The World Of The Games: Warring Illusions
By PK Vijayan
03 October, 2010
Countercurrents.org
A ‘world class city’ is coming up in India today, in the capital, where Delhi used to be. It will last from the 1st of October to the 15th of October, after which it will vanish as ephemerally as it will appear. It is as yet too early to say if Delhi, the city that resolutely refused to become ‘world class’, will reappear, or what else may appear in place of both Delhi and the ‘world class city’. But this much is certain: the ‘world’ in this city will no longer be the same.
During the period when the ‘world class city’ replaces Delhi, there will be only one ‘class’ that will occupy the space of the city – or rather two: the small but infinitely more powerful one of the ruling elite; and the much larger one of the middle class – multi-layered and heterogeneous in so many ways, but tragically homogenized by the blinkers of patriotism and paradoxically, also by the hunger to be part of a mythical ‘world class’. The tiny but all-powerful ruling elite of course need this larger set of subjects to remain in power – and need for them to remain blinkered, if not blinded by their hunger. But most importantly, they need them to yearn for the ‘world class city’, even if the illusoriness of that city is patently clear to everyone. And so various urban policies to bring about this illusion have been initiated, with the grateful approval of large sections of this middle classes. There are of course the usual dissenters – jholawala intellectuals, human rights activists and their sensationalist friends in the media – all of who are parts of this class – but firstly they constitute a minority, and secondly, they constitute just a minor bump in the path of the speeding juggernaut of administrative fiats by which the city is being ‘cleansed’.
First in these is the removal of the unsightly poor from the city – those intractably persistent markers of ‘underdevelopment’. The innumerable poor, destitute and diseased denizens of the city that used to be Delhi will have been packed away – some right out of the city, stuffed into outgoing trains and buses at gunpoint by an enthusiastic police force; some herded into parks converted into concentration camps, walled up behind aesthetically designed ‘scene cutters’ that will prevent the visiting ‘world’ from ever knowing they are there; some will be packed away into the various jhuggi-jhopdi colonies (also known as JJ Colonies – transformed into civility by the power of the acronym) that begrime the suburban landscapes of the city; and the remainder will no doubt be swiftly stuffed into jails and prisons through the mechanisms of various unpleasant charges available in the IPC.
Alongside this ‘cleansing’, there have been associated activities, like the removal of cycle-rickshaws – those ubiquitously embarrassing reminders of our ‘backwardness’ – from across the city, and their replacement by sleek, colourfully designed, electric-powered ‘e-rickshaws’; or the complete ban on hawkers and vendors on the streets of Delhi. We will no longer have migrant, illiterate, uncivilised peasants-turned-rickshaw-pullers to haggle with in almost extortionist ways, when we take a rickshaw, but rather, well-dressed, well-spoken and trained ‘e-rickshaw-wallahs’, whose rates are fixed (and probably inflexibly extortionist themselves – but we will have no say in that anymore). We will no longer see pani-wallahs, chai-wallahs, bhel-puri-wallahs, kulcha-chhole-wallahs, momo-vendors, vegetable and fruit vendors, and all the rest of that pot-pourri of itinerant goods and services that constituted the irreplaceable background to street-life in Delhi. In their place we will have only empty, but freshly painted and tarmaced, roads and boulevards, marked by the occasional licensed kiosk that will sell only the well-packaged, branded and licensed products of our eager and waiting industries. The colossal unemployment this will cause, and its effect on the economy, are yet to be measured; but there is no doubt that it will be enormous. Add to this the sheer inconvenience of this removal, and the concomitant additional expenditure to the millions who have come to depend on this sector, and we will have a glimmer of the invisible costs that this monumental prestidigitation that is being undertaken in the name of the Games, will eventually entail.
The simulacrum of being ‘developed’ that we hope to achieve doesn’t end with these. The government is also going in for mass replacement of the regular buses of the public transport system with spanking new air-conditioned buses that charge prohibitive fares (but then the poor who needed lower fares aren’t around to use them anymore, so how does that matter?). Stray dogs, cattle and other unsightly bestial signs of being ‘third world’ are being removed with a speed and alacrity only matched by that of the disappearance of enormous sums of money. This selective ‘upgradation’, ‘development’ and ‘beautification’ of specifically targeted areas – sites of the city close to or part of the CWG – on a ‘war-footing’ is, in one sense, the exact equivalent of the grandiose cloth-palaces that are erected for the typical Delhi wedding – and the minister who made that unfortunate comparison in the first place was, in this sense, speaking truer than perhaps he himself could have desired. But the ‘world’ that will come visiting will not know – or so we hope, keeping our fingers and toes (and possibly even other less visible appendages) crossed that buses will not catch fire, bridges will not collapse, roofs will not cave in, stadia and apartments will not implode, rooms will not be invaded by snakes and dogs, roads will not develop potholes – in short, that the whole blessed shamiana (sham-iana, scam-iana, whatever) that we have put up as our version of the ‘world class city’, will hold, just for two weeks, it will hold…. After that, who cares if roofs fall, or floors cave in, or bridges collapse, or how many die or are injured in that process – at least the ‘world’ will not be watching.
Even before all these policies were put in place, the government had ‘encouraged’ the various Delhi University colleges to close their hostels for three months before the Games, ostensibly in order to overhaul them completely, and render them habitable by ‘international’ standards. Absolutely no compensatory mechanism or procedure was set in place to help the aggrieved students; they were simply left to fend for themselves. This peremptory eviction of students from the hostels was apparently to accommodate various kinds of guests who will arrive for the Games – but mainly the 800-odd ‘volunteers’ for the Games from different parts of the country. It is not clear why these ‘volunteers’ from outside were so desperately needed that several hundred students had to be rendered without accommodation; could it be that there is a severe shortage of ‘volunteers’ in this recalcitrant city? Or is it that, in the guise of bringing in volunteers, various political constituencies will be satisfied with a free trip to Delhi and to the Games? In any case, Rs. 70,000 crores have been spent so far, and several hundreds of those crores on refurbishing hostels that will become exorbitantly expensive to run, after the Games (and therefore available only to students who could well afford not to live in them in any case); but evidently the government found it – what? cheaper? more efficient? or just another way to spread the largesse of the Games funds? – to commandeer the student hostels than to board and lodge these ‘official’ visitors in hotels.
The ‘war-footing’ though, on which all this was undertaken, is not simply a metaphor. Shock has turned to mind-numbing awe as the government has revealed its intentions to pin this mirage of a ‘world class city’ to deadly reality, at least for two weeks, through sheer force of arms. An astounding 100,000 police and paramilitary personnel, complete with riot-gear, snipers and bomb squads, have been deployed, ostensibly to ensure that this fragile ‘world class city’ is not ripped apart by ‘terrorists’. There is apparently also a proposal to impose Section 144 of the IPC (which prohibits the assembly of five or more persons) across the city for the duration of the Games. The government has also used Section 118 of the Motor Vehicles Act to declare a dedicated CWG lane on Delhi roads; entering this lane without authorization will lead to instant impounding of the vehicle and a fine of no less than Rs. 2000. The police have already started enforcing these with ruthless efficiency. The message is clear: the police are here in such large numbers not just to counter possible ‘terrorism’ – the word that is fast becoming a law in its own right, an emblem under which anything can be justified and legitimated. No, the police are here in such large numbers to ensure that the recalcitrant denizens of Delhi behave themselves – or rather, that they do not behave like themselves but – for just two weeks – like citizens of a ‘world class city’. The civilizing of the Delhi-ite is being undertaken on a ‘war-footing’, quite literally here – and the irony is that the illusion of the ‘world class city’ is preventing the Delhi-ite from even knowing that he or she is being warred upon.
Let us pause for a moment and reflect on the context of these developments. If they had been undertaken in China, or North Korea, or even Singapore, we would not have hesitated to decry them as the violations of the democratic rights of their peoples, as the excesses of authoritarian regimes and police states. These are actions perfectly in tune with such regimes, expected of them. Nobody expects that an event of this scale would be conducted in any other way by say, a Hu Jintao, a Kim Jong Il, a Robert Mugabe or a Muammar Qaddafi. What we have here though, is the presence of the actions apparently minus the singly identifiable actor, the dictator whom we can point to and decry: who do we hold responsible for this magic act, this illusionist’s trick that will make Delhi disappear for two weeks and produce a ‘world class city’ in its place? Suresh Kalmadi? Sheila Dixit? The Group of Ministers that was finally appointed to oversee the Games, when both the gargantuan corruption and the absolute failure to deliver on time became too patently apparent to ignore? P. Chidambaram? Manmohan Singh? Sonia Gandhi? Where does the proverbial buck stop (the actual buck stopped long ago, tucked away with its billions of brethren in the vaults of Swiss and other overseas banks by now – but that is another story)?
For some days now, the national anthem has been ‘let’s not dwell on this now, let’s come together and make the Games happen, it’s the country’s pride at stake; we’ll deal with the culprits later’. The fact of the matter is that, after the Games, another set of games will begin, the second act of the Great Illusion will commence. The second Great Illusion that will be perpetrated will be the disappearance of the first one. Even if the Great Shamiana of the Games does not hold up – with more collapsing bridges and roofs – even if every last shred of the Great Illusion is exposed for what it is, there is no doubt that the Second Great Illusion is already being prepared, to make the first one disappear. This is easier, much easier, to do when it isn’t entirely clear who the perpetrator of the first illusion was: the principle is that if there was no illusionist, then there was no illusion – it was all just an illusion about an illusion. It’s a little more difficult when it is clear that there were several illusionists: but since it is going to be up to the illusionists themselves to identify the actual illusionists and take action against them, this poses no real problem. We can safely say that whatever action will be taken will be purely illusory – that is, if they are unsuccessful in convincing us that there was no illusionist at all, which they will no doubt pull every trick in the book to do.
This metaphor of the illusion has been stretched enough; like all metaphors, it has the dangerous potential to become an illusion itself. To return then to ground reality, let me spell out some propositions by way of my understanding of this. First, we didn’t need a dictatorship or an authoritarian regime to have these gross violations of democratic rights happen under our very noses: they happened precisely because we live in a purported ‘democracy’. But this ‘democracy’, which is in reality nothing more than a sort of extended oligarchy, ensures that the benefits of its democratic principles remain confined to the ruling elite, and to some extent, and in a much more diluted form, to the Great Indian Middle Class. The elite use the powers vested in them by this ‘democratic’ system to garner and accumulate wealth, not just for themselves but for their partners in the broad alliance that gives the impression of ‘democracy’. This mutual support system is what will ensure that the guilty in the Games scam-iana will never be brought to book. If there is an outcry against the likes of Kalmadi, there is a deeper class sense that will persuade Us to let it be, fostered by our ever-faithful media: because, deeply ingrained in the unconscious of this class is the awareness that the likes of Kalmadi are only continuing to do what we do routinely, except more blatantly, and on a much greater scale. When Kalmadi is finally let off the hook, as no doubt he will be, there will be some mutterings and some rantings, but the matter will be quickly forgotten. That is what he is banking on, and that is what the essence of our ‘democracy’ is. In this ‘democracy’, our elected representatives and their appointed officers tell us that it is in our interests that our democratic rights are being violated, and we paradoxically accept it because we believe that our representatives, being products of the democratic system, represent democracy itself. Even when it is patently clear that they do not, we cannot conceive of their being anything but democratic, because to acknowledge that would be to acknowledge the systemic failure of this ‘democracy’. It would be to acknowledge that we are victims of the same system that we routinely participate in, that is used to routinely victimize the millions below us – Us, the Great Indian Middle Class – a process of victimization that at once defines Us and that we thrive on, indeed are dependent on. The half-hearted outcry against the deportation of the toiling masses from the ‘world class city’ and specifically from its extensions in Gurgaon, arose because of this very dependency: how can we be at liberty to participate in the illusion of the ‘world class city’ if we are tied down with the myriad domestic chores that our domestics perform for us?
But this is the price we are being told to pay for participation in the ‘world class city’ – and we are willing to pay it because, on the one hand, of course, we get to be, for two weeks, citizens of a ‘developed world’, and on the other, it is nothing compared to the violence perpetrated – in our name and by us – on the rest of the populace of the country. Farmers dying by the hundreds of thousands because of the depredations of agricultural corporations that we own, or work in, or get dividend-profits from, will be cynically portrayed as ‘suicides-for-money’; tribals battling the established nexus between the government and big mining corporations, that is rendering them destitute in the millions in the process of capturing their lands, will be cynically portrayed as Maoist terrorists, and systematically crushed; tax-sops to the tune of several lakhs of crores will be proudly proffered to dollar billionaire industrial giants, but loan-waivers of a few thousand crores to peasants across the country will be bitterly resented; workers agitating against appalling working conditions and demanding no more than marginal increase in wages are berated for their greed and thrashed by an ever-willing police; the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy continue to remain beggars for our democratic favours, long after our ‘democratic’ system, with our silent collusion, allowed the villains of the piece to go practically scott-free – and so on.
Predatory capitalism, parasite capitalism, crony capitalism – call it what you will, it is thriving in our very real world, because that world is not the ‘world class’ world that we would like to imagine it as, but a deeply feudal, profoundly colonized, underdeveloped-in-every-sense world of caste-, class-, ethnic-, religious and gender-violence. The Great Indian Middle Class sits on the skin of this world – predatory, parasite, crony – like a hallucinating bug, insulated from the actuality of this world by its hallucinations, protected from its violences – however fragilely – by the chains of ‘democracy’ that bind this world and hold it tightly in place. The Delhi we know may or may not reappear, after the Games; but that world – destitute, deprived, steeped in poverty and violence, and warred upon by the Indian state in a multitude of ways – that world, it seems, is doomed to remain invisible.
PK Vijayan teaches English Literature at Hindu College, Delhi University. His research is in the area of gender and nationalism. He is currently examining the intersectionalities of class, caste, religion and gender as these emerge in the Sachar Committee Report. He may be contacted at [email protected]
