Incongruous India

How depressing that in the week in which we discovered that the Indian economy is growing faster, at 9.4 per cent in 2006...

How depressing that in the week in which we discovered that the Indian economy is growing faster, at 9.4 per cent in 2006, than it has in nearly 20 years, we were reminded by the Gurjjars of Rajasthan that politically we remain a primitive country.

That is the real incongruity in India 8212; the divide between 21st century economic growth and 19th century politics. This is what we need to worry about, not whether the gap between Bharat and India is widening. It is not. If anything it has lessened, and television has been the real reason for this. It has brought 21st century India to villages that did not know what the 21st century meant.

Often in this column I draw attention to television having been a vital engine of social change in India and I celebrate the proliferation of private television channels. May they continue to grow and flourish. But, having said this, let me say that the coverage of the Gurjjar violence appalled me. Do you know how the violence began in Dausa? Why the police opened fire on those mobs last week? No? Nor did I, until I asked the one question that none of the reporters asked on either our television channels or in our newspapers.

Why? The answer is that Gurjjar mobs hacked two policemen to death. I am shocked that the police did not open fire sooner so that the lives of their colleagues could have been saved. As a dutiful taxpayer, I am disgusted that the vandals who burned public property and blocked highways are not all in jail.

This seemed not to concern the TV reporters who were in Dausa or the learned panels that pondered over what happened in the safety of TV studios in Delhi. All they seemed concerned with was that the Rajasthan government had let the Gurjjars down by not fulfilling an alleged promise denied by the chief minister to demote Gurjjars from OBC status to the status of Scheduled Tribes so that they could get more government jobs.

Assuming the mobs genuinely believe that such a promise was made, does it give them the right to hack policemen to death, block highways and destroy public property? Not in my book. But what were our reporters concerned about? Compensation. They wanted the Rajasthan government to compensate the people who were killed in police firing and whose bodies are now being desecrated by mob leaders who refuse to allow them to be cremated till their 8220;demands are met.8221;

So, added to murder, vandalism and mob rule, we have blackmail and we in the media are behaving as if this is fine. Am I missing something?

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In my opinion, there can be no room for this kind of politics in an India that aspires to become the fastest growing economy in the world. We are at No. 2 today after China. Those who led the Gurjjar mobs must be made to compensate the people of India for the damage they did to public property. But, we need to admit that the fault lines between caste, creed and community are erupting because of the kind of politics that our major political parties have been playing.

They are all to blame and the only solution now is for them to try and build a national consensus to end all reservations except, perhaps, in the case of Dalits. I say perhaps only because I believe that Dalits are the only Indians to whom we owe compensation for centuries of injustice.

I am not sure reserved government jobs and reserved seats in schools and colleges have helped uplift the community, but we owe them and if they think affirmative action is useful then so be it.

As for the others, can we stop deluding ourselves about this OBC nonsense? Anybody who believes that Yadavs, Jats and Gurjjars are oppressed rural communities needs a refresher course in rural India. These so-called Other Backward Castes are more powerful today than Brahmins and Thakurs, and often better educated, because they do not have upper-caste prejudices about educating girls.

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If they are demanding reservations and more and more special rights, it is because they have been misled by cynical politicians who see them only as vote banks. So will any lessons be learned from last week8217;s violence? Probably not by the politicians, but we in the media need to be careful not to make a bad situation worse by telling less than the whole truth.

The Gurjjar mobs ended up being portrayed as the victims. They were not, sad though it is that anyone should die in police firing. When are our policemen going to learn to use rubber bullets? They are just as effective without being lethal.