N Y Times (April 25, 2012)
Letter from India
'National' Loses Power as an Idea in India
By MANU JOSEPH
Published: April 25, 2012
NEW DELHI — This sentence has no meaning: “Tea to be declared Indian
national drink.”
It was the headline this week in several newspapers that reported
on a proposal of the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission of
India, a government body that plans things. What will happen after tea
is declared the national drink? Nothing much, of course. But once word
got out, an influential cooperative society of milk producers said that
milk, and not tea, should be declared the Indian national drink.
It is odd that this fuss has arrived at a time when the very idea of
“national” is becoming irrelevant in India, especially in matters far
more serious than tribute to tea. The political supremacy of New Delhi
and the central government is being challenged by state governments and
other regional forces.
About three months ago, when the Indian government decided to allow 100
percent foreign investment in single-brand retail stores, several
regional governments refused to implement the policy because they
wanted to protect small businesses in their states. Also, the central
government has been unable to push through its plan for a national
anti-terrorism agency because some states are unwilling to make their
own law enforcement agencies subordinate to such a central authority.
There was a time when the chief ministers of the states would arrive in
the capital like indebted peasants to plead for funds from the masters
of Delhi, but now they simply raise a stink when they don’t get enough.
It appears that every fortnight or so the authority of the center, even
its common sense and credibility, are publicly challenged by the
states.
A major reason for this is that the Indian National Congress, which
heads the alliance that forms the Indian government, has been
diminished. The supremacy of the center made sense when the Congress
party was at the height of its powers both in Delhi and in several
states. But the party has lost power in many of its traditional
strongholds, and with the spectacular rise of regional parties,
national is not what it used to be.
For most of modern India’s history, everything national was superior to
what was near and familiar. After all, wasn’t it true that national
highways were broader than state highways, central government jobs
better paying than state government jobs and the prime minister more
powerful than a state chief minister?
In the early 1980s, even in the states where the Congress party had
only a modest hold, like in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi was unfailingly granted the honor of a great
spectacle. Huge crowds went to see her. She never spoke in Hindi
because there was a powerful sentiment against the perceived
imperialism of Hindi. She would speak in English, and P. Chidambaram,
who was then an emerging star of the Congress party and is now minister
of home affairs, would stand beside her and translate into Tamil. But
her opening words would usually be in Tamil, a tortured, practiced
Tamil, as a grand condescension of a national figure from Delhi to the
peripheral people of Tamil Nadu. And the crowds would erupt in honest
joy. Later, when her son Rajiv first visited Madras, schools were
closed so that children could go and gawk at him.
India does not have a national politician anymore, who is national in
the true sense of the word.
The power of the center was in no small part derived from the idea of
central planning. The Planning Commission, the same agency whose deputy
chairman was behind tea as the national drink, decided from Delhi what
all industries would produce, how much and for what purpose. Central
planning damaged the Indian economy for years and survives today in a
much less deadly form.
In the past two decades, with economic liberalization, the political
sphere of the Indian has become much smaller. Even in the national
elections, he votes on local issues, for local politicians. Delhi still
does attract politicians, but its glow is dimming. Four years ago, when
Raj Thackeray, a rising politician in Mumbai, instigated violence
against migrants from North India, I asked him if he was worried that
he would never be accepted outside the western state of Maharashtra,
that he would never become “national.” He told me that he didn’t see
the point of being a national leader.
It is not just in politics that the power of the national has
diminished. The news media are increasingly forced to become regional.
Most of India’s English-language newspapers consider themselves
national publications. But they are not so in spirit. They have
multiple editions, and on most days local reports overshadow national
news.
Scores of regional news channels in Indian languages have sprouted,
many of them financed by political parties. English-language television
news channels believe that they are national, and as a consequence are
confused about what their viewers want to watch. They have seen their
political clout shrink and are saved largely by the belief of
advertisers that the elite consumers of the English news channels have
considerable purchasing power.
Accustomed to decades of concentration of power, Delhi’s elite is a
well-run confederation of cozy cartels containing politicians,
bureaucrats, merchants, middlemen, journalists, novelists and people
whose day jobs cannot be easily described. They take care of their own.
That is how they guard their mediocrity.
As the idea of “national” sinks into obsolescence, it will one day
liberate the rest of India from the hold of Delhi. In a way, that has
already begun to happen.
Manu Joseph is editor of the Indian newsweekly Open and author of the
novel “Serious Men.”
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