http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/portal/2007/07/1022
July 2007 Darkness at noon Amit Sengupta Delhi We hijack instant history like instant food. Rajiv Goswami in flames, the brazenly prejudiced media selling the image faster than fast food. Youth for Equality docs with brooms imitating Dalit sweepers in Delhi, mocking at their 'lowly professional status'. Gujjars brandishing lathis, an irrational, aggressive mob, nothing less, nothing more. The antiseptic elite, bloated with the 10 per cent growth rate of an inegalitarian democracy — by, for and of the neo-rich — plays blind and deaf to the oppressive upper caste dominated social reality of feudal India, as if it does not exist. They play blind because they have systematically eliminated the poor from their 'frog-in-the-well' radars of private profit unleashed: do a random check of Dalit presence in big business, the famed IT sector or even in the media — even subverted statistics can't hide the big lie. And where was the Youth for Equality when the Gujjars hit the streets? Why didn't they light candles for their dead? Why don't they bring out their stethoscopes and placards for the thousands of dead and dying, here, there, everywhere, perhaps even those 'starvation death cases', declared dead due to 'cardiac arrests', as in the 'sick' tea-estates of Left-ruled West Bengal? You destroy nature and nature destroys you. You bury reality, and the magical realism of a ravaged democracy will bury you. None of us can escape this vicious cycle of our own actions. And inactions. Politicians won't learn their lessons. Quota politics is affirmative action, but it is not radical transformation — it is half-baked, creamy-layered, polarising, a piece of a realpolitik pie which is not infinite. Ask the Bhils and Sahariyas of Rajasthan, eternally starving in most abject poverty, or the Musahars of Bihar and the Dalits of Punjab, or even the 'suicidal farmers' of Vidharbha. Ask the 93 per cent unorganised workers of the entire work force in India, out of the 'Constitution' — sans social security or fundamental rights, not even 100 days of daily wages. Ask the vast majority of landless labourers and occupational castes in rural India, who have no access to education, health, the right to food or work, exiled in their own imaginary homeland. No, don't ask them. Because they are not even quoted in this quota misquote. They are outside all power politics of the SC-ST-OBC kaleidoscope. Because, for or against, this quota politics seems to have lost all its original originality — it has little to do anymore with social justice or youth or equality. -- Subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a BLANK email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
