The politics of flinging things

Not a thought given as to who got what, to the piles of discarded old clothes all over, to the meaning of this unfeeling act. After a few seconds of watching this, the degradation of the spectacle hit home. So I waded through the crowd, screaming at the team: “What are you doing?” They shrugged and went on tossing their stuff. At my shoulder, a man turned and said, “Why are you bothering? After this quake, we have become like animals.”

Why these three-year-old memories? Because of the news from Lucknow. A “birthday celebration” for BJP chieftain Lalji Tandon, a function to distribute saris to “poor” women. Without being there, it is easy to imagine the prevailing scene: The same sea of outstretched arms, like those at that Kutch village, saris flung at them instead of biscuits. Sure enough: The witnesses reported that the organisers “threw saris into the approximately 5000-strong crowd of poor women crammed into a small park.” Should we then be surprised at the resulting stampede killing 22 women?

Why must people be treated this way? Earthquake victims, riot victims, even “poor” people? Pleading for and fighting over pitiful handouts, people turn into beggars, become animals. They get trampled to death. And yet, horrible as all this is, the truly ghastly aspect lies elsewhere: In those doing the handing out. They are applauded for apparently being well-meaning. Yet how destructive their attitude is of a thing like self-respect. How destructive of life.

The attitude that says you “serve the poor” by giving them stuff — too often, by throwing the stuff at them. The attitude that assumes victims of great calamities are, by definition, poor — and so need stuff flung at them. The attitude that presumes doing such things is good, and thus an appropriate way to mark a birthday. It’s that attitude that killed the women in Lucknow.

We might have a fat catalogue of famous name cars for sale, or BPO operations mushrooming all over the country, or double-digit growth rates based on extrapolating from a monsoon-drenched quarter. All components of the India Shining we’ve heard so much about. But somewhere inside, each of us knows: Stand up anywhere and announce that you are distributing free saris—free anything, and you don’t even need a birthday— and you will immediately attract a crowd. It will inevitably turn into a free-for-all. You can safely expect that some will be injured, some even killed.

And this will keep happening: as long as we have politicians arrogant enough to believe that their brthdays are best celebrated — their political prospects best improved — by distributing freebies. As long as they profess that this is service to the poor. As long as there are Indians desperate enough to stretch out hands. In the very act of gathering the “poor” and throwing things at them, whether in Bhachau or Lucknow, is an Indian reality; a commentary on the way we are. That reality shows up “India Shining” for the election gimmick it is, a slogan no less empty than “Garibi Hatao” was.

After all, it’s been a generation since a prime minister used that last slogan to attract votes. The Lucknow tragedy tells us, if we needed to be told, that the garibi has by no means been hatao-ed. Remember that when you vote today, and in the next few days.