You8217;re not welcome

Wherever there is a camera, you are likely to spot him or her. A funeral, a protest, and if they are high profile, he knows that it is a perfect photo op. Don8217;t call him a vulture feeding on the cadavers of lens-friendly lamentations and newsworthy celebrations. Rather, he is attempting to be humane, I8217;m-with-you friend, I8217;ll-take-up-your-cause benefactor. The exigencies of his trade require him to be a society-driven mourner, a good fellow in the service of the people. And what is he without people, he, the politician? On Wednesday, he saw people there, protesting the gruesome murder of the Outlook cartoonist Irfan Hussain. The protesters were predominantly journalists and the protest was pre-determined to find a place, picture included, in almost every newspaper next morning. The politicians came uninvited. You don8217;t wait for invitations for such occasions. It8217;s your social duty, your political responsibility, to be seen, to be heard, in the right, correct, and properly photogenic, context. But they wereshooed away. What8217;s happening?

Usually, journalists don8217;t shoo away politicians. They need each other. Tomorrow, this public humiliation will be repudiated by professional requirements. Still, Wednesday8217;s humiliation is very important as a social gesture. It represents a trend. When someone is murdered, the politician is identified with the murderer. His tears have no credibility. His words are empty. He is not real. He is not one of us. He is not trustworthy. That shopworn term, the politician-criminal nexus, is shopworn because it is a banal truth, so familiar, part of life, no way you can make it a lie. Your average Indian politician is the most common adjective to everything that is terrible, from sleaze to slaughter to swindle. Whenever he seeks out people, personalises the slogan, it is seen as an act, a self-serving act. What happened on Wednesday was an acknowledgement of this truth: the politician is undesirable.

Is the anti-political sentiment spreading? There is of course a growing disinterestin politics, and that is not something Indian alone, it is there even in matured democracies. Elections are not always an affirmation of trust in politicians, they are more and more just an affirmation of the democratic obligation. And the smart ones are aware of this. They defy the stereotype by seeking out society in ways better than attending a funeral or a protest demonstration. They rewrite the slogans in the language of social compassion, of community. The ruling political philosophy in places like Washington, London and many European capitals is so self-consciously society-friendly because some politicians want to be relevant among people. They are likely to go beyond the Third Way. But for the Indian politicians, all the ways are in the wrong direction, socially as well as politically. On the way back from that horrible Raisina Road demonstration, they must have been thinking about other destinations that make them relevant. You have to be a professional to be there, others can onlyprotest.