Consider this. Somewhere in India, it is night, and you are sleeping peacefully. Suddenly in the middle of your deep slumber, you find yourself being rudely woken up and informed that you are now in Pakistan! National borders have been redrawn, and the land you are in now, belongs to Pakistan. You are told that you will have to vacate immediately and that you will be given your space in your new country instead of the one you cede now. What'd you do? You think that such crazy things don't happen ever?! Think again! As a nation we’ve been through it before, and it was called Partition!
In terms of the extant of its impact, what happened on November 9, 2016 was no less shocking. Only, instead of a home, this time, it was currency. I agree, the scenarios are not strictly comparable. But I can’t think of another close enough event in our post-independent history that has tossed about an Indian’s life as this has, not even the dreaded ‘emergency’.
Also, it is not the quantum of impact that I’m comparing here. While economists and political commentators try to assess the complex economic and political outcomes of demonetisation, it’d be equally interesting to look at this issue from the point of view of the people for whom the disruption caused to their everyday lives is substantial (even if temporary).
To reiterate, this is not a comment on the government’s decision. Rather, it is about how we Indians have reacted to the supposed ‘surgical’ strike on black money, and why.
Seen through this lens, two things strike one immediately. One, that we are a very tolerant people - very very tolerant. Two, that we are survivors. Tenacious survivors!
But first, on our virtue (?!) of tolerance. Barring a few sporadic incidents here and there of people complaining about their hardship, there has hardly been any show of impatience or belligerence by the common man. Despite the severe inconveniences caused to him, he stands stoicly, waiting hours for his turn to exchange old notes, irrespective of whether he understands or agrees with the move. Good for the government and the society at large!
But, can you imagine this happening anywhere else in the world?
For example, contrast this with the protests that broke out (also during the same week) by the detractors of President-Elect Trump, who took to the streets proclaiming that they had not voted for him and so they didn’t want him as their President. The episode turned nasty with the police resorting to shooting to curb the protestors.
Has this ever happened in India, the world’s largest democracy? Have we ever disagreed with the results of an election conducted duly under the aegis of the EC?
Why not?
While it can be debated if such tolerance is good for the society, the more interesting question to ask is ‘why’? Why are we Indians so tolerant? What’s it about us that makes us stoic?
Is it because we are fatalists, believers of karma theory, and can take anything that comes our way and explain it away as our fate?
Or is that years and years of successive invasions and foreign rule have broken our spirit and weakened our psyche that we’ve lost the courage to question?
Or, are we so used to being overrun by our rulers’ whimsical decisions that we don't find anything odd about yet another?
Or, is it that we have so much faith in our rulers that we accept all their decisions unquestioningly? (It can't be denied that many people appear convinced that the government’s move to demonetise is only a temporary irritant to be suffered for a larger good.)
Maybe, the answer is some or all of the above. But, apart from the socio-cultural and religious reasons, I suspect there is yet another reason for the unending tolerance we display, and that is a basic lack of entitlement in our dealings with the government.
We Indians don’t really ‘expect’ the government to work for our welfare. We simply perceive it as an unwelcome but unavoidable element of our lives, something to be wary of and kept at arms’ length.
Blame it on the Colonial hangover, if you will.
In his book ‘A South Indian Journey’, British historian Michael Woods says how for thirty years between 1749 and 1781, the Tamils from the delta region of the river Cauvery were caught in the crossfire between the British, the French and their ally Hyder Ali, with each of them trying to stake claim to the ‘Chola lands’. Unspeakable atrocities were unleashed on the victims - their agricultural lands destroyed, women violated, temples looted and places of worship desecrated. Surprisingly, Wood says, at the end of it all the Tamils ‘bore few grudges’ towards their perpetrators!
Surely, this speaks volumes of the attitude we take towards our ruling polity - that of benign resignation and apathy!
Even seven decades after independence, the constitutional assurances that the government is ‘of’ the people and ‘for’ the people remain but mere words. To most of us, the government remains but a peripheral entity - an irritant or an interference at best, an avoidable bully at worst. In other words, it is an entity we would like to have minimal interactions with.
This attitude can also explain the poor participation of Indians in government organised Citizen Forums for schemes like the Swacha Bharath Abhiyan, which have failed to take off as a people’s movement. But, on the positive side, our apathy has enabled us to survive bad, indifferent or even absent governments. (The most recent example is how for the last few months, the state of Tamil Nadu, even in the absence of active governance, has been functioning without descending into anarchy.)
And that is exactly how we Indians are dealing with the current crisis on hand. We want to dispense with it as quickly as we can, so we can get on with our lives. In a way, we Indians are taking this disruption like how we would deal with gum sticking to our boots!! Indulgent at best, apathetic at worst! You could call it ignorance or myopia. But, maybe, that’s what makes us big survivors….
On our ability to survive….. in the next blog
In terms of the extant of its impact, what happened on November 9, 2016 was no less shocking. Only, instead of a home, this time, it was currency. I agree, the scenarios are not strictly comparable. But I can’t think of another close enough event in our post-independent history that has tossed about an Indian’s life as this has, not even the dreaded ‘emergency’.
Also, it is not the quantum of impact that I’m comparing here. While economists and political commentators try to assess the complex economic and political outcomes of demonetisation, it’d be equally interesting to look at this issue from the point of view of the people for whom the disruption caused to their everyday lives is substantial (even if temporary).
To reiterate, this is not a comment on the government’s decision. Rather, it is about how we Indians have reacted to the supposed ‘surgical’ strike on black money, and why.
Seen through this lens, two things strike one immediately. One, that we are a very tolerant people - very very tolerant. Two, that we are survivors. Tenacious survivors!
But first, on our virtue (?!) of tolerance. Barring a few sporadic incidents here and there of people complaining about their hardship, there has hardly been any show of impatience or belligerence by the common man. Despite the severe inconveniences caused to him, he stands stoicly, waiting hours for his turn to exchange old notes, irrespective of whether he understands or agrees with the move. Good for the government and the society at large!
For example, contrast this with the protests that broke out (also during the same week) by the detractors of President-Elect Trump, who took to the streets proclaiming that they had not voted for him and so they didn’t want him as their President. The episode turned nasty with the police resorting to shooting to curb the protestors.
Has this ever happened in India, the world’s largest democracy? Have we ever disagreed with the results of an election conducted duly under the aegis of the EC?
Why not?
While it can be debated if such tolerance is good for the society, the more interesting question to ask is ‘why’? Why are we Indians so tolerant? What’s it about us that makes us stoic?
Is it because we are fatalists, believers of karma theory, and can take anything that comes our way and explain it away as our fate?
Or is that years and years of successive invasions and foreign rule have broken our spirit and weakened our psyche that we’ve lost the courage to question?
Or, are we so used to being overrun by our rulers’ whimsical decisions that we don't find anything odd about yet another?
Or, is it that we have so much faith in our rulers that we accept all their decisions unquestioningly? (It can't be denied that many people appear convinced that the government’s move to demonetise is only a temporary irritant to be suffered for a larger good.)
Maybe, the answer is some or all of the above. But, apart from the socio-cultural and religious reasons, I suspect there is yet another reason for the unending tolerance we display, and that is a basic lack of entitlement in our dealings with the government.
We Indians don’t really ‘expect’ the government to work for our welfare. We simply perceive it as an unwelcome but unavoidable element of our lives, something to be wary of and kept at arms’ length.
Blame it on the Colonial hangover, if you will.
In his book ‘A South Indian Journey’, British historian Michael Woods says how for thirty years between 1749 and 1781, the Tamils from the delta region of the river Cauvery were caught in the crossfire between the British, the French and their ally Hyder Ali, with each of them trying to stake claim to the ‘Chola lands’. Unspeakable atrocities were unleashed on the victims - their agricultural lands destroyed, women violated, temples looted and places of worship desecrated. Surprisingly, Wood says, at the end of it all the Tamils ‘bore few grudges’ towards their perpetrators!
Surely, this speaks volumes of the attitude we take towards our ruling polity - that of benign resignation and apathy!
Even seven decades after independence, the constitutional assurances that the government is ‘of’ the people and ‘for’ the people remain but mere words. To most of us, the government remains but a peripheral entity - an irritant or an interference at best, an avoidable bully at worst. In other words, it is an entity we would like to have minimal interactions with.
This attitude can also explain the poor participation of Indians in government organised Citizen Forums for schemes like the Swacha Bharath Abhiyan, which have failed to take off as a people’s movement. But, on the positive side, our apathy has enabled us to survive bad, indifferent or even absent governments. (The most recent example is how for the last few months, the state of Tamil Nadu, even in the absence of active governance, has been functioning without descending into anarchy.)
And that is exactly how we Indians are dealing with the current crisis on hand. We want to dispense with it as quickly as we can, so we can get on with our lives. In a way, we Indians are taking this disruption like how we would deal with gum sticking to our boots!! Indulgent at best, apathetic at worst! You could call it ignorance or myopia. But, maybe, that’s what makes us big survivors….
On our ability to survive….. in the next blog
