Vikram Garg: Thoughts on India's Middle Class.
... It seems that for now these [middle class] aspirations are mostly consumerish and professional, not political.
But why not ? So much is wrong with India’s politics. What [explains] this most unforgivable disengagement ? Many different reasons have been proposed, but I think it really starts in school. Although the syllabus is now much better, when I was in school I mostly learnt about the Freedom Struggle, Shivaji and the Maratha Empire. I learnt a lot about what the results of the Freedom Struggle should have been and how a democratic India should be run. But I learnt absolutely nothing about what happened in the 50 odd years of a supposedly ‘free’ India. My textbooks were silent on the Emergency, the Babri Masjid demolition, problems in Punjab, Kashmir and the North East. They were silent on the day to day corruption. They did a very bad job of making me an Indian citizen. Add to this, the traditional nepotistic and self-serving attitudes of most Indians meant that we choose ambitions/aspirations with little regard to what effect our life will have on the broader society we are part of.
So in India today, we have a generation of young men and women who ‘dream’ of Harvard, neuro-surgery, nano-technology and New York, but there are few signs of environmental lawyers, quality journalists and film-makers, professors with India-specific research interests and politicians from the middle class. The entire nation seems in decay, institutions that are the fundamentals of the nation are collapsing, because the young blood that would have nourished them is now either in America doing a PhD in Computer Science or working in a tech company in Bangalore. For now it seems, middle India has abandoned the Republic.
4 Comments:
"The entire nation seems in decay, institutions that are the fundamentals of the nation are collapsing, because the young blood that would have nourished them is now either in America doing a PhD in Computer Science or working in a tech company in Bangalore".
Whew! That's pretty heavy! I think what India and Indians (the 'intellectual' middle class) is good at is self-flagellation. It's slowly becoming a full-time obsession.
>there are few signs of >environmental lawyers, quality >journalists and film-makers, >professors with India-specific >research interests and politicians >from the middle class
i kind of agree with this. we need more institutional mechanisms to generate more active people in these fields who can compete with the likes of attending iisc, iit, aiims etc.
Thanks for linking and correcting my incorrect grammar. :)
Rahul, I try to be as academic and objective in this self-flagellation as I can, but I guess I am sort of an outsider for now. And I agree that the best people to raise these issues would be middle class Indians themselves.
My textbooks were silent on the Emergency, the Babri Masjid demolition, problems in Punjab, Kashmir and the North East. They were silent on the day to day corruption.
Goodness me, you want so much more in your textbooks! Did you want fries with that ?
The vastly overrated textbooks!!
Why do people fight so much over worthless pages that merely serve to immiserate little children?
Incidentally, my textbooks were also silent on the directions for using toilet paper ! And yet ...
My point: If only we'd relied on textbooks to create a citizenry, we'd still be waiting for the French revolution (and all the revolutions that followed). Cheer up !
the traditional nepotistic and self-serving attitudes of most Indians meant that we choose ambitions/aspirations with little regard to what effect our life will have on the broader society we are part of.
Now then, you don't want to be saying things like this, or you'll have a billion people (aka "most indians") making chutney out of you. Whats wrong with self-serving, as long as its not detrimental to others? And nepotism - in India we call it "family business" - some also like to think of it in the framework of "reciprocal altruism" (since you're the academic type, check out Trivers).
Its more important, IMHO, to fulfill one's creative potential, excel at whatever one chooses to do, than chase after some phoney "greater common good". (If you can have both in one life, that's a bonus)
Bottomline: A khadi kurta can never be a substitute for competence (in any field, including social activism)
because the young blood that would have nourished them is now either in America doing a PhD in Computer Science or working in a tech company in Bangalore.
Oh dear! You couldn't possibly have patted yourself on the back any harder ! And now after the gratuitous self-congratulation (via the back), shall we move to the , er!.. bottom.....
We're quite fine with our RBC (red blood cell) count, thank you! Too much of it is not good for health. Some RBCs (statistically insignificant) do float abroad looking for more oxygen. We honestly don't expect too much from them - many (not all) are wont to succumb to necrosis upon return- but we welcome them back just the same !
And now, what was it that you wanted to say?
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