The word ‘Indian’ is too broad and too vague, so I’m talking about the middle-class Indian male. There was one kind of Indian 20 years ago, straitjacketed by his social, political and economic world. In that world, power was the way to economic comfort. For that Indian, it was merely a matter of holding on to that power, which was his by virtue of birth (read caste). He already had it.
So while he merrily sold himself for dowry, got jobs because he had usurped the education system and deprived the majority of access to its benefits, he sold a set of values that saw money as evil and we were all living a vague “Indianess”, where love and peace prevailed. Of course, it goes without saying some sold it, some bought into it and some disagreed, but only mildly. They had, between the three of them, already snuffed out the aspirations of the majority by intellectual subterfuge and brute force.
Without resorting to statistics, one can safely state that in the India of 20 years ago, there was a set of established leaders—economic, political and social. The rest of us—upper caste, middle caste —were servants. The line, or value system, sold was that affluence was akin to depravity, therefore, the majority should not aspire to it. Everyone should wait for the nobility to save their souls. However, 20 years ago, the cracks had started to appear because the rest of “India” had already seen through the con.
And then a seminal event happened. The western world realised that its markets were not enough and it needed our markets to keep its economies going. And suddenly the population of India—which was its biggest problem—became its biggest asset. And the value systems changed—or, shall we say, another set of values was floated as being “ideal”. So the Indian middle-class male was given American baseball caps in all sizes, which he promptly put on his kids’ heads as he walked with his manicured wife with her hair coloured blonde into shopping malls, waving his credit cards as if they were a gift from Alladin.
Now, this prosperous Indian male has begun to think he is special, therefore, “upper” (caste again). So everyone lower than him is a servant without the right to dissent. Because he has denied himself that right, he then thinks nobody else has that right as well. However, the newly affluent Indian has a strange kind of schism in his head. He says he believes in free competition but does not recognise that it is not enough to open the gates of prosperity for all. You have to first make them capable of walking through these gates. Some minor reservations in government jobs freak him out and he lashes out at the beneficiaries of handouts with a kind of vicious paranoid anger.
But what gives him actual nightmares are women. I don’t know if I am right, but I think they are the real beneficiaries of liberalisation even though some may say that it is an “unintended consequence”. The logic of the marketplace is such that the rights of half the consumers can no longer be denied. And a whole edifice of values lies shattered. The woman can not only give birth and nurture his babies, she can replace him in the workplace as well. He has discovered that if he can betray her, so can she. If he can leave her, so can she! Her value system has changed and is sometimes in opposition to his.
But there is another revolt brewing—some have sensed it and some haven’t. When you create needs and flaunt objects of aspiration, the desires are created in everyone (and not just the target audience). A substantial part of the great Indian mass that has been left out of the economic juggernaut now desires the same things and is turning red with anger at the joke being played at them. The system will have to change its values and allow more of them to enter the mainstream or else the whole fabric will be rent. In the next 20 years, another set of values will collapse!
The writer is an award-winning filmmaker.
