Article on CWG, etc

8/8/2019 Article on CWG, etc

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The World of the Games: Warring Illusions

A world class city is coming up in India today, in the capital, where Delhiused to be. It will last from the 1 st of October to the 15 th of October, afterwhich 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, willreappear, or what else may appear in place of both Delhi and the worldclass city. But this much is certain: the world in this city will no longer bethe same.

During the period when the world class city replaces Delhi, there will beonly one class that will occupy the space of the city or rather two: thesmall but infinitely more powerful one of the ruling elite; and the much largerone 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 inpower and need for them to remain blinkered, if not blinded by theirhunger. But most importantly, they need them to yearn for the world classcity, even if the illusoriness of that city is patently clear to everyone. And sovarious urban policies to bring about this illusion have been initiated, withthe grateful approval of large sections of this middle classes. There are of course the usual dissenters jholawala intellectuals, human rights activistsand 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 administrativefiats by which the city is being cleansed.

First in these is the removal of the unsightly poor from the city thoseintractably persistent markers of underdevelopment. The innumerable poor,destitute and diseased denizens of the city that used to be Delhi will havebeen packed away some right out of the city, stuffed into outgoing trainsand buses at gunpoint by an enthusiastic police force; some herded intoparks converted into concentration camps, walled up behind aesthetically

designed scene cutters that will prevent the visiting world from everknowing they are there; some will be packed away into the various jhuggi-

jhopdi colonies (also known as JJ Colonies transformed into civility by thepower of the acronym) that begrime the suburban landscapes of the city;and the remainder will no doubt be swiftly stuffed into jails and prisonsthrough the mechanisms of various unpleasant charges available in the IPC.


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Alongside this cleansing, there have been associated activities, like theremoval 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 onhawkers and vendors on the streets of Delhi. We will no longer have migrant,illiterate, uncivilised peasants-turned-rickshaw-pullers to haggle with inalmost extortionist ways, when we take a rickshaw, but rather, well-dressed,well-spoken and trained e-rickshaw-wallahs, whose rates are fixed (andprobably inflexibly extortionist themselves but we will have no say in thatanymore). 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 thatconstituted the irreplaceable background to street-life in Delhi. In their placewe will have only empty, but freshly painted and tarmaced, roads and

boulevards, marked by the occasional licensed kiosk that will sell only thewell-packaged, branded and licensed products of our eager and waitingindustries. The colossal unemployment this will cause, and its effect on theeconomy, are yet to be measured; but there is no doubt that it will beenormous. Add to this the sheer inconvenience of this removal, and theconcomitant additional expenditure to the millions who have come to dependon this sector, and we will have a glimmer of the invisible costs that thismonumental prestidigitation that is being undertaken in the name of theGames, will eventually entail.

The simulacrum of being developed that we hope to achieve doesnt endwith these. The government is also going in for mass replacement of theregular buses of the public transport system with spanking new air-conditioned buses that charge prohibitive fares (but then the poor whoneeded lower fares arent around to use them anymore, so how does thatmatter?). Stray dogs, cattle and other unsightly bestial signs of being thirdworld 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 thecity close to or part of the CWG on a war-footing is, in one sense, theexact equivalent of the grandiose cloth-palaces that are erected for thetypical Delhi wedding and the minister who made that unfortunatecomparison in the first place was, in this sense, speaking truer than perhapshe himself could have desired. But the world that will come visiting will notknow or so we hope, keeping our fingers and toes (and possibly even otherless visible appendages) crossed that buses will not catch fire, bridges will


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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 developpotholes 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, willhold, just for two weeks, it will hold. After that, who cares if roofs fall, orfloors cave in, or bridges collapse, or how many die or are injured in thatprocess at least the world will not be watching.

Even before all these policies were put in place, the government hadencouraged the various Delhi University colleges to close their hostels forthree months before the Games, ostensibly in order to overhaul themcompletely, and render them habitable by international standards.Absolutely no compensatory mechanism or procedure was set in place tohelp the aggrieved students; they were simply left to fend for themselves.

This peremptory eviction of students from the hostels was apparently toaccommodate various kinds of guests who will arrive for the Games butmainly the 800-odd volunteers for the Games from different parts of thecountry. It is not clear why these volunteers from outside were sodesperately needed that several hundred students had to be renderedwithout 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 involunteers, various political constituencies will be satisfied with a free trip toDelhi and to the Games? In any case, Rs. 70,000 crores have been spent sofar, and several hundreds of those crores on refurbishing hostels that will

become exorbitantly expensive to run, after the Games (and thereforeavailable only to students who could well afford not to live in them in anycase); but evidently the government found it what? cheaper? moreefficient? or just another way to spread the largesse of the Games funds? to commandeer the student hostels than to board and lodge these officialvisitors in hotels.

The war-footing though, on which all this was undertaken, is not simply ametaphor. Shock has turned to mind-numbing awe as the government hasrevealed its intentions to pin this mirage of a world class city to deadlyreality, at least for two weeks, through sheer force of arms. An astounding100,000 police and paramilitary personnel, complete with riot-gear, snipersand bomb squads, have been deployed, ostensibly to ensure that this fragileworld class city is not ripped apart by terrorists. There is apparently also aproposal 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. Thegovernment has also used Section 118 of the Motor Vehicles Act to declare a


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dedicated CWG lane on Delhi roads; entering this lane without authorizationwill lead to instant impounding of the vehicle and a fine of no less than Rs.2000. The police have already started enforcing these with ruthlessefficiency. The message is clear: the police are here in such large numbersnot just to counter possible terrorism the word that is fast becoming a lawin its own right, an emblem under which anything can be justified andlegitimated. No, the police are here in such large numbers to ensure that therecalcitrant denizens of Delhi behave themselves or rather, that they donot behave like themselves but for just two weeks like citizens of a worldclass 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 worldclass city is preventing the Delhi-ite from even knowing that he or she isbeing warred upon.

Let us pause for a moment and reflect on the context of thesedevelopments. If they had been undertaken in China, or North Korea, or evenSingapore, we would not have hesitated to decry them as the violations of the democratic rights of their peoples, as the excesses of authoritarianregimes and police states. These are actions perfectly in tune with suchregimes, expected of them. Nobody expects that an event of this scale wouldbe conducted in any other way by say, a Hu Jintao, a Kim Jong Il, a RobertMugabe or a Muammar Qaddafi. What we have here though, is the presenceof the actions apparently minus the singly identifiable actor, the dictatorwhom we can point to and decry: who do we hold responsible for this magic

act, this illusionists trick that will make Delhi disappear for two weeks andproduce a world class city in its place? Suresh Kalmadi? Sheila Dixit? TheGroup of Ministers that was finally appointed to oversee the Games, whenboth the gargantuan corruption and the absolute failure to deliver on timebecame too patently apparent to ignore? P. Chidambaram? ManmohanSingh? Sonia Gandhi? Where does the proverbial buck stop (the actual buckstopped 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 lets not dwell on thisnow, lets come together and make the Games happen, its the countryspride at stake; well deal with the culprits later. The fact of the matter isthat, after the Games, another set of games will begin, the second act of theGreat Illusion will commence. The second Great Illusion that will beperpetrated will be the disappearance of the first one. Even if the GreatShamiana of the Games does not hold up with more collapsing bridges androofs even if every last shred of the Great Illusion is exposed for what it is,


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there is no doubt that the Second Great Illusion is already being prepared, tomake the first one disappear. This is easier, much easier, to do when it isntentirely clear who the perpetrator of the first illusion was: the principle isthat if there was no illusionist, then there was no illusion it was all just anillusion about an illusion. Its a little more difficult when it is clear that therewere several illusionists: but since it is going to be up to the illusioniststhemselves to identify the actual illusionists and take action against them,this poses no real problem. We can safely say that whatever action will betaken will be purely illusory that is, if they are unsuccessful in convincingus that there was no illusionist at all, which they will no doubt pull every trickin 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 toground reality, let me spell out some propositions by way of myunderstanding of this. First, we didnt need a dictatorship or an authoritarianregime to have these gross violations of democratic rights happen under ourvery noses: they happened precisely because we live in a purporteddemocracy. But this democracy, which is in reality nothing more than asort of extended oligarchy, ensures that the benefits of its democraticprinciples remain confined to the ruling elite, and to some extent, and in amuch more diluted form, to the Great Indian Middle Class. The elite use thepowers vested in them by this democratic system to garner and accumulatewealth, not just for themselves but for their partners in the broad alliance

that gives the impression of democracy. This mutual support system iswhat will ensure that the guilty in the Games scam-iana will never bebrought to book. If there is an outcry against the likes of Kalmadi, there is adeeper 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 isthe awareness that the likes of Kalmadi are only continuing to do what we doroutinely, except more blatantly, and on a much greater scale. WhenKalmadi is finally let off the hook, as no doubt he will be, there will be somemutterings and some rantings, but the matter will be quickly forgotten. Thatis what he is banking on, and that is what the essence of our democracy is.In this democracy, our elected representatives and their appointed officerstell 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. Evenwhen it is patently clear that they do not, we cannot conceive of their beinganything but democratic, because to acknowledge that would be to


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acknowledge the systemic failure of this democracy. It would be toacknowledge that we are victims of the same system that we routinelyparticipate in, that is used to routinely victimize the millions below us Us,the Great Indian Middle Class a process of victimization that at oncedefines Us and that we thrive on, indeed are dependent on. The half-heartedoutcry against the deportation of the toiling masses from the world classcity and specifically from its extensions in Gurgaon, arose because of thisvery dependency: how can we be at liberty to participate in the illusion of theworld class city if we are tied down with the myriad domestic chores thatour domestics perform for us?

But this is the price we are being told to pay for participation in the worldclass 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 theother, it is nothing compared to the violence perpetrated in our name andby us on the rest of the populace of the country. Farmers dying by thehundreds of thousands because of the depredations of agriculturalcorporations that we own, or work in, or get dividend-profits from, will becynically portrayed as suicides-for-money; tribals battling the establishednexus between the government and big mining corporations, that isrendering them destitute in the millions in the process of capturing theirlands, will be cynically portrayed as Maoist terrorists, and systematicallycrushed; tax-sops to the tune of several lakhs of crores will be proudlyproffered 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 nomore than marginal increase in wages are berated for their greed andthrashed by an ever-willing police; the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedycontinue to remain beggars for our democratic favours, long after ourdemocratic system, with our silent collusion, allowed the villains of thepiece to go practically scot-free and so on.

Predatory capitalism, parasite capitalism, crony capitalism call it what youwill, it is thriving in our very real world, because that world is not the worldclass 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 onthe skin of this world predatory, parasite, crony like a hallucinating bug,insulated from the actuality of this world by its hallucinations, protected fromits violences however fragilely by the chains of democracy that bind thisworld and hold it tightly in place. The Delhi we know may or may not


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reappear, after the Games; but that world destitute, deprived, steeped inpoverty 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

Asst. Prof., Dept. of English, Hindu College, Delhi University.

Bio-note:

PK Vijayan teaches English Literature at Hindu College, Delhi University. Hisresearch is in the area of gender and nationalism. He is currently examiningthe intersectionalities of class, caste, religion and gender as these emerge inthe Sachar Committee Report. He may be contacted at

[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]

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Article on CWG, etc