhatsApp to Facebook to Twitter, typing, “Deepest condolences” with a prayer emoji. If not sharing/re-tweeting SOS messages for beds/meds/oxygen/ICU—never once bothering to even tag top organs of the state, in case they’d help. For, what’s the point? And what’s so private about a hospital.
Do you still fall for positivity frauds, claiming India will survive this? Of course it will. Or do you whisper that instead to those already dead? Because they were India! Better still; do you obsess over a national image abroad. As if Indians are dying—to show India in a bad light? And, significantly, who’s to say this is a one-off.
But could you please not make this about the Prime Minister? He’s been Indian middle-class’ favourite topic of debate, splitting living rooms into war zones. Everything can’t be about him. Unfair, no? Yes, that’s what I hear around me.
And assume all observations made against the government—it didn’t act enough (or at all) to procure vaccines; carried on electioneering; advertised and held the national super-spreader Kumbh Mela—can be countered by robust rebuttal/propaganda.
Sure, the ones critiquing the ruling class are yet the same, smallish lot, who firstly didn’t vote them in, and they criticise the government on everything—Delhi riots, farmers’ protests, demonetisation, complicated GST, religious CAA, human rights in Kashmir/elsewhere, censorship laws—calling it a “crisis generating machine”, anyway. Maybe any government would’ve proven ineffective to the scale of India’s population and the Corona spread; “unexpected/sudden,” as claimed.
Still. How does one give the PM credit for defeating the same virus in January, and not assign equal responsibility, when Covid-19 becomes the number one cause for deaths in May?
It’s not a surprise that even the desi middle-class’ Public Intellectual No 1, initially/eventually the establishment’s cheerleader, the “very upbeat” Chetan Bhagat, has had to speak up. And be counted, for the number of vaccines that could’ve saved us. Maybe he has personal friends/family suffering, like everybody else.
To be fair, he found IPL’s cricket matches being played/enjoyed, when people were dying, “weird”—presumably in poor taste. But massive constructions for new palaces for PM, vice president, and the parliament, with the same limited public money, carrying on uninterrupted during the pandemic, as something he doesn’t care about much. That’s just an argument over “symbolism”. It doesn’t have anything to do with the larger issue (of vaccination). Chalo, yeh bhi sahi.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
