Street Democracy

  

(Improvisation on Nizar’s offhand, loud thinking on Indian democracy)

What characterises a street? An auto comes, stops, pulls to the side of the road, and the driver walks towards a tea shop. People are waiting for the bus at the bus stand. A bus arrives and stops a bit away from where people were waiting. They run after the bus. Three cars come together as if in a race, but nothing happens. One of them takes a sharp turn, allowing the other to overtake. This forms street life; this is the character of a street. Its character is characterlessness. The life of a street is the result of a plethora of quick decisions made in ephemeral, random contexts. The rich, the tricky, and the hero can manipulate street logic and capitalise on it.

Indian democracy is like life on a street. Take Vijay. He manufactured his image through films and gradually became ingrained in the minds of people who lived their lives in the cinema. This shows that an image can win. Berlusconi won and ruled Italy three times. He was a media tycoon who built his image. He won by the power of money in a short time, in contrast to the long roads to victory of political parties. In Bengal, trickery or vote theft won the election. In Kerala, too, a different concoction of street logic worked. Perhaps this is the last ray of fading hope for democracy. Luckily, a sad form of democracy remains. A reckless democracy is still breathing, or the democracy is fighting to survive, whatever faint form it can.