Letter to Mint: On Interview with Shruti Kapila

Note: The original e-mail sent to LiveMint has been corrected for the more visible typos. I am unable to locate the link to the original article. The date of publication of the article was 27th December, 2013. In case any one comes across the original link, kindly e-mail me at converse at kushagramerchant.info

From merchant.kushagra@gmail.com Fri Dec 27 13:12:44 2013
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2013 13:12:44 +0530
From: Kushagra
To: feedback@livemint.com
Subject: On Interview with Shruti Kapila

Hello,

Congratulations for an article that was instructive and endeavoured to present a realistic interpretation of the current political events. Hopefully, more such would follow.

I am a recent subscriber to Mint (since Nov 16) and have been not too infrequently disheartened at opinionated and stereotypical articles on Mr. Modi in your "Views" pages. This article and this column, in general, have been more balanced in that sense.

For a layman like me the present discourse in media seems to have evolved into pitting the civic society, the corporate and the government in stereotypical either/or relationships. However, the life for most of us does not provide such a clear-cut evidence to support civic society vs. India Inc or India Inc vs. the Government. The reality, luckily, is inconsiderably more complex. In some way, the above mentioned article seems to call into question, beneath its surface, such easy stereotyping. Especially with Shruti's interpretation of the BJP and the rhetoric around Narendra Modi and very interestingly, around AAP.

It is the first statement in this paper that I saw explicitly put forth a hypothesis that the talk on governance, reforms and economic development maybe a misguiding expression of the underlying, unchanged and, to some extent, foundational ideology of the RSS and its affiliated groups. Modi is worth talking about from this angle and not solely on account of the Gujarat Model of Development on which the jury is still out and will remain so for quite some time.

It is also interesting that Shruti is forthright in covering a large portion of the current political discourse under the rubric of populist. As an historian one would have to respect that observation of hers and make an attempt to understand it better. One of the possible implications, very indirect, is of course why has the discourse turned populist and who makes it populist? Lack of substantive issues of discussion is indeed a concern. And so is the blind repose of faith in charismatic and authoritative figures as a panacea (a position that some columns of this paper seem to highlight, at times, with a not so sublime fervour). This leads to the role of media as the fourth stakeholder in the whole discourse (apart from the civic society, India Inc and the government) and its own ambiguous role. The fact that it is the media that has popularized the discourse around India Inc vs. Civic Society and the other relationships, it will have to justify what is its own relationship in/with this triumvariate. Is it balanced across all three or seems to naturally align with one over the other and thus, at times, becomes indistinguishable.

This point and a few more threads that emerge from this article deserve more vigorous debate, especially as Shruti explicitly asserts the possibility of the Hindutva element being an ever-present reality. The nature of all these relationships and the notion that India Inc is rooting for Modi when interpreted through this observation can lead to unsavoury conclusions. This is another reason to not stereotype because one finds it hard to believe that the whole of India Inc is rooting for Modi or that whole of India Inc thinks all the work of UPA(I+II) with NAC thrown in it was a disaster alongside similar other highly general conclusions.

In the same spirit, one would also not like to assume that the role of the whole of media is ambiguous. Maybe a steady recurrence of articles in the same spirit as this one may at least prove that papers like yours are willing to go below the superficial and look at the substantive. Of course, a lot more consistent effort is needed.